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In This Issue:
Team Heart members have the support and insight of Rwanda native Egidia Rugwizangoga, BSN, RN, of Tower 4, as they plan a cardiac surgery mission to King Faisal Hospital in Kigali.
Egidia Rugwizangoga was just 14 when horrific genocide ravaged her native Rwanda in 1994, killing an estimated 800,000 people. Separated from her family, Rugwizangoga spent weeks going from home to home, hiding in attics and other tiny spaces with little food while she feared for her life.
Eventually, she made it to a refugee camp where she remained until the war was over. “In the camp, they taught anyone who could read or write how to perform basic care tasks, like change dressings,” she recalled. “I started to like it. Here I was, trying to save lives after so many were destroyed.”
Many of her friends and family members did not survive the genocide, but Rugwizangoga tried to focus on helping as many people as she could. “From the experience, I came to realize that nursing is what I was meant to do,” she said. “It gave me hope that after all those bad things, I can be part of saving lives.”
At the end of 1995, she enrolled at a nursing high school in Rwanda, where she learned about injections, drawing blood, applying dressings—and delivering a baby. “There are not enough physicians in Rwanda to deliver every baby, so nurses have to,” said Rugwizangoga, who worked as a student at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali. “It was a requirement to graduate.”
After finishing high school in 1999, she left Rwanda and its persistent safety issues and came to Boston. She became a member of St. Mark’s Church in Dorchester, and a priest helped her find a job at the state auditor’s office. After a few years, she was introduced to BWH, where she began as a patient care assistant on Tower 16 while attending UMass-Boston for her BSN.
As she cared for patients at BWH, she saw stark differences between health care in the U.S. and Rwanda. “The environment is different here than in Rwanda,” she said, noting the ample equipment and up-to-date textbooks and other resources that BWH clinicians access easily. “But people are the same everywhere. We all have needs, we all want to be taken care of, no matter our different backgrounds.”
Rugwizangoga became a nurse on Tower 4 after graduating in 2005. “It’s an amazing place,” she said. “I love it here.”
Now, she’s also working with Team Heart to make the mission a success. “It’s incredible what they’re doing,” she said of the team members, who are volunteering their time and paying their own way to Rwanda. “They’re changing lives in Rwanda, but it’s more than that. They’re making a difference in the world. They should be supported in any way possible.”