Commercial banks are continuously shunning private hospitals, which has adversely affected the quality of their services due to lack of finances to upgrade their facilities.

In order to overcome this, private hospital practitioners are now turning to the government for help, seeking a health credit mechanism through which they can access long-term loans to support their investments.

They say the government has not put in place a heath credit fund to allow them to access health investment loans to purchase expensive medical equipment.

Private hospitals owners noted that it would be of great importance if the government sets up a fund that can be accessed through commercial banks Hospitals, clinics, among other facilities, told Rwanda Today that specialised medical instruments, for instance, Computerised tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and endoscopy.

Speaking to Rwanda Today Dr George Ntakiyiruta and managing director of private EjoHeza Surgical center, said the government should help them by negotiating with commercial banks in the country to give them long term loans at a lower rate to purchase health operational equipment.

“It is very disturbing all banks offer short term loans for private hospital owners buying equipment which is not helping us since health equipment is expensive and the return on investment takes longer,” said Dr Ntakiyiruta.

“Health apparatuses and scanning machines are expensive and only a few private clinics and hospitals can afford to purchase them,” said Dr Ntakiyiruta.

“The cheapest and most expensive surgical instruments costs around Rwf1million and Rwf30 million respectively,” he said, adding, “without a loan or cooperating with many others to raise funds, owning these instruments in the private clinic or hospital is quite impossible.”

“It’s now close to five years after we initiated the center, but since then we have tried multiple banks to acquire a loan to purchase scanning machines but failing due to unbearable conditions attached to the loan,” he says.

“If the government helps us and avail health fund or ease access to long term loans by private hospitals, it will be a great step taken towards providing quality services to our patients in the country,” he added.