University Central Hospital of Kigali (CHUK) has said appointments backlog choking them is because they are overwhelmed rather than poor service delivery.

After an inspection of public service delivery places in Kigali City, last week, Jean d'Amour Gatera, the chairperson of the Taskforce on National Customer Care and Service Delivery, said there is a backlog of appointments at the referral hospital.

"Many patients have not seen their doctors. People are being given appointments for April next year, how can a patient wait for that long?" Gatera asked.

However, CHUK Medical Director, Dr Theobald Hategekimana, on Tuesday said they receive too many patients since the facility serves as both district and referral hospital.

He said patients who are given such appointments are those with non-emergency cases, adding that they have since asked hospitals to refer patients to CHUK only after consulting with the university hospital.

Dr Hategekimana also asked the Ministry of Health to build a district hospital in Nyarugenge to cater for cases that do not need referal.

Arthur Asiimwe, the head of Rwanda Health Communication Centre Division, was hopeful that the Human Resource for Health programme that was launched last year, will address the challenges.

He said the seven-year programme is one of the long term measures the ministry is taking to reduce skills gap.