In Kigali, Rwanda's first dedicated hearing centre is already giving children their first sounds

Fifty children in Rwanda have received cochlear implants — devices that can give a child who cannot hear a way into the world of sound — in the first days of the country's first dedicated Auditory Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Center, at the Military Referral and Teaching Hospital in Kanombe, Kigali. Others are being fitted with hearing aids. The centre brings screening, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and follow-up together under one roof, and was inaugurated on 26 October by First Lady Jeannette Kagame and Morocco's Princess Lalla Asmaa, whose foundations — Imbuto and the Lalla Asmaa Foundation — built the partnership behind it. Moroccan specialists spent the week working alongside Rwandan doctors. 'These are very sophisticated procedures, but they are a good and reliable way to help them,' said the hospital's director, Brig Gen Dr Eugène Ngoga. Hearing caught early can decide whether a child learns to speak, reads and joins a classroom on equal terms.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program