Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / Being involved in soccer in Rwanda at both national and international level exposes soccer players to the risk of injury. The aim of this study was to identify common soccer injuries among the 1st and 2nd division soccer teams in Rwanda and to establish the need for physiotherapy intervention. This deals with the first two stages of injury prevention, which included identification and description of the extent of the problem and the identification of factors and mechanisms that play a part in the occurrence of injuries. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / The aim of this study was to investigate met and unmet palliative care needs for people living with HIV/AIDS in selected areas in Rwanda. The achieve this aim, the study, firstly, identified the palliative care needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, secondly, it identified the health care services available to meet these needs, and thirdly, it determined the extent to which palliative care needs were met. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / Falls among elderly people have been identified as a significant and serious medical problem confronting a growing number of older people. Falls have been found to be a leading cause of disability, distress, admission to supervised care and death among older persons that pose a serious problem to public health. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of and risk factors for falls in the community-dwelling elderly persons in the Umutara province of Rwanda. / South Africa

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper aimed to analyse the impact of power sharing on democracy. The paper also compared the approach of Burundi and Rwanda in their constitutions to the concept of power sharing. / South Africa

Magister Commercii - MCom / Rwanda is constrained by an export structure that is heavily dependent on one or a few agricultural export products such as coffee, tea , pyrethrum and cinchona. The country did not manage to industrialize or to diversify its export structure significantly during the post-independence period. The situation was worsened by the civil war of 1994, which almost destroyed all sectors of the economy. Traditional export crops, such as coffee, cotton, tea, cocoa, palm oil, and tobacco are all subject to large price fluctuations and declining world market prices. This paper considered the case for diversification into non-traditional agricultural exports as a strategy for improving a developing country's terms of trade. The study put forward a case of Higland Flowers Project; a flowers project located in rural Kigali about 5 kilometers to the Kigali International airport. / South Africa

Magister Commercii - MCom / This study attempted to examine the nature of the relationship between high levels of external debt and capital accumulation with the case study of Rwanda. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / Spinal cord injury is a devastating condition, and its consequences impact on many facets of an individual's life. Activities of daily living such as personal care and housework might be difficult to perform post injury. The majority of spinal cord injury patients receive hospital-based rehabilitation to address these consequences. The normal length of hospital stay among spinal cord injury patients ranges from three to twelve months, and an increased length of stay are caused by development of secondary complications such as pressure sores, urinary tract infection and respiratory infection. The purpose of this study was to determine factors affecting length of hospital stay for individuals with spinal cord injuries at Kanombe Military Hospital in Rwanda. To achieve this, a retrospective study, utilising a quantitative approach was used. The records of individuals with spinal cord injuries discharged from the hospital between 1st January1996 and 31st December 2007 were reviewed to collect data. A data gathering instrument was developed by the researcher and there after used to capture the relevant information from the patients' folders. Information collected included demographic data, information relating to the injury, occurrence of medical complications and length of hospital stay. One hundred and twenty four medical folders of patients discharged from 1st January 1996 to 31st December 2007 at Kanombe Military Hospital were reviewed for data extraction. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0 for windows was used to analyse the data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were determined in SPSS. Associations were made between demographic factors and occurrence of secondary medical complications with length of hospital stay. These were computed by means of chi-square tests. One level of significance, alpha set at 5% was used throughout. The linear regression analysis was used to determine factors affecting the length of stay. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / The number of children with disabilities under the age of 18 years around the world varies from 120 to 150 million. In many countries, throughout the world, the majority of children with disabilities either do not receive any form of education or, if they receive any, it is often inappropriate. UNESCO estimates that more than 90% of children with disabilities in developing countries do not attend schools. Rwanda has recently started inclusive education in a number of schools around the country for ensuring that children with disabilities have access to education. Despite this, in Rwanda, many children with disabilities do not attend school and this number is not known. This study aimed to identify the barriers to school attendance by children with disabilities in Rwanda. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae - MSc / Background: Three epidemiological studies conducted in Rwanda have highlighted that many people at different levels in the community of soccer do not implement accepted control measures for reducing the risk of injuries. However, little is known about what soccer community members themselves know about injury prevention. Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify perceptions of factors influencing the implementation of soccer injury prevention strategies in Rwanda. / South Africa

Masters of Science (Physiotherapy) / Nursing is worldwide regarded as a high risk occupation for the development of work-related low back pain (WRLBP). LBP is one of the most common causes of disability, creating an important socio-economic problem in modern society. Studies report that more than 80% of workers suffer from WRLBP once in their occupational lives. Among nurses, the lifetime prevalence has been found to be higher, varying up to 90% of a nursing population. The current study aimed at determining the prevalence, perceived disability and contributing/risk factors to WRLBP among nurses in Rwanda, identifying the perceived contributing risk factors of WRLBP and intervention strategies received by those nurses. A descriptive quantitative cross-sectional survey using convenience sampling was used to gather data with a self-administered questionnaire on a sample of 226 nurses. The study population included all registered nurses of Kabgayi District Hospital and Nyanza District Hospitals and their respective health centers. To be included, the nurses had to have suffered from WRLBP during the previous 6 months before data collection. The Nordic Back Pain Questionnaire, the Oswestry Disability Index and an open-ended questionnaire regarding perceived risk factors have been used. Descriptive statistics to summarize data and inferential statistics such as chisquare test to test the relationship between different variables of the study have been studied at 5% levels. Correlation coefficients in terms of cross-tabulation were also studied at 1% level of significance. The current study highlights one-month prevalent rates of 70.4%, and one-week prevalent rates of 54.4%. WRLBP among nurses has been found to be significantly associated with gender according to the p-value of 0.007 among the studied variables, and good correlation coefficients between disability scores, together with the length of WRLBP and BMI with 0.0001, 0.0030 respectively. Nurses in the current study reported WRLBP as a result of a wide range of factors related to their work, manual handling being the major physical work activity exposing them to WRLBP. The perceived risk factors for WRLBP reported in this study were classified into 4 categories. The first category included work positional factors such as standing, sitting, bending, and awkward work postures. The second group included work-related nursing tasks such as lifting patients and items at work, repositioning and transferring patients, bed making, washing patients, and many others. In the third group, psychosocial factors like poor relationship with colleagues, work pressure and reduced job satisfaction have been listed. Finally, some non-occupational factors such as aging, pregnancy, menstruation, history of back pain, being female and body built have also been perceived as contributing factors to WRLBP. The Oswestry Disability Index demonstrated a mild to moderate disability due to WRLBP in this group of nurses. WRLBP has a negative impact in health services due to activity limitation, lost time and lowered productivity. The study concludes that nurses must be protected from ergonomic work stressors, and improvement of awareness of urses with regards to ergonomic stressors seems to be crucial. However, an effort by different parties concerned with the problem at all levels in Rwanda is needed. The government of Rwanda, through the Ministry of Health in particular, will be recommended to put strategies in place for the management, reduction and prevention of WRLBP amongst health workers, especially in the nursing population. / South Africa