Morocco’s Princess Lalla Asmaa, President of the Lalla Asmaa Foundation, and First Lady of Rwanda Jeannette Kagame launched on Monday in Kigali the fifth phase of Lalla Asmaa Foundation’s program “”Together, We Hear Each Other Better” program aimed at providing hearing healthcare across Africa.
Princess Lalla Asmaa and Rwanda First Lady inaugurated the same day in Kigali a hearing diagnosis & rehabilitation center donated by Princess Lalla Asmaa and equipped by her humanitarian & medical Foundation.
As an international extension of the Moroccan national “Nasmaa” campaign, the “Together, We Hear Each Other Better” program is part of the African Vision of King Mohammed VI based on solidarity South-South cooperation, the sharing of experiences, and co-development among brotherly and friendly nations.
Rwanda thus becomes the 23rd country to join the “Together, We Hear Each Other Better” program, which is active in Africa, the MENA region, and Latin America, and has provided care to nearly 500 patients.
On this occasion, Princess Lalla Asmaa and the First Lady of Rwanda visited four Rwandan children who had undergone surgery as part of this medical-humanitarian mission, an initiative that reflects the special attention the Princess gives to supporting the children benefiting from the Program and their families, both in Morocco and in the Foundation’s 23 partner countries, a move that extends beyond the medical procedure.
Afterwards, Princess Lalla Asmaa and the First Lady of Rwanda inaugurated the Hearing Diagnosis and Rehabilitation Center, a gift from the Moroccan Princess and the Lalla Asmaa Foundation, which provided the equipment.
This new center brings together all stages of care, from the initial examination to rehabilitation. The center, which gathers ENT doctors, audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and psychologists, is equipped with all necessary medical equipment, including a soundproof booth, audiometers, devices for testing infants’ hearing, as well as workstations for adjusting cochlear implants and hearing aids.
During this fifth phase of the “Together, We Hear Each Other Better” program, 50 Rwandan patients are receiving cochlear implants and 56 others are being fitted with hearing aids. The procedures are performed jointly by the experienced surgical teams mobilized by the Lalla Asmaa Foundation and their Rwandan counterparts.
This collaboration brings together practitioners from both countries, as well as residents in training, throughout all stages of patient care, from preoperative preparation through the surgical procedure itself to intraoperative measures to verify the proper functioning of the implant. This approach helps strengthen the skills of Rwandan hospital teams and ensures that the mission’s benefits are sustained over the long term, for the benefit of patients.
Princess Lalla Asmaa also chaired a signing ceremony on Monday in Kigali of a MoU between the Lalla Asmaa Foundation and the Imbuto Foundation, presided over by Rwanda’s First Lady. The MoU aims to strengthen further medical & humanitarian cooperation between the two institutions and advance the transfer of expertise between Morocco and Rwanda.
While 430 million people worldwide currently require hearing rehabilitation, the support that Princess Lalla Asmaa continues to show toward deaf and hard-of-hearing children is part of a comprehensive and globally unique approach based on early screening, free access to care, including cochlear implant placement and medical and educational support, while working to share Moroccan expertise with partner countries.
