Rwanda is a country in the East and Central Africa with a population of approximately 11 million. Globally, Rwanda is recognized for its tremendous progress in economic and social development, notwithstanding, the 1994 genocide where about 2 million became refugees, and, the country’s health facilities were decimated (Blair T. 2014).

Vision 2020 framework has been very instrumental in Rwanda’s success. The framework has Inter alia, quadrupled the economic growth (8.1% annually from 2000), over a tenth of the population (over 1000000) have pulled themselves out of poverty and achieving gender equity-equality dyad (Blair T. 2014; Burnet JE. 2011). Above all, Rwanda was identified as the most attractive location for investment in Africa (World Bank. 2016).

In health sector, the progress has been equally inspiring. Rwanda was amongst the few that achieved all the health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 3, 4 and 5 (Worley H. 2015).

Most importantly, reduction of infant and under-five mortality rates was by over 70% (see fig 1). But, conversely, the reduction of neonatal mortality rate has been rather slow, a bellwether of underlying challenges to ending preventable newborn and child deaths.