Our flight from Kigali, Rwanda to Brussels was uneventful and pleasant.

In addition to our week in Africa, we added on two days in Europe.

We rented a car in Brussels and drove over to Normandy.

I’ve long wanted to tour the D-Day sites, and it was everything I had thought it would be, and more.

We had an all day tour with a very experienced guide, and Will and I learned a lot about this important chapter in American and world history.

The D-Day landing, on June 6, 1944, is something I’ve read a lot about and seen in several movies.

Recently I read a new book, D-Day, by Antony Beevor — I heartily recommend it.

And we had planned to see Saving Private Ryan again, but didn’t get that done — but we will soon.

Will and I saw Arromanches, where some of the key events occurred, and then Omaha Beach — the most celebrated of the landing spots.

The beach is very broad — and it was incredible to stand there and imagine running up onto the shore, and trying to find cover from the shots raining down.

We then went to the American Cemetery — an awesome and impressive spot — with rows and rows of crosses.

Finally went went to Pointe du Hoc, where the American Rangers scaled the cliffs — an act of heroism that is almost beyond belief.

I strongly recommend that you do such a tour if you possibly can. We are changed because of this experience.

Then we drove back to Brussels and flew home — arriving safe and sound.

Will and I are already talking about the 2012 trip — lots of discussion and planning to come.

Stay tuned for more!

Our final two days here in Rwanda have been very worthwhile and enjoyable.

Yesterday we spent time in doors — it rained VERY hard most of the afternoon.

It was actually pleasant to sit and read and listen to the rain.

Last evening we had dinner with Bishop Nathan Gasatura and his wife Florence in their home.

[check out the pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/billroper]

Will and I had enjoyed their hospitality when we were here in 2010.

This time we were able to meet all four of their children — David (24), Daniel (22), Darius (20), and Deborah (17).

They are each bright and engaging.

Also with us at dinner were Dr. Patrick Kyamanywa, whom I met last year, and with whom I visited in June in Durham, NC.

He is dean of the School of Medicine at the National University of Rwanda — and he and I have hit it off quickly and well.

His two young children were at dinner last evening.

The house full of people made for a very good and lively time.

Today we checked out of the Anglican Guesthouse, where we have been staying in Butare, and went to see two “factories.”

One is a tinnery near Butare, where we saw them make beautiful pieces with tin.

And we went to Maraba Coffee, also nearby, where we saw them processing and sorting coffee beans.

Then we drove to Kigali, had lunch and then John, our driver, took us by to see his family.

His very modest home was filled with joy by him, his lovely wife Aline and their two young children, Samuel (5) and Elijah (2).

Each of them let Will and me hold him, but Elijah was not at all sure of us for a while.

We are now at Kigali International Airport — about to fly overnight to Brussels.

It has been an amazing week here.

Rwanda is a beautiful country with a heart-rending past, and a bright future.

We met wonderful people and learned a great deal.

Will and I are already planning our 2012 trip — BACK TO RWANDA!

Stay tuned.

Over the weekend I had several very worthwhile experiences.

I got some chores done in Kigali, and then had dinner in the home of new friends, Cal and Mimi Wilson.

Cal is a family medicine doctor and a faculty member at the University of Colorado Denver.

He is UCD Director of the Capacity Building Project in Medical Education in Rwanda, which is a consortium of several US med schools working to strengthen medical education here.

He also directs a family medicine residency program in Rwanda — and we have several mutual friends.

Cal and Mimi have done similar work in Jordan and Ecuador in the past.

After church on Sunday, we drove to Nyanza, about two hours south of Kigali, to visit with Godfrey Kalema and his wife Diane.

We had met last year when we were in Rwanda.

Godfrey is a high school teacher who started a non-profit group in 2003 called the Dufatanye Cooperative.

It provides a place to live and some opportunity for income for extremely poor people who are HIV positive.

Currently seventy seven people live there, most of whom are on anti-retroviral therapy.

Will had spent the past two days there — working at the Cooperative.

After lunch at Godfrey and Diane’s house, we went to Dufatanye.

You can see pictures of our visit at www.flickr.com/photos/billroper.

The members of the coop welcomed us with song and dance — and Will and even I got into it!

Then there was some speechmaking and translating, ending with their giving us gifts they had made, woven grass baskets and other items.

We walked around and saw their gardens — and then their brick and roof tile making activities. Will had worked on this and did cabbage planting too.

He had a great time there — and told the group that he looks forward to coming back next year!

We Americans have so much to be grateful for — and so much to learn from others. I was really moved by my time at Dufatanye.

We are now at Butare — a bit further south. It is the third largest city in Rwanda, and the home of the National University of Rwanda, so think of it as the Chapel Hill of this country.

More to come, stay tuned!

This morning we got to visit Sonrise School in Ruhengeri.

This is the school that Joel attends and Theoneste used to attend.

The two of them took us around the high school, which has about 550 students, mostly boarding.

We learned that Sonrise has one of the top records in Rwanda for students passing the national exam.

That’s a tribute to the dedicated teachers and the rigorous curriculum.

Part of the fun of the day was getting to visit again with Moses, the young Rwandan boy who lives with the Kings.

Moses is about to turn eight, and he is quite interactive — I took several pictures of him (at his request) and he used my camera to take pictures of Will and of me.

He also attends Sonrise — in the primary school.

This afternoon we drove back to Kigali — about two hours.

There are bicycles everywhere in Rwanda — and we saw an ingenious way of climbing a tall hill on a bike — by holding on to a truck.

Will and Theoneste have gone on to Nyanza, where they will spend the next two days.

They will be at the Dufatanye Cooperative, the non-profit organization that provides a place to live and some income for people with HIV/AIDS.

Will worked there last year on our visit — where he learned how to make bricks.

More to come!

Today has been a full and rewarding day.

After a quick trip with our young friend Theoneste for him to see a local dentist, we headed out for Ruhengeri (or Musanze as it is now known officially).

It is about 70 miles, but it took us more than two hours, as there is quite a lot of road repair work underway.

Once we arrived, we went to the new home of Drs. Louise and Caleb King.

They used to live and work at Shyira Hospital, but now are in the city of Ruhengeri.

Louise will be teaching in the local family medicine residency program, and Caleb is devoting himself fully to launching a major hydroelectric project in the region.

He has been working part time on this for several years — the first construction phase has been underway since January, and he took us to see it.

About an hour drive out of Ruhengeri the project will divert a small river — the water will run in a canal they are building for 1.4 kilometers, gradually sloping downhill.

At the end, the water will descend almost straight down about 70 meters, in a 70 centimeter pipe — to turbines, which will generate electricity.

When fully built out, the projects Caleb is working on will be able to produce power equivalent to 20 percent of all the power now being produced in Rwanda by all methods.

His company is called “Peace Power and Light.”

I took several pictures that will show you the work — but I currently do not have enough bandwidth to upload them.

Check later at www.flickr.com/photos/billroper.

We had dinner tonight with Pastor Frank and his wife Peace, at the Kings’ home. They are the parents of Joel Gashagaza, the other young Rwandan student we are working with.

Stay tuned!

After getting a bit settled this morning (with local currency and cell phones), we set out to learn about the latest in public health here.

We went to the US Embassy, where we were hosted by CDC’s mission chief, Dr. Pratima Raghunathan. We had lunch with some team members — they have nearly 50 CDC staff altogether.

This is a very significantly expanded global health presence by the CDC. They told us that CDC has this kind of staff in over 40 countries worldwide.

The funding for this effort comes principally from PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, which was begun in 2002 by President Bush, and now continued by President Obama.

After a very good informal briefing, we went to CHUK, the Central University Hospital in Kigali (the acronym is from the French name), where we toured the pediatric HIV/AIDS unit, and met with children and parents. It was very impressive.

If you wish, you can see some of our pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/billroper.

More to come!

Will and I have embarked on our 2011 international trip, and have returned to Rwanda.

Last year’s trip was so worthwhile that we decided that we should come back to this special place.

We will be visiting friends we made when we were here in the summer of 2010, and making new ones.

If you are interested, you can follow our progress on this blog, and can see some of our pictures here.

All the pictures will be posted at www.Flickr.com/photos/billroper.

We left Chapel Hill two days ago — and flew via Philadelphia and Brussels to Kigali.

We were met here by Theoneste Ndagijimana, the Rwandan student we met last year, and who came to visit us in April.

We were also met by Godfrey Kalema, the leader of the Dufatanye Cooperative, where Will visited last year, and where he will be again in a few days.

Today we are going to spend time with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, lead by Pratima Raghunathan, seeing the work that they are doing here with Rwandan partners.

And tomorrow we are going to Ruhengeri to visit with Louise and Caleb King, our American friends who have been working in Rwanda for many years.

It promises to be a full, exciting and interesting trip.

For now, I am sitting on the terrace of our hotel in Kigali, drinking coffee and eating fresh fruit, connected wirelessly to the internet.

Stay tuned — more to come!

UNC Health Care recently received its Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider Systems (HCAHPS) scores for June 2009-June 2010. HCAHPS measure patients’ ratings of their hospital experience and the results are compiled into 10 core measures as outlined by the department of Health and Human Services.

We ranked highest in the Triangle area in all core measures, which include things like overall hospital experience, bedside manner, communication, cleanliness and guidance through treatment options, among others.

We also were given a high overall ranking by 81 percent of surveyed patients, exceeding the state and national averages of 69 and 67 percent, respectively. The full list of our rankings can be found here.

We strive to provide our patients with the best care we can deliver. Through coordination of care and collaboration with other health systems, we are able to offer better measurement of outcomes, ultimately improving care. This will become increasingly important as we continue to grow.

Our HCAHPS scores help us identify our strengths and weaknesses as a System through the lens of our most valued graders: our patients. And these measurements will help us drive improvements in care quality as we move forward.

The UNC Health Care news team put together this brief overview of the UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Campus groundbreaking.

Last week, UNC Health Care broke ground on its new Hillsborough campus, set to open for patient care in 2013. This expansion is part of our mission at UNC Health Care to provide access to high-quality care across our state. Once complete, the Hillsborough campus will ensure better access for patients who require care outside of the Chapel Hill community and help to alleviate some of the capacity issues at our main campus.

This expansion would not be possible without the dedication and hard work of our physicians. Their role is the focus of phase one of the project, a three-story physician office building, which will be completed in 2013. This facility will include an urgent care and outpatient clinic, imaging and oncology services. UNC Health Care Physicians are central to our ability to provide these services to the surrounding community.

The urgent care unit, in particular, will allow people with non-emergency issues to receive treatment, rather than traveling to our main campus’ emergency room. This will ease our emergency room crowding issues and help us keep medical costs low.

The second phase of the project is the UNC Hospitals – Hillsborough Campus, which will be home to 68 beds. Fifty of those will be used for acute care and 18 for intensive care units. We plan to be fully operational by 2015.

UNC Hospitals has 803 licensed beds in Chapel Hill currently, and those beds are typically at 90 percent. However, in the past few months, we have operated at nearly 100 percent capacity. The Hillsborough campus will allow us to move patients with non-emergency issues off our main campus to receive the care they need. This also will give us an opportunity to turn some of our semi-private patient rooms into private rooms – providing a better patient experience.

Our new Hillsborough campus will translate into jobs and overall growth for our area. This project is the result of decades of hard work and we are pleased to meet the growing health needs of our surrounding community.