Dr-Martin_04 Rwanda 2017 Audio Transcript

Dr. Rebecca Martin, Presenter:  It’s really great to be back here in Kigali after nine years and to see the incredible progress that has been made by the Rwandan Government and partners in collaboration. Looking at the CDC – PEPFAR partnership with the Government of Rwanda in collaboration with other U.S. agencies engaged such as USAID, Department of Defense and Peace Corps potentially; has led to many significant accomplishments here. Ensuring that persons living with HIV are receiving antiretroviral therapies. I hear as a statistic that in 2009 there were 21,830 supported by CDC here. And as of March this year (2017) there are 93,366 patients currently on treatment. That’s quite an accomplishment by the government. And before treating was available newly initiated on ARVs was 2,000 per quarter and I have heard recently that (since) you initiated the treat all program in July of 2016 this number has risen to over 6,500 which is three times more compared to previous quarter achievements. So those are incredible success stories that have been achieved here by Rwanda. Also to see that the HIV prevalence among pregnant women in antenatal care treatment has decreased 2.6% by 2010 as compared to the ANC estimation of 8% in 2009. So that’s quite also, quite a drop. I also have heard during my visit of the importance that CDC through PEPFAR has directly supported getting over 93,000 people on ARVs. I just want to repeat that number again. It’s incredible! Ninety-three thousand people on treatment here in Rwanda, through CDC supported efforts, with ninety-eight percent of pregnant women screened for HIV reducing transmission of the virus to newborns below two percent. Reaching 98% of women is and incredible accomplishment by the government and now to learn that, to go further the government will start case based surveillance, which I can tell you ten years ago, when things were where they were, no one ever imagined countries would get to case based surveillance. So to see this is just remarkable. To have such a low prevalence that you can actually start to follow the cases.

https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/rwanda/mp3/Dr-Martin_04__NR.MP3