Agnes Binagwaho

Dr.
Agnes Binagwaho
Born Rwanda
Occupation Rwandan Minister of Health
Nationality Rwanda

Agnes Binagwaho, MD, M(Ped), PhD is a Rwandan paediatrician and is the Minister of Health of Rwanda. From October 2008 to May 2011, she was the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda.[1] Binagwaho returned to Rwanda in July 1996 and currently resides in Kigali.

Current activities

Since 2008, Binagwaho has been a lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is a Professor of the Practice of Global Health Delivery at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. She is a member of the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries. She serves on multiple Lancet Commissions, including the Lancet Commission for Women and Health, the Lancet-O'Neill Institute, Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and Law, the Harvard Global Equity Initiative - Lancet Commission on Global Access to Pain Control and Palliative Care, and the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health, co-chaired by Dean Jamison and Larry Summers, the latter of which is summarized in the Global Health 2035 report published in 2013.[2] Binagwaho sits on the international advisory board for the Lancet Global Health journal, on the editorial board of the Journal of Health and Human Rights,[3] and on the editorial board for the Public Library of Science.[4] Binagwaho also serves on the International Strategic Advisory Board for the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London. She received an Honorary Doctor of Sciences from Dartmouth College in 2010, and completed her PhD in 2014 at the University of Rwanda.

Previous positions

From 2002–2008, Binagwaho was executive secretary of Rwanda's National AIDS Control Commission.[5] During that period she was the chair of the Rwandan Steering Committee for the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.[6] She was responsible for the management of the World Bank MAP Project[7] in Rwanda; served on the country's High Commission on Aid Policy; co-coordinated the United Nations[8] Task Force of Millennium Development Goals[9] Project for HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines under the leadership of Jeffrey Sachs, for the Secretary General of the United Nations; and, from 2006–2009, co-chaired the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS,[10] an independent alliance of researchers, implementers, policy makers, activists and people living with HIV. Binagwaho served as member of the steering committee for the Multi-Country Support Program on SSR/HIV/AIDS, an advisory body of the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands.[11] She is also a founding board member of the Tropical Institute of the Community Health and Development in Africa,[12] based in Kismu, Kenya. Binagwaho also served on the Health Advisory Board for Time magazine, and chaired the Rwanda Country Coordinating Mechanism of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

Medical career

She began her career by working in low income areas in Kigali.[13]

Binagwaho obtained her medical training in Belgium and France and specialised in emergency paediatrics, neonatology and the treatment of HIV/AIDS in children and adults. She is a member of several boards, foundations and journals combating AIDS and infant mortality, including the African Advisory Board of the Steven Lewis Foundation,[14] the advisory board of the Friends of the Global Fund Africa[15] and the advisory committee of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.[16]

Twitter/SMS discussions: #MinisterMondays

In October 2011, Binagwaho launched a series of online discussions through Twitter on topics related to global health policy and Rwanda’s national health sector. Twitter users from around Rwanda and around the world have joined her in biweekly discussions about topics such as family planning policy in Africa, building a national health sector, the introduction of new vaccines, cross-sectoral policies to combat malnutrition, combatting substandard and counterfeit medicines, and the role of national and international institutions in global health using the hashtag #MinisterMondays, to name a few. In December 2011, Binagwaho partnered with the Rwandan-American ICT company Nyaruka to allow Rwandans to contribute questions and comments to #MinisterMondays discussions via SMS.[17]

Research and activism

Binagwaho is focused on research in the intersection of health and social and political sciences. Her studies and publications aim to improve access to prevention, care and treatment for HIV/AIDS and other diseases. In 2014, she became the first person to be awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) from the College of Business and Economics at the University of Rwanda for her dissertation titled: Children’s Rights to Health in the context of the HIV Epidemic: A Case of Study of Rwanda.[18] She actively fights for children's rights and promotes equality in Rwanda and around the world. She is at the vanguard of the fight against HIV/AIDS, striving to find effective methodologies to advance interventions to diminish and eliminate the burden of the disease.

Publications

The following are a select number of Binagwaho's peer-reviewed articles:

References

Further reading

External links

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