HIV / AIDS

Every year, the Ministry of Health through the Rwanda Biomedical Centre releases the annual report for HIV, STIs and Viral Hepatitis program achievements. This report provides the updated status of National program response and progress towards targets set from July 2020 to June 2021.
Despite the disruptions caused by Covid-19 to a wide range of services delivery, routine interventions to control HIV, Viral Hepatitis and STIs continued. Notwithstanding that HIV services delivery is decentralized at health facilities and community level, there is a need to measure the long-term impact of Covid-19 on HIV program in Rwanda.
On top of sustaining and maturing the existing strategies, new approaches have been introduced to contribute to achieve the national targets. These interventional approaches are in key areas of the National HIV program, namely: (i)HIV prevention, (ii) HIV care and treatment, (iii) STIs and Viral Hepatitis, (iv), HIV epidemic surveillance and strategic information. Among the approaches that have been scaled up include, Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), scaled up HIV self-testing, index testing and partner notification, HIV case-based surveillance and recency testing, scale up of DTG -based regimen to all eligible PLHIV, TB Preventive Therapy (TPT) to all PLHIV, multiple months drug dispensing to reduce the burden of multiple visits of PLIV at health facilities.
From July 2020-to June 2021, at least 3,348,337 HIV tests were performed countrywide, resulting 0.48% of positivity rate, with a higher of 5.3% yield from index testing. During this reporting period, 95% of all pregnant women living with HIV received ART during antenatal care, with the rate of mother to child transmission for HIV estimated at 1.5%. More than ninety-eight percent of HIV-exposed infants tested negative after 24 months of follow up. In addition, for the same period, 480,260 males were medically circumcised.
Eleven thousand five hundred thirty-five people were initiated to HIV antiretroviral therapy, totalling 207,089 people living with HIV on ART by June 2021. As Rwanda is still in the campaign of Eliminating Hepatitis C virus, at least 5,062,018 have been screened and 51,722 were initiated to treatment with a success rate of 92% on first line treatment. Alongside, 4,865,320 people screened for STIs with 4.54% screened positive and treated.
Successful implementation to contain HIV STIs and viral Hepatitis and sustain the gains during this last fiscal year, is a sign of effective collaboration between the Government of Rwanda, Development partners, UN agencies, implementing partners, Civil society organizations and beneficiaries towards achieving global targets and ending AIDS.