Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, has revealed that in the past 30 years, malaria in Rwanda has been reduced by a rate of 90% due to the efforts and contributions of Community Health Workers, known as ‘Abajyanama b’Ubuzima’.
Dr. Sabin made this announcement on June 15, when President Paul Kagame met and interacted with over 8,000 Community Health Workers, cell coordinators, heads of hospitals, health centers, and other members of the health sector at the BK Arena in Kigali City.
The Health Boss revealed that out of three malaria patients, Community Health Workers treated two, and they recovered without needing to go to the hospital.
“They did it for more than 29-30 years, and the result we got was that malaria was reduced by 90%. We used to have about six million Rwandans suffering from malaria per year, but this year we are counting only 500 thousand,” said Minister Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana.
Dr. Sabin explained that due to the contribution of Community Health Workers, sick people no longer need to go to clinics because they are taken care of at the village level, with the help of health centers that provide them with equipment and training.
The WHO World Malaria Report 2023 recognizes Rwanda as one of the five African countries making commendable progress towards meeting the Global Technical Strategy (GTS) target for 2025.
According to the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) Malaria Annual Report 2022/23, the annual malaria incidence has dropped from 409 cases per 1000 people in 2016/17 to just 47 cases per 1000 in 2022/23.
During the same period, malaria cases have decreased from nearly 5 million to only 600,000.
Additionally, malaria-related deaths have seen a significant decline of over 89%.
