Etienne Karita 

SANTHE Collaborative Grant Awardee


Rwanda Zambia Health Research Group (RZHRG) Ndola, Zambia

Karita is a public health physician with over 30 years of experience in family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention and research, particularly among key populations including female sex workers and men who have sex with men. He earned his MD from the National University of Rwanda, along with advanced degrees in Molecular Biology and Public Health (Epidemiology) from institutions in Belgium and the United States.

He has held national leadership roles, including Director of Rwanda’s National AIDS Control Program and founding Director of the Treatment and Research AIDS Center, where he led the scale-up of voluntary HIV counseling and testing services and launched Rwanda’s first prevention of mother-to-child transmission program.

SANTHE is an Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) flagship programme funded by the Science for Africa Foundation through the DELTAS Africa programme; the Gates Foundation; Gilead Sciences Inc.; and the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard.