KIGALI, April 26 (Xinhua) — The Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) on Saturday launched a national integrated malaria genomics surveillance platform to help inform government policies on malaria diagnostics, treatment and control, according to a statement.
The launch coincided with this year’s World Malaria Day, which falls on April 25.
In the statement, RBC said the newly launched platform reinforces precision public health in Rwanda by embedding advanced molecular surveillance into routine health systems, from the community to the national level.
“The integration of genomic surveillance into Rwanda’s routine health system represents a paradigm shift toward precision public health interventions. By linking community-level epidemiological intelligence with high-resolution molecular data, we are strengthening our capacity to detect and respond to evolving malaria threats in near real time,” RBC Director General Claude Mambo Muvunyi said in the statement.
According to RBC, the platform will generate high-quality evidence to inform national policies on malaria diagnostics and treatment.
Building on more than three decades of Rwanda’s community health program, the platform leverages a nationwide network of community health workers to deliver real-time, high-resolution surveillance.
RBC said implementation is underway across all 30 districts, with 30 sentinel sites and 60 villages, alongside plans to expand to 30 private health facilities in each district.
The integrated model links community-level data collection with centralized genomic analysis, enabling rapid detection of transmission dynamics and emerging resistance patterns, it noted, adding that the program also represents a major investment in national capacity.
RBC’s latest data, cited by local media, show that malaria cases have fluctuated in recent years, rising from 610,832 in 2023-2024 to 1.1 million in 2024-2025, before declining to 928,616 in 2025-2026. ■
