Etienne Karita

Etienne Karita is a Rwandan scientist who has been researching HIV/AIDS in Rwanda since the mid-1980s. He has held numerous leadership positions in different organizations that are working to control HIV in Rwanda. Some of his work is concentrated on preventing mother to child transmission of HIV and in collaboration with Projet San Francisco, he has studied HIV in discordant couples.

Education Karita earned his MD from the National University of Rwanda in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. In 1995, he completed his master's degree in molecular biology at the University of Brussels in Belgium, studying with Peter Piot, and then a master of public health in epidemiology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He is currently affiliated with Emory University as the country director for Projet San Francisco in Rwanda. Project San Francisco was founded in Kigali in 1986, but when the Rwandan genocide began in 1994, many of the researchers relocated and began a clinic in Lusaka, Zambia. Karita was also the first Technical Advisor in Rwanda for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), which is an organization aiming to end AIDS among children and prevent mother to child transmission. The EGPAF ended their partnership with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda in 2019 because of the reduction of mother to child transmission in the country.

Recent work Karita has been the principal investigator for recent HIV vaccination clinical trials in Rwanda for the past few years. One research article that he published analyzed how HIV health care has improved since the genocide. In 2017, he was one of the recipients for the SANTHE (the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence) grants for his research on HIV among high-risk populations, such as female sex workers. The past few years, Karita has been working on the Umurinzi Ebola Vaccination Program to prevent the spread of Ebola, but the vaccinations were paused in 2020 while the government's main focus was on COVID-19. In addition to being the country director of Projet San Francisco in Rwanda, he is currently the vice chairperson on the board of directors of the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, which conducts research to improve health care in Rwanda.