WASHINGTON, Mar 11 — Rwanda and the United States took stock of their bilateral health cooperation in Washington DC on Tuesday, as officials discussed advancing the next phase of a partnership signed in December 2025.
Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Sabin Nsanzimana, met with Jeff Graham, the State Department’s senior official overseeing global health security and diplomacy, along with representatives from the US State Department Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy.
The meeting focused on reviewing progress in implementing the bilateral agreement and charting the next steps of collaboration, according to Rwanda’s Ministry of Health.
The December 2025 agreement laid the foundation for a five-year cooperation programme valued at up to $228 million, covering HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious disease programmes, as well as efforts to strengthen disease surveillance, outbreak response, and laboratory capacity. Rwanda has committed an additional $70 million in domestic funding to support these initiatives.
Officials also discussed signing a complementary framework to reinforce the partnership and streamline coordination on priority public health programmes.
The bilateral pact comes amid broader US efforts to deepen direct partnerships with African governments on health security.
However, similar agreements have drawn scrutiny from global health groups and civil society organisations, which have raised concerns about provisions requiring partner countries to share pathogen samples and genetic data from potential outbreaks.
Critics say such provisions could allow external actors access to biological data without clear guarantees on equitable access to vaccines or treatments developed from that information.
Similar agreements have also prompted debate over governance of sensitive health data, with civil society groups in several countries calling for stronger transparency and oversight in how the data is managed.
Officials from both governments did not indicate whether those issues were discussed during the Washington meeting.
