The Senate on Wednesday February 2, approved the appointment of Prof. Claude Mambo Muvunyi as the new Director General of Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), replacing Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana who had been on suspension since December last year. He was appointed during a recent cabinet meeting which was held last week on January 26 and chaired by President Paul Kagame. He takes on an institution that is at the centre of the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Muvunyi is a Professor of Clinical Microbiology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Rwanda where he has taught since 2014 and has also been a Senior Regional Laboratory Advisor at ICAP at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. In 1998 he got Bachelors in Science of Human Biology at the National University of Rwanda while his PhD is in Clinical Microbiology which he obtained from University of Ghent Belgium in 2012. He has 10 years of technical, managerial and strategic experience in the field of clinical and public laboratory medicine with special focus on clinical microbiology, laboratory system and service strengthening and Global health security. Speaking to The New Times, Muvunyi said he has worked in the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organisation and different non-government organisations where he headed different projects and in the area of research. “I have substantial clinical and public health expertise which I obtained through working with several agencies including public hospitals, the Ministry of Health, public health institutions, regional and international non-government health implementing partners, universities, and multilateral organisations,” he said in an interview. Muvunyi is also not new at the biomedical centre. In recent years, he said he among other assignments worked as Head of National Reference Laboratory and Head of Microbiology Unit. He has also previously worked as a General Practitioner at different district and referral hospitals in the country and later became a study physician for AIDS Vaccine clinical and feasibility research at Project San Francisco. The trained medic has also been a senior consultant for World Health Organization (WHO) supporting the UN body’s programmes for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance and diagnostic capacity building for infectious disease in African countries. The 45-year-old has also edited peer-reviewed medical journals; Insight Knowledge (UK) and Rwanda Medical Journal (Rwanda). Speaking to The New Times he promised the Rwandans to build from what his predecessors had achieved to make RBC a strong and dynamic institution. “I want to build a strong RBC through implementing evidence-based programmes, client-centered models, care and collaboration as well as partnership with national and international institutions,” Muvunyi says. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Muvunyi is married with four children.
