Professor Agnes Binagwaho, MD, M(Ped), PHD is a Rwandan pediatrician who returned to Rwanda in July of 1996, two years after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. Since then, she has provided clinical care in the public sector, served the Rwandan Health Sector (2001-2016) in high-level government positions, first as the Executive Secretary of Rwanda’s National AIDS Control Commission, then as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, and 5 years as Minister of Health. She co-founded the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), an initiative of Partners In Health, which focuses on changing how health care is delivered around the world by training global health professionals who strive to deliver more equitable, quality health services for all.
Professor Binagwaho currently resides in Rwanda and is the Vice -Chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity. She is specialized in emergency pediatrics, neonatology, and the treatment of HIV/AIDS. She completed her MD at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and her MA in Pediatrics at the Universite de Bretagne Occidentale. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Dartmouth College and earned a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Rwanda College of Medicine.
Professor Binagwaho currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization, and as a member of multiple Advisory Board and Board of Directors including the Rockefeller Foundation Board. She is a member of a number of international working groups and task forces in global health for the United Nations and independent organizations and also sits on the Editorial Board of several scientific journals and serves on multiple scientific commissions.
Previously, she co-chaired the Millennium Development Goal Project Task Force on HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines for the Secretary-General of the United Nations under the leadership of Professor Jeffrey Sachs (MGGs). Professor Binagwaho also co-chaired the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA) (2006–09) and founded the Rwandan Pediatric Society, chairing it until 2019. Since 2016, she has been a member of the American National Academy of Medicine and since 2017 a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. In 2015, Professor Binagwaho received the annual Roux Prize and Ronald McDonald House Charities Award of Excellence.
She is currently a senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Professor of Pediatrics at UGHE, as well as an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. Professor Binagwaho’s academic engagements include research in implementation sciences, research on human rights to health, health services delivery systems strengthening, HIV/AIDS, and pediatric care. She has published over 190 peer- reviewed articles.