Dr. Beata Mukarugwiro says she was a lucky child. Beata grew up in a village in southern Rwanda and her parents, farmers who had not attended school themselves, supported her to get an education. This was rare in her community, where most parents required their children to work or stay home to care for siblings.

“I was privileged that my parents were open to letting me go to school,” says Beata.

Beata knew when she was six years old that she wanted to work in medicine. She recalls seeing mothers bring their sick babies and children to the health center near her village and this spurred her dream to one day be a nurse.

She excelled at school and ended up becoming a doctor, working in hospitals treating patients, many of them suffering from severe malaria. This was in the early 1990s and Beata says almost 80 percent of her patients at that time had malaria. “We were admitting so many patients in severe conditions and losing patients to malaria,” she says.

Beata as a young doctor on a study tour in 2000 to observe health services in Uganda. Photo courtesy of Beata Mukarugwiro.

Eventually Beata took on the role as director of a district health unit and this is when she first experienced how much impact she could have working in public health. She loved being a doctor working in a hospital but she discovered that she could reach so many more people in her new role: “I could see I was making a big impact by planning programs. I saw I was serving more people. Then I decided to pursue a Master’s in Public Health,” says Beata.

Her belief in the importance of public health is what led Beata to her current role as Malaria Specialist with the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) at the USAID Mission in Rwanda. Beata joined PMI in 2020 and quickly became an invaluable member of the PMI/Rwanda team, coordinating with Ministry of Health contacts and implementing partners on malaria programming, and monitoring malaria activities.

PMI recently recognized Beata’s exceptional contributions to PMI by awarding her the PMI 2022 FSN of the Year award. Beata is one of PMI’s more than 60 Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs). FSNs make up the largest portion of USAID’s workforce and are non-U.S. citizen employees hired by a USAID Mission abroad.

“Beata is an exceptionally dedicated, experienced, and collaborative member of the PMI/Rwanda team,“ says Dr. Kevin Griffith, who works with Beata on PMI’s Rwanda Country Team. “She was able to step in and lead digital community health communications planning within the Mission and across stakeholders in Rwanda, manage planning for the upcoming Malaria Indicator Survey, while supporting service delivery programming at the health facility and community level.”

“Beata joined the PMI/Rwanda team in January 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning. She is kind, thoughtful and conscientious and we appreciate what she brings to our team!” say her PMI colleagues.

Beata (fourth from left) with PMI colleagues and members of the Rwanda Malaria and Other Parasitic Diseases Division receiving a Certificate of Appreciation from U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator Dr. David Walton (far right). Photo credit: PMI

Beata is motivated every day by the difference people can make working together. She has seen first hand how the malaria situation has improved in Rwanda with the collaboration and coordination led by the Rwanda Malaria and Other Parasitic Diseases Division with support from PMI, the Global Fund, and other partners. Since 2016, the malaria mortality rate in Rwanda has dropped nearly 80 percent. Beata says this is primarily due to the distribution of insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying of insecticides in people’s homes, the introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), and the expansion of community based management of malaria.

“We can’t say we are at the level we want because when you are decreasing malaria you need to work harder so that it cannot increase again,” says Beata. “But for now I see we have made good progress.”

The progress is evident to Beata when she returns to her home village.

“You can see people are less sick and you can see the impact economically because when people are not sick they can work for their family and children can go to school,” she says. “The impact is visible.”

 

This November 16, USAID celebrates FSN Recognition Day. We thank Beata and all of the FSNs working across PMI for their commitment to preventing illness from malaria and saving lives around the world. The deep experience and unique perspective they bring to their work every day is essential to PMI’s ability to partner effectively with countries to pursue our vision of ending malaria within our lifetime.