Denise Mupfasoni, MD

National Coordinator of the Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program

As Coordinator of the Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program, Denise’s work is focused on the control of five neglected tropical diseases: soil transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis. Denise leads a team of five people with the singular goal to reduce the morbidity of NTDs to a level where they will no longer be a public health problem in Rwanda. She has worked on the development of a five-year policy and strategic plan to prevent and control NTDs and a mass drug administration (MDA) plan for the control of schistosomiasis and soil transmitted helminths in Rwanda. Beginning in 2003, Denise worked for the National Malaria Control Program, where she was in charge of malaria case management. She participated in the development of the five-year strategic plan on the prevention and control of malaria in Rwanda, and helped in developing algorithms and training modules for diagnosing malaria in children and adults. In 2005, Denise began working with We-ACTx, an NGO which deals with HIV patients, focusing on the diagnosis and treatment of widows from the 1994 genocide. Denise studied medicine at the National University of Rwanda between 1996 and 2002. She then worked for a year in the pediatric department at the University hospital in Butare. In 2006, Denise received a master’s degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Her research focused on alcohol use and risky sexual behavior among young men in Eastern Cape. Publications “In-vitro susceptibility of Plasmodium falciparum to monodesethylamodiaquine, dihydroartemisinin and quinine in an area of high chloroquine resistance in Rwanda,” June 2006. “School prevalence survey on soil transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis in Rwanda,” 2007 (for publication in 2008).