Authors: Gallican N. Rwibasira, Samuel S. Malamba, Gentille Musengimana, Richard C. M. Nkunda, Jared Omolo, Eric Remera,Vedaste Masengesho, Valens Mbonitegeka, Tafadzwa Dzinamarira, Eugenie Kayirangwa, Placidie Mugwaneza.

Despite Rwanda’s progress toward HIV epidemic control, 16.2% of HIV-positive individuals are unaware of their HIV positive status. Tailoring the public health strategy could help reach these individuals with new HIV infection and achieve epidemic control. Recency testing is primarily for surveillance, monitoring, and evaluation but it’s not for diagnostic purposes. However, it’s important to know what proportion of the newly diagnosed are recent infections so that HIV prevention can be tailored to the profile of people who are recently infected. We therefore used available national data to characterize individuals with recent HIV infection in Rwanda to inform the epidemic response.