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KIGALI. – Rwanda has been selected to host the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) 2019, a senior health official said Saturday.

Rwanda has launched the preparatory phase of the conference, which is expected to bring more than 10,000 participants including government officials, researchers and representatives from academia and private sectors, said Patrick Ndimubanzi, Rwanda’s Minister of State in the Ministry of Health in charge of Public Health and Primary Health Care. The conference will discuss policies to put in place and see how Africa can tackle the HIV prevalence, he said at a press conference in Kigali, capital city of Rwanda. The conference will also talk about the diseases that are associated with HIV, he added.

The ministry of health of Rwanda will organise the conference with the Society for AIDS in Africa, founded in 1989 by a group of African scientist, activists and advocates in response to HIV and AIDS.

The conference has been organised since 1990 to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and their debilitating effects. UNAIDS estimated that 200,000 to 250,000 Rwandan people live with HIV in 2017. The total population of Rwanda is around 12 million. – Xinhua.