Dr. Diane Uwimana Mutesi

Dr. Diane Uwimana Mutesi is an internal medicine specialist at CHUK — the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali — Rwanda's principal public university teaching hospital. With 13 years of practice in adult internal medicine, she has developed particular expertise in the management of HIV/AIDS and its complications, the treatment of non-communicable diseases including diabetes and hypertension, and the complex multi-morbid presentations that increasingly define adult medicine in Rwanda as the country's epidemiological profile evolves.

Dr. Uwimana Mutesi trained at the University of Rwanda before completing her specialist MMed in Internal Medicine at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda — one of East Africa's foremost medical schools with a highly regarded internal medicine residency programme. This regional training pathway reflects the collaborative spirit of the East African academic medical community and provided her with exposure to a large and diverse patient population across Uganda's major referral hospitals.

She is one of Rwanda's respected younger internists, balancing a demanding clinical practice with teaching responsibilities for medical students and residents at CHUK. Rwanda's remarkable progress in reducing HIV mortality and improving ART access has created a generation of people living with HIV who now face the chronic disease management challenges that come with longer survival — a complexity that Dr. Uwimana Mutesi navigates with particular skill. She is a member of both the Rwanda Medical Association and the East African Internal Medicine Association, contributing to the regional professional network that underpins internal medicine development across East Africa.

Dr. Uwimana Mutesi completed her MBChB at the University of Rwanda (formerly the National University of Rwanda), one of the most significant contributors of trained physicians to Rwanda's health system. Following her internship, she secured a competitive postgraduate training placement at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda — completing her MMed (Master of Medicine) in Internal Medicine, the standard specialist qualification for internists in the East African higher education tradition.

Makerere University's internal medicine programme at Mulago National Referral Hospital provides exposure to a high volume of complex adult medical cases across infectious disease, cardiology, nephrology, respiratory medicine, gastroenterology, endocrinology, and neurology. The programme is conducted in English and emphasises both clinical skills and academic rigour, preparing graduates for independent specialist practice and for academic contributions to the regional evidence base.

Following her MMed, Dr. Uwimana Mutesi returned to Rwanda to join CHUK's department of internal medicine, where she has since built a clinical practice grounded in the care of patients with infectious disease, metabolic disorders, and multi-morbidity. She has attended continuing medical education programmes organised by the Rwanda Medical Association and EAIMA, and maintains currency with WHO and regional guidelines for HIV management, TB treatment, and non-communicable disease care.

Dr. Uwimana Mutesi's clinical practice reflects the dual burden of disease that characterises Rwanda's evolving epidemiological profile: a residual but substantial infectious disease burden — primarily HIV, tuberculosis, and their co-morbidities — alongside a rapidly growing non-communicable disease burden driven by urbanisation, dietary change, and the ageing of the HIV-positive population on long-term ART.

In HIV medicine, she manages patients across the full spectrum of disease — from newly diagnosed individuals requiring ART initiation, counselling, and adherence support, through to patients on established treatment who require monitoring for long-term ART toxicities (renal, metabolic, bone), management of non-AIDS comorbidities, and navigation of TB-HIV co-infection. She is conversant with the WHO consolidated HIV guidelines and Rwanda's national ART protocols, and has experience managing patients with virological failure and the need for second- and third-line ART.

In non-communicable disease, she manages type 2 diabetes including insulin initiation and optimisation, hypertension with a particular focus on renal protection, and chronic kidney disease including conservative management and preparation for renal replacement therapy where available. Heart failure management — both de-compensation in the acute setting and long-term optimisation in outpatient follow-up — is a growing part of her inpatient and clinic practice.

Diagnostic procedures including diagnostic thoracocentesis (sampling pleural fluid), paracentesis (sampling ascitic fluid), and lumbar puncture for CNS infection are standard components of her acute inpatient practice.

Dr. Uwimana Mutesi has contributed to clinical research within CHUK's department of internal medicine, including retrospective analyses of ART adherence and virological suppression rates among CHUK's HIV-positive patient cohort, and prospective audits of hypertension and diabetes management outcomes in the hospital's non-communicable disease clinic. This work contributes to Rwanda's national health monitoring and evaluation framework and has been presented at Rwanda Medical Association academic events.

She has collaborated with research groups at the University of Rwanda and with international partners — including universities in Belgium and the United States who have longstanding research partnerships with Rwandan institutions — on studies examining the intersection of HIV, metabolic disease, and cardiovascular risk in the East African setting. Her research interests align with CHUK's broader academic focus on the management of non-communicable disease comorbidity in people living with HIV — a clinically important and understudied area.

She is involved in the clinical teaching and academic supervision of internal medicine residents at CHUK and contributes to the department's journal club and clinical case conference programme, maintaining the academic culture of evidence-based practice that CHUK's affiliation with the University of Rwanda's medical faculty demands.

CHUK is Rwanda's main public university hospital and, while it primarily serves the Rwandan population, it receives patients from across the region — particularly from neighbouring Burundi and from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where access to specialist internal medicine is significantly limited. Dr. Uwimana Mutesi has experience managing patients with complex HIV and tuberculosis presentations referred from these neighbouring countries, as well as expatriate residents and NGO workers based in Kigali who require specialist medical care.

She conducts consultations in Kinyarwanda, French, and English, covering the linguistic needs of most patients likely to seek care in Rwanda. For patients from the Rwandan diaspora returning for specialist review, or for regional patients considering medical travel to Kigali, she can review prior medical records and laboratory results in advance of an appointment and provide written clinical summaries in English or French for sharing with physicians abroad.

Kigali is increasingly accessible internationally, with Kigali International Airport serving as a regional hub with direct connections to Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Brussels, Dubai, and London. Rwanda's strong reputation for safety, cleanliness, and governance makes it a practical destination for medical travellers from the region.

Dr. Uwimana Mutesi has been recognised by CHUK's academic leadership for her contributions to internal medicine clinical care and to the training of medical residents. As one of Rwanda's younger specialist internists, her completion of the Makerere University MMed programme and her return to Rwanda to contribute to the public health system is itself regarded within Rwanda's medical community as a mark of professional commitment — given the emigration pressures faced by trained Rwandan specialists.

She is an active member of the Rwanda Medical Association and the East African Internal Medicine Association, through which she participates in regional CME programmes and professional networking. She contributes to CHUK's reputation as an academic medical centre, supporting the culture of clinical research and evidence-based medicine that underpins Rwanda's ambition to develop world-class healthcare institutions domestically. She is also regarded as a role model for female physicians in Rwanda, where women's representation in specialist medicine continues to grow with each graduating cohort of the University of Rwanda's medical faculty.