Q&A: Jean-Baptiste Mazarati (’12) Builds Health Care Excellence in Rwanda
Jean-Baptiste Mazarati has a truly global impact in health care. Since graduating from Georgetown with a Ph.D. in Tumor Biology in 2012, he has emerged as a health leader in his native Rwanda, contributing to the development of a renowned health care system and fostering international collaborations while serving hard-to-reach populations and protecting the country from Ebola, COVID-19, Marburg virus and other threats.
Mazarati has chaired the Rwanda National Ethics Committee for 11 years and has overseen transfusion and laboratory services in the country. He is currently serving as a consultant at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND). As a university lecturer, he seeks to impart his humility and passion for science to the next generation.
Mazarati spoke with BGE about his career, his guiding motivations as a scientist, and the trends and innovations he sees shaping the future of biomedicine.
BGE: What did you do after finishing your doctoral studies at Georgetown?
Jean-Baptiste Mazarati: When you come out of school, you’re full of ambitions, full of ideas, full of ideals. … You want to impress the world with a smile, and you want to transform things with people. And I can say that I had the opportunity to do so.
I got a job with the government at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, and I was in charge of the Biomedical Services Department, which included the National Reference Laboratory and the transfusion services and the medical technology divisions. And I’ve been there for around eight years. So that really has put me in a position to inspire, to influence, to create, to innovate, and to do stuff I have never been involved in.
BGE: What has been your role as a senior government manager in building public health systems in Rwanda?
JBM: I think what I have as an ambition was to increase the diagnostic power of our health facilities and our National Reference Lab.
We took the National Reference Lab … according to the peer review of the World Bank Project for the East African Community, from zero stars to five stars on my watch. … And for our transfusion services, we went from [Africa Society of Blood Transfusion (AfSBT)] Level 1 to Level 3 [the maximum rating]. … The African Society for Blood Transfusion has a training center in our vicinity at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, whereby people from around Africa come to learn how we do.
Along with the transfusion services, we initiated a project with Zipline … which is a drone company, and Rwanda was first in the world to have blood distributed to hospitals by drone. That has been a transformative experience. … Rural transfusing health facilities which were taking long hours to get their blood to patients, now by aviation with the drones, it is from 5 minutes to 40 minutes from the droneport to the health facility. So in terms of saving lives, you can say it is just tremendous.
Among African countries, I think we have one of the health systems which is strong, and which is established from the community level to referral hospitals.
BGE: What was it like for you to take on leadership responsibilities within Rwanda Biomedical Centre?
Mazarati poses in the lab at Georgetown with Anton Wellstein and Anna Riegel (standing center) and fellow researchers.
JBM: You can say we didn’t get prepared for this leadership, but remember, at my bench, at [Anton Wellstein and Anna Riegel’s] lab, I had the opportunity to manage my own project. And the way you deal with it from supply chain, to reagents ordering, to how you manage the environment to make sure that you finish your project – that’s the kind of management that you take with you in your luggage with your diploma.
When you reach the implementing side in life, in politics, in government affairs, you start to be humble and learn. And I can say that I was lucky to land within a team [at the Biomedical Services Department] which was accommodating, integrating and happy to have me there. … I can actually say that they have become my second Ph.D., both socially and intellectually.
BGE: Rwanda has faced multiple viral disease threats such as Ebola, COVID-19, Marburg and malaria. How did you help the health system to overcome these challenges?
JBM: The Ebola times were before COVID [in 2018-2020], and it was not Ebola in Rwanda, it was Ebola in our neighboring countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo and some provinces in Uganda. So it was all the preparations we did to prevent cases flowing into Rwanda, or to get prepared in case there was a danger.
We took the prevention at multiple levels. First, bringing in all [personal protective equipment] to make sure that we are prepared materially. … Then we started bringing in PCR platforms to make sure that we’d be able to do molecular testing. Then we vaccinated all the different provinces along the borders with DRC and Uganda, so that means our health care workforce was prepared or vaccinated in case Ebola cases were to be found in Rwanda.
When COVID came, we had already some preparation in terms of materials, in terms of workforce, but as you know, COVID was more challenging because it was already touching lives here in Rwanda.
Of course, no one was really prepared for [COVID], the way it hit. But the way Rwanda navigated the epidemic was really an example to be proud of. I was at the task force of diagnostics in Rwanda … and that’s actually where I had my molecular biology work most, from collection of the samples to the sequencing of the samples to know which kind of strain is going on in Rwanda. That was information many people in our clinical settings were not accustomed to.
[The COVID-19 epidemic] did also prepare the whole health system here in Rwanda to face the Marburg virus which we had last year. And it took the health system 6 to 8 months to come out of that new epidemic, which was very specific to Rwanda. So I can say that the luggage that we got from our biomedical education, and the knowledge we packaged when we got home, and what we decided on site to make sure that we were equipped with PCR platforms and other equipment … has really helped us make an impact on the public health care here in Rwanda.
BGE: Tell us about your work on malaria in Rwanda.
JBM: [With INES-Ruhengeri Institute of Applied Sciences in northern Rwanda, Brown University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] we have set up a Center for Genomic Biology whereby we are mapping resistance to artemisinin, which is a treatment to malaria. So we are mapping the whole malaria resistance to treatment across Rwanda, the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo, the southern part of Uganda, and the western part of Tanzania. All the samples we have from malaria-positive people, we bring them to our Center for Genomic Biology for processing and sequencing.
First you have to know the treatment is no longer as efficient as was expected. Then you must find the cause at the molecular level – you see perhaps some genes have mutated, and you know that for people having this gene, the treatment is no longer efficient.
When you have the whole information published, the pharmaceutical companies … make sure they go around the resistance, or they combine treatments to see if the treatment can overcome the challenges in our bodies, in our situation.
BGE: What is it like to work with health professionals around the world?
JBM: It is the most exciting experience one can be involved in. … It is challenging, but it is really an open-ended experience which I wish every biomedical scientist can be involved in.
BGE: What motivates you in your work?
JBM: First and foremost, I want to make an impact on my own country’s story. Rwanda has a vision as a country and a nation, we have ambitions, and I would be happy to play any role that might bring a light to our country.
Second, I think I have gotten the luggage and the package of knowledge I need to transmit to the next generation.
Third, I really enjoy science, and when I talk about science, when I am doing science, I do enjoy that kind of debate and conversation. … That’s what motivates me, and that’s what I also want to see my kids have as a legacy.
BGE: Before your master’s and Ph.D. studies in biomedicine, you earned degrees in philosophy, theology and bioethics. What was it like to move from philosophy to biomedicine?
JBM: It is quite the same journey for me. … I don’t feel that there is a dichotomy between what I learned in theology and bioethics with what I had in proper core science education that I had at Georgetown. Same person, same disciplines, and one person and one mind and one spirit.
I am a Catholic by faith, and I’m a Catholic practitioner, and I think the science inasmuch as we can do should be a science which is in line with what we believe in. We shouldn’t be doing science as just crazy science for science – that’s not my science. Science with a human conscience, that’s the science I do.
I would love to see in every corner, in every scientific endeavor, we do it with a conscience that promotes what a human being should be, and what should be our aspirations as a human being? That’s the bioethics I teach. … If we do whatever is to be done scientifically, we have always to have what is there for the human person, the human being?
BGE: In addition to all your work in research and health administration, you are also an adjunct professor at the University Of Global Health and Equity in Kigali, Rwanda, and a senior lecturer at INES-Ruhengeri. What is it like to now be a teacher of biomedical students?
JBM: My dad was a teacher, so to be a teacher is in my blood. (Laughs) I like teaching. … I am not a full-time professor; I go there when I have time, and I teach molecular genetics, molecular biology and bioethics. … To be a teacher, just to share my knowledge, I’m happy to do that.
BGE: What are the greatest challenges in health today that students should be thinking about?
JBM: I think the way we practice medicine is changing, and a doctor with no scientific luggage underlying his medical practice will fail, or should fail. So as the art of medicine is changing, our language is no longer about biology, it’s biomedicine; it’s no longer about treating an individual, it is now personalized medicine; how do we bring the genomics, the metagenomics, the epigenomics … how do we bring that as a tool to treat a human being?
That’s the kind of language, that’s the kind of science, that’s the kind of package we have to provide to the students of today so that they can serve better. … Making sure that they have that kind of package which brings newness and innovation into the day-to-day doctor, medical doctor, specialist doctor, provider to his or her patients.
I am working with FIND [the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics] on two projects which are actually involved in artificial intelligence. … For example, at the community level, we want to put a mini-doctor into a community health worker’s pocket. Something which can assist him or her at the community level to make sure that he/she is doing consultation of the patient at the community level in the way a doctor in his or her office can do.
FNB: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the Georgetown community?
JBM: I wish Georgetown would come and explore Africa. Here in Kigali, in Rwanda, we have Carnegie Mellon University … so I would love to see our alma mater, Georgetown, to do the same, and then share their power and education with those who have less, in Africa.
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