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Christian Ntizimira, MD, MMsGHE

Founder and Executive Director

Wednesday 7 May 2025, by Webmaster

Dr. Christian Ntizimira is the author of “The Safari Concept: An African Framework on End-of-Life Care” and the Founder/Executive Director of the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care (ACREOL), a non-profit organization to bring socio-cultural equality through “Ubuntu in End-of-life Care” in Africa. He is a Fulbright Alumnus and graduated from Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

Dr. Ntizimira is the winner of the prestigious Tällberg-Stervos Niarcos Foundation-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize 2021, for his passionate advocacy for palliative care in Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa, based on his deeply held belief that dignified end-of-life care is a human right. He pioneered the integration of palliative care and end-of-life care into health services rendered to Rwandan cancer patients and in community settings. Through his program (2008-2013), more than 1500 health care providers and community health workers have learned the principles of cancer prevention, control & palliative care, leading to a five-fold increase in prescription of morphine, an essential pain medication. In 2016, he was awarded as a young cancer leader and World Cancer Regional Lead in 2018 for his outstanding contributions to cancer control in Rwanda and in Africa.

In 2018, he became the first advocacy/policy champion among extraordinary individuals who are making a significant contribution to developing palliative care in low- and middle-income countries for the World Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA). From 2010–13, he was the director of Kibagabaga Hospital in Kigali. He has advised several governments on national palliative care policy, including Burundi, Rwanda, and Senegal, on access to palliative care services. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Control.

Ntizimira graduated in medicine from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Rwanda in 2008. In 2011, he received a scholarship to study palliative care education and practice in the United States of America at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Palliative Care. He also trained as an African Pain Policy Expert at the University of Wisconsin. Ntizimira was named Young Cancer Leader by the Union for International Cancer Control in 2016 and Distinguished Young Leader by the Harvard Global Health Catalyst in 2017.

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