Dr. HABYALIMANA Vedaste

Head of Drugs Department

Dr. Vedaste HABYALIMANA is the Head of the Food and Drugs Assessment and Registration Department. Before this position, Dr. Vedaste has been the Quality Assurance Analyst here at Rwanda FDA and had acquired proficiency in developing and coordinating Quality Management System (QMS). Dr. Vedaste has also been actively involved in the process of Rwanda FDA – QMS certification to ISO 9001:2015 standard, and the WHO benchmarking for maturity level 3 (ML3) required to regulate vaccine manufacturing and vaccines lot release, while in this position.

Dr. Vedaste has extensive practical experience of more than 15 years in Quality Assurance and Quality Control of various types of essential medicines and other health commodities (raw materials, in-process/bulk and finished products, packaging materials, production and laboratory equipment, chemicals, fortified and therapeutic foods, medical devices, long-lasting insecticidal nets, etc.) as Director of QA/QC at LABOPHAR (Pharmaceutical Laboratory of Rwanda) and Rwanda Biomedical Center / Medical Procurement and Production Division (RBC/MPPD currently RMS Ltd.).

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the National University of Rwanda (currently the University of Rwanda), a Master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences – A specialization in Pharmaceutical Analytical Chemistry from the University of Liège (ULiège, Belgium). He has extensive scientific experience between 2011 and 2018 while conducting research at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Analytical Chemistry (LPAC) in the Center of Interdisciplinary Research on Medicines (CIRM) of the ULiege (Belgium) and actively participating in numerous workshops, national and international conferences/symposia regularly organized by the CIRM, the Belgian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences (BSPS) and the University of the Greater Region-UniGR (cooperation involving the universities of Kaiserslautern/Germany, Liège/Belgium, Lorraine/France, Luxembourg/Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Saarland/Germany and Trier/Germany).

Dr. Vedaste is a part-time Lecturer and Theses Supervisor in the Pharmacy Department at the University of Rwanda / College of Medicine and Health Sciences (UR-CMHS) and at the EAC-Regional Center of Excellence for Vaccines, Immunization and Health Supply Chain Management (UR-HSCM) for more than five years from 2017 till now in postgraduate program and earlier from 2010 in an undergraduate program. He is also a Researcher on the Quality of medicines and other health commodities at different levels of the supply chain, Systems compliance with international standards/guidelines and application of best practices (GxP)s, Quality Management Systems setups, and Development – Validation – and Transfer of Analytical Methods used in Fighting Against Substandard and Falsified Medical Products.