Rwanda’s Art Program Success Story: Insights from the Artificial Neural Networks

Rwanda is one of the nations in Africa which has significantly improved access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV. Modeling ART coverage in this country will help to assess the impact of the efforts made by government to improve access to ART and to control the HIV epidemic. In this research article, the ANN approach was applied to analyze ART coverage in Rwanda. The employed annual data covers the period 2000-2018 and the out-of-sample period ranges over the period 2019-2023. The residuals and forecast evaluation criteria (Error, MSE and MAE) of the applied model indicate that the model is stable in forecasting ART coverage in Rwanda. The results of the study indicate that ART coverage will be very high around 90%. The government is encouraged to continue on this commendable path. The authorities should continue strengthening TB/HIV collaboration and strengthen tracking of loss to follow up ART clients to improve adherence and clinical outcomes.