NATIONAL AIDS CONTROL PROGRAM

VHS entered into a Cooperative Agreement with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, United States Government to provide Technical Assistance to National AIDS Control Program

Goal is to strengthen strategic planning, decision making, national level reviews and policy revisions of prevention, care and treatment programs including cross cutting areas of capacity building, integration, planning and financial systems

Project supports strategies to maximize resource utilization by addressing gaps identified during program reviews and scaling up high impact practices

Project strengthens national level activities of NACO and intensely functions at cluster level, in line with revised PEPFAR approach of pivoting to six high burden cluster districts in Andhra Pradesh (East Godavari, Guntur, Krishna) and Maharashtra (Mumbai, Pune, Thane)

Profiling risk of clients at Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTCs), classifying clients and linking clients (including key populations) to HIV services

Strengthening mechanisms to ensure all HIV positive clients (including key populations) are linked to ART centre and minimize linkage loss

Demonstrating models for Key Population friendly ICTC

Supporting the implementation of integrated PLHIV-ART Linkage System (PALS) for improved tracking of PLHIV cases and trends and demonstrating linkage across the prevention to treatment and care cascade.

Building human capacity to enhance counselling skills of ICTC Counsellors and strengthening linkages to treatment

Strengthening Partner Tracing and Testing program

Strengthening Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission of HIV (PPTCT) program in six cluster districts to address gaps found in HIV testing of pregnant women, coverage of Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and initiation of Anti Retro-viral Therapy (ART) among HIV positive pregnant women

Capacity enhancement and mentoring of 188 District AIDS Prevention and Control Units (DAPCU) across India through DAPCU National Resource Team (DNRT) leading to improved program efficiencies, enhanced quality of data for decision making and strengthened mechanisms for cross referrals between diagnosis and treatment facilities

Strengthening the Strategic Information Management Unit, basic services and care and treatment program

Conducting quality review of Opioid Substitution Therapy centers functioning at government health facilities

Technical Assistance to the National STD/AIDS Control Program (NSACP), Government of Sri Lanka for strengthening the country’s response to HIV through enhancement of Strategic Information (SI) capabilities and systems in coordination with Strategic Information Management (SIM) Unit

Facilitated the signing of Letter of Intent (LoI) between the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, Government of Sri Lanka and CDC/DGHT-India

Facilitated exploratory visits, planning meetings, consultative meetings with key stakeholders, experience sharing sessions and field visits to facilities

A reference manual on “Situation Assessment of Strategic Information Management System under NSACP, Sri Lanka & Strategies and Approaches of Technical Assistance to SI under NSACP” developed and shared with NSACP, CDC and other key stakeholders.

Process of developing comprehensive dashboard indicators on STI/HIV/AIDS, enhancing the NSACP website, updating Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan to align with the “National HIV/STI Strategic Plan Sri Lanka, 2018-22” initiated

Additional proposed activities in the forthcoming period include Technical Assistance for implementation of Electronic Information Management System (EIMS), developing analytical report on Strategic Information, improving capacity of SIM unit to conduct and disseminate results of operational research and documenting best practices on Monitoring and Evaluation

Technical support to NSACP aims to (1) Enhance the capacities of in-country Strategic Information Management Unit team to utilize electronic and manual program data for decision making; (2) Improve the capacity of SIM Unit to carryout management, analysis, documentation and dissemination of summary program data reports; (3) Improve capacity of SIM Unit to conduct and disseminate results of operational research at national, global and regional levels; (4) Consultation with stakeholders on monitoring and documentation of accomplishments and sustainability plans.