OpportunityTitle: Strengthening Clinical and Laboratory Services at National Referral Level to Improve HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment in the Republic of Zambia, through the President&apos;s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
AdditionalInformationOnEligibility: This funding opportunity announcement is proposed to be single sourced to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), located in Lusaka Province of the Republic of Zambia. UTH is the national tertiary reference hospital in the capital city, Lusaka, with a government mandate to provide in- and out- patient services to the entire country, although the majority of patients are from Lusaka province. UTH has a 1,863 bed capacity and has developed Pediatric and Adult Centers of Excellence for the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. UTH is also the main medical and paramedical teaching and resource center in the country, and is the host institute for several national reference laboratories. Additionally the hospital hosts all the major specialist clinics and has community outreach programs that support out of hospital care for patients.Since 2003, UTH has received funding from CDC to support larger pediatric and adult care and treatment programs. These included support for unique activities like the one stop child sexual abuse programs, community based nutrition program, children&apos;s developmental intervention clinic and national external quality assurance programs for the laboratories.The justification for the supplement is the expansion of the scope of work for UTH due to changing priorities determined during the Country Operational Plan. These changing priorities now require that UTH expand the number of districts they are working and also that they expand their scope of work to include key populations. This expanded scope requires that the awardee deliver on a significantly increase in targets, provide more rigorous case finding and an aggressive scale up in placement of individuals living with HIV on treatment. These requirements demand innovation, increase human resources, trainings, etc. in order to meet the set targets.  Additionally, the new project will strengthen prior and ongoing CDC supported activities in the areas of counseling and testing, HIV prevention and treatment and laboratory infrastructure development. The new project will also focus on integration of services, dealing with complicated cases, drug resistance testing and third line treatment, transitioning of human resource from project staff to MOH staff and support towards the establishment of first ever forensic science laboratory in Zambia.
Description: The goal and objectives of the program is to solicit comprehensive and cost-effective technical assistance, capacity building and program implementation expertise for PEPFAR and Global Fund-supported global health activities (with emphasis on but not limited to HIV/AIDS) in the five programmatic areas listed under the purpose section of this FOA. This announcement will also support Global Fund implementing partners in assessing HIV service delivery and will develop technical assistance plans and strategies. This FOA will not provide direct program implementation. Rather, it will provide technical assistance support to PEPFAR and Global Fund implementing partners engaged in program implementation and scale-up activities.This FOA will support HHS/CDC&#8217;s efforts to provide high-quality, targeted technical assistance to ensure that the PEPFAR and Global Fund-supported countries have the capacity and necessary technical expertise to assume responsibility for service delivery and adequately respond to their HIV epidemics. While this announcement will address several of the overall program goals and objectives, it will primarily focus on five critical PEPFAR-supported technical areas. Applicants are expected to respond to one or more of the following program areas:Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS (PMTCT);HIV Care and Treatment Clinical Services for adults and children;HIV Pediatric Care and Treatment (PEDs);Surveillance and Strategic Information (SI); andLaboratoryThis FOA has an ultimate goal of reducing morbidity and mortality and improving the quality of life of adults and children infected with and/or affected by HIV/AIDS.The purpose is to provide high quality comprehensive hospital based, clinical and laboratory services for patients in Lusaka, Zambia. The awardee will be a national terciary referral hospital and will provide counseling, laboratory testing, clinical care, treatment, nutritional advice and social services for adult and pediatric HIV/AIDS and co-infected TB patients. Strategies will be implemented to reduce the risk of HIV transmission from infected persons to their sexual partners and offspring.Additionally, services will be provided sexual gender-based violence (GBV) victims, including child sexual abuse (CSA) and build capacity of personnel and conduct infrastructure development for related forensic investigations, until completion of planned construction of a purpose built National Forensic Science Laboratory in Zambia. UTH will support the Zambian Ministry of Health (MOH) with human resources development, improving clinical and laboratory practice both UTH and nationwide. The awardee will ensure equitable access by all Zambians to its hospital services and will carry out monitoring and evaluation activities to provide strategic information for program improvement and reporting. The Awardee will ensure a continuum of care through strong linkages among hospital clinical services and Lusaka&#8217;s primary health care facilities, establish systems to track patients throughout all services and document HIV clinical outcomes. The United States Government (USG) and other bilateral and multilateral Cooperating Partners (CPs)/donors that operate in Zambia signed a new 5-year Mutual Accountability Framework with the MOH in 2013, through which USG and other donors engage and coordinate with the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) to strengthen the national HIV/AIDS response. The awardee selected through this FOA, will operate within the &#8220;framework&#8221; and address sustainability of programs through:-Collaboration with MOH to provide leadership in implementing HIV and AIDS services within the policy framework of the GRZ;- Adhering to the Guiding Principles laid out in the National Health Strategic Plan (NHSP) 2011-15, National HIV and AIDS and STI Policy, national treatment protocols and technical guidelines;-Implementing activities using GRZ structures and infrastructure and accessing community health and social support systems, as needed.The University Teaching Hospital (UTH), is the national tertiary referral hospital, receives in- and outpatients from the entire country, although the majority are from Lusaka province where UTH is located. UTH has a 1,863 bed capacity and has developed Pediatric and Adult Centers of Excellence for the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. It is also the main medical and paramedical teaching and resource center in the country, and is the host institute for several national reference laboratories. Additionally the hospital hosts all the major specialist clinics and has community outreach programs that support out of hospital care for patients. UTH has a 10 year long proven track record of successful implementation of PEPFAR funded HIV/AIDS programs through two previously awarded CDC Cooperative Agreements, for which UTH fully complied with the associated technical, financial, reporting, monitoring and evaluation requirements. UTH achieved &gt; 90% of all of its past planned targets for adult and pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment, HTC, PMTCT and HIV/TB. It is proposed that UTH continue to assist GRZ to achieve the goal of reducing morbidity and mortality and improving the quality of life for adults and children infected with and/or affected by HIV/AIDS throughproviding comprehensive in- and out-patient hospital and supportive services.The objectives are:-To increase the coverage of Provider Initiated Testing and Counseling at each service delivery within supported facilities from about 50% to &gt;95% by testing 129,823 adults and children.-To reduce the MTCT rate among HIV infected pregnant women managed from the current 9% to &lt;2% by 2020 by reaching 22, 420 pregnant women with services at all supported facilities.-To increase the number of Advanced Treatment Centers in Zambia from one to five by 2020.-To increase coverage of Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) and psychosocial services for sexual Gender Based Violence and Child Sexual Abuse victims from 49% to 95 % by 2020.-To achieve national coverage of current Proficiency Testing programs for HIV RT and CD4 cell enumeration and increase the number of laboratories accredited to international standards by 2020.
GrantorContactEmailDescription: Grants Policy
GrantorContactText: Technical Information Management Section Department of Health and Human Services CDC Office of Financial Resources Office of Grants Services 2920 Brandywine Road, MS E-14 Atlanta, GA 30341 Telephone: 770-488-2700 E-mail: ogstims@cdc.gov
CloseDateExplanation: Electronically submitted applications must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m., ET, on the listed application due date.