Strategic Information

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Overall Objective

The main objective of this program component is to collect, validate, harmonize, analyze, report and disseminate national and regional information on HIV/AIDS and STIs on regular basis-in order to guide national, regional, and global planning and decision-making processes for health sector response towards Universal Access for HIV prevention, care, and treatment.

The HIV/AIDS strategic information component has the following areas of thrust:

Surveillance

  • Support countries of the Region in the implementation-including reporting-of the Second Generation HIV/AIDS/STIs surveillance, which guides countries to collect, analyze, interpret, and use HIV prevalence and sexual behavior among various population groups such as pregnant women attending antenatal clinics, sexually active populations, and most-at-risk population groups (MARPs), depending on the epidemic characteristics of a given country.
  • Monitor and report the emergence of HIV drug resistance (HIVDR) in high burden countries by using Early Warning Indicators (EWIs), Threshold Surveys (TSs) and drug resistance monitoring (DRM) according to the guidelines by WHO's HIV drug resistance network (ResNet).

Monitoring & Evaluation

  • Based on the WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF joint reporting form, data on agreed upon indicators are collected, validated and harmonized at all levels, analyzed, and reported on annual basis. Besides contributing to the global report - Toward Universal Access: Scaling up priority HIV/AIDS interventions in the health sector - the Regional Offices of the above UN agencies decided to develop a similar report for sub-Saharan Africa-with sub-regional analysis and discussions.
  • Promote and create capacity in the Region for the implementation of the 3-interlinked patient monitoring system (3-IPMS) to monitor and report patients and clients on anti-retroviral therapy-including prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) and TB clients.

Operational Research

  • Support countries to assess the quality of priority services-particularly ART-through development of simple tools and guidelines.
  • Spearhead the documentation of best practices in the Region by providing guidance and funds to selected countries that have informative case studies to share the rest of the countries in the Region.

Achievements

  • 44 countries have submitted the 2009 reporting forms for monitoring health sector response towards Universal Access for HIV prevention, care, and treatment.
  • WCO staff and their national counterparts are trained to estimate and project HIV/AIDS parameters by using EPP and Spectrum software. These parameters are useful in calculating service coverage for priority interventions, such as anti-retroviral therapy (ART), and prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT).