Strategic Focus

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began working in Sierra Leone in 2008 through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  In 2015, after helping the nation respond to Ebola, a permanent country office was established to support the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS).  CDC’s HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) focus is:
 

• Providing technical assistance and enhancing partner coordination at the national and district level
• Implementing effective prevention programs by improving HIV testing and preventing mother-to-child transmission
• Strengthening surveillance and program monitoring and evaluation
• Improving care and treatment services including HIV/TB diagnosis and antiretroviral (ART) treatment
• Enhancing point of care laboratory testing for Multi Drug Resistant (MDR)/Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR) TB and HIV/TB co-infection
• Building high quality laboratory systems to support HIV and TB testing

Key Activities and Accomplishments

Partnerships

• CDC continues to be a strong and active participant throughout Sierra Leone, including the National AIDS Control Program (NACP)

 
Laboratory Systems

• CDC and PEPFAR partners continue to strengthen the national HIV program by providing technical assistance to develop and validate the Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission (eMTCT) Strategic Plan and eMTCT and Pediatric HIV treatment in the country
• CDC in collaboration with Global Fund & African Society for Laboratory Medicine (ASLM) continue to strengthen the capacity of viral load and Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) testing by supporting national expansion of viral load from one to 28 facilities and EID to 21 facilities
• CDC has strengthened the TB testing program through development and review of an integrated specimen Management Policy and Guideline
• CDC has provided support to develop system tools and institute Quality Management Systems (QMS), which has raised the WHO-AFRO Strengthening Laboratory Management Toward Accreditation (SLMTA) score from 0 to 3 stars in the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory and continues with the aim of attaining accreditation.
• CDC provides technical assistance to test TB samples by solid culture and Drug Susceptibility Testing (DST) for first and second line drugs through Line Probe Assays

 
Data for Decision Making

• CDC is supporting capacity building of MoHS to use data for decision-making to guide HIV and TB programs

 
Quality Improvement

• Improve coverage of inpatient HIV testing and use of isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) to prevent TB amongst people living with HIV by supporting MoHS to design and implement two Quality Improvement Collaborative (QICs) involving 24 healthcare facilities

 
Technical Assistance

• Supported MoHS to update NACP monitoring and evaluation (M&E) registers to be more robust and responsive to demand at the health facility and program levels and enable NACP to track HIV positive patients screened for TB along the continuum of care for the first time
• Trained 5 public health workers in Frontline and Intermediate Field Epidemiology Training Program on HIV and TB surveillance
•  Provided training to improve HIV services through quality improvement