Strategic Focus

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB) technical assistance to the Mali Ministry of Health (MOH), focusing on laboratory, surveillance, and TB/HIV integration at the national and policy level through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Enhancing the Laboratory Foundation for HIV and TB: CDC provides financial and technical assistance to the National Public Health Research Institute for laboratory quality assurance programming.

National HIV/TB Strategic Information: CDC provides financial and technical assistance to multi-stakeholders effort in the development of a national surveillance strategy. The agency has specific focus on key population surveys, HIV cascade analysis, and the conceptualization of electronic data systems and treatment monitoring systems.

Integration of TB Programs: CDC provides technical assistance to the TB program, recently contributing to the opt-out strategy for HIV testing in addition to facilitating policy dialogue.

Lab capacity building: CDC provides technical assistance to national reference lab and regional laboratories in training laboratories technician in Dried Blood Spots (DBS) for viral load

Key Activities and Accomplishments

Strategic Information and Laboratory Systems Support

• Development and phased implementation of national key HIV populations’ surveys of men who have sex with men, female commercial sex workers, and long distance truck drivers.

• Facilitated Strengthening Laboratory Management Toward Accreditation (SLMTA) process including laboratory policy and the revision of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing algorithms and viral load

• Contributed expertise to consensus building on national TB prevalence and resistance monitoring.

• Established the only regional Early Infant Diagnosis laboratory in the Kayes region.

• Contributed expertise to the first HIV treatment cascade analysis.

• Facilitated and supported the establishment of the national HIV surveillance steering committee

National Policy and Program Support

• Assisted national TB program to identify policy and program gaps in HIV/TB integration and Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB) management through facilitated national stakeholder dialogue and revision of strategic plan addressing the gaps including opt-out HIV testing strategy in TB clinics, and consensus development for funding increase for TB.

• CDC plays an active role in HIV/AIDS technical work groups on Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT), key populations, and surveillance to improve the effectiveness, and adherence to scientific PEPFAR and UNAIDS technical guidance.

• CDC serves as a partner in the multi-stakeholder Global Fund HIV and TB program reviews, along with 2018-2020 concept note development.

• The Treat-All strategy was adopted in 2016 to improve the national HIV response.