With an HIV prevalence rate of 12 percent, Zambia receives significant support from USAID under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). These PEPFAR investments focus on scaling up integrated HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs, with the goal of reaching epidemic control by 2020.

Through direct service delivery and technical assistance, Supporting an AIDS Free Era (SAFE) partners with Zambia’s Ministry of Health to reduce HIV mortality, morbidity and transmission, while improving nutrition outcomes and family planning integration.  As one USAID/Zambia's largest treatment activities, SAFE works across 43 districts and 363 health facilities to:

• Strengthen the health system to support the objectives of 95/95/95, namely:
  • Ensure 95 percent of HIV positive individuals know their HIV status;
  • Initiate 95 percent of those who tested positive on Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART); and
  • Ensure that 95 percent of those on ART are virally suppressed
• Reach 90 percent of eligible HIV-positive adults and children with Nutrition, Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)
• Ensure biomedical prevention through:
  • Voluntary medical male circumcision and pre-exposure prophylaxis to priority populations, to avert new infections; and,
  • Institutionalize cervical cancer screening and treatment services for HIV-infected women.
• Increase access to and quality of family-planning services,
• Strengthen monitoring and evaluation capacity at the facility, district and provincial levels for improved program management.

In addition to the above, SAFE works with select hospitals and facilities to improve the quality and efficiency of laboratory services. The supported labs are key to identifying HIV in infants, testing for drug resistance to Anti-Retroviral Drugs, and performing viral-load testing.

JOURNEY TO SELF-RELIANCE

USAID believes every person, every community, and every country wants to be empowered to lead their own future. We support self-reliance by walking alongside our friends on their development journey, as evolving but enduring partners.  As partners on this journey, we are empowering host-country governments and our partners to achieve locally-sustained results, helping countries mobilize public and private revenues, strengthening local capacities, and accelerating enterprise-driven development.  This approach fosters stable, resilient, and prosperous countries that are more self-reliant, and prioritizes enduring partnerships.