Project Overview

Accelerating the control of HIV Epidemic cluster 6 is a 5-year USAID grant focusing on increasing the control of the HIV epidemic through the delivery of high-impact HIV prevention, care, and support services to the general population.

Project Goal

ACE is intended to provide evidence-based services that will deliver measurable results by addressing programmatic and systems barriers to epidemic control, to include but not limited to the following areas:

• To contribute to the national response towards ending AIDS in Nigeria by 2030 through support to the national HIV and AIDS strategic plan to achieve improved health and disease outcomes of priority populations in Edo state.
• Increased quality of HIV/AIDs, TB services.
• Increased resilience, responsiveness, and accountability of the health system community-based programming through advocacy, linkages, data management systems and other interventions.
• Supportive health policy ideas and norms.

Target Population

The target population includes:

• General Population: Women (never married younger women, pregnant women), men and women in transit corridors in project states.
• Priority Populations: Adolescent girls/boys and young women/men, single mothers, never married men, mobile populations, victims/survivors of trafficking, and sexual violence.
• Pediatrics: Includes children of key populations, children of PLHIV, children of single mothers, children in slums and other settlements.

Project Objectives

• Expand and extend HIV/TB case finding in communities and work settings through innovative models, risk stratification, and age-layered artificial intelligence.
• Improve and increase access to comprehensive and integrated HIV/AIDs/TB treatment and other wrapped-around services.
• Strengthen and optimize decentralized community ART using innovative DSD models.
• Increase sustainability of the service delivery system by eliminating user fees and other structural barriers to HIV/TB services.

Overview of Activities

• Recruitment, Training, and Kitting of Counselor Testers
• Community Mapping (HTS hotspots, camps, and settlements)
• Community Dialogue Sessions and GBV Sensitization
• Community Sensitization on PrEP Education and Stigma Reduction
• Community Advocacy Drives
• HTS in Hard-to-Reach Areas
• Creek, Settlement, Moonlight, and Camp Testing Services
• Direct HTS Activity for various Specialized World Programs
• Optimization of Index Testing and Contact Tracing
• Recency Step-Down Training
• Comprehensive Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Plan
• Counselor Testers Monthly Review