Funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with PEPFAR support, this project built the Ministry of Health’s capacity to generate, gather, disseminate, and use integrated, high-quality information about HIV services and needs to inform evidence-based HIV programming and strategic planning in South Sudan. High-quality information is key to uncovering trends and gaps in service implementation in order to make progress toward HIV epidemic control. The project established and conducted routine surveillance to track HIV prevalence among pregnant women and key populations, which enabled us to respond to HIV service needs when and where they arose. 

IntraHealth worked alongside the ministry to establish the nation’s health information system architecture, which elevated HIV service monitoring from a nascent, 
primarily paper-based system to a fully electronic health information system operating at scale across the country. This included supporting a weekly and monthly dashboard to provide real-time data to PEPFAR partners for improved HIV care and treatment services at clinics.  The data were routinely reviewed and necessary changes were made to improve the quality and use of information. When COVID-19 began to spread, the project helped develop the nation’s preparedness and response plan and designed and deployed a COVID-19 vaccination tracker. To ensure all HIV studies in South Sudan adhere to ethical standards, we set up and supported the Ethics Review Board.

This project was a follow-on to Strengthening System Capacity & Data Collection with a Focus on Strategic Information in South Sudan (2012-2017), during which IntraHealth conducted the first-ever HIV monitoring and evaluation assessment in South Sudan and revised HIV data collection tools.