I-TECH has worked for almost twenty years to support health systems strengthening and the national response to the HIV epidemic in Malawi through significant contributions to the development of a robust health care workforce that provides high-quality HIV prevention, care, and treatment services.
In Malawi, I-TECH works through the secondment of well-qualified, experienced technical advisors (TAs) in the Ministry of Health (MOH) and other institutions to provide technical assistance for development and implementation of the national strategic plan led by the Government of Malawi (GOM). I-TECH TAs play an important role in ensuring timely national HIV/TB response by supporting prevention and control across the HIV care continuum. Additionally, I-TECH TAs support and facilitate surveillance and M&E for HIV/TB programs. This assistance enables the MOH to collect and manage up-to-date data to inform evidence-based decision-making by GOM and partners.
I-TECH technical assistance to Malawi MOH also covers the implementation of national surveillance systems to improve the generation of high-quality epidemiological data. Surveillance TAs work together with their GOM counterparts to improve storage and transportation conditions for lab samples, train staff in analysis of surveillance samples, and increase the functionality of surveillance systems to generate reliable and accurate data. The principal surveillance projects I-TECH TAs support in Malawi are Birth Defects Surveillance and HIV Recent Infection Surveillance. Most recently, I-TECH TAs have been placed at Public Health Institute of Malawi (PHIM) to support GOM with its emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Departments and units supported by I-TECH TAs include the National Tuberculosis Control Programme, Department of HIV and AIDS, Supply Chain of HIV Commodities, Monitoring and Evaluation of HIV Program Diagnostics, Reproductive Health Department, PHIM, National HIV Reference Laboratory, and the National Registration Bureau. I-TECH TAs also support clinical mentoring and M&E at Lighthouse Trust, a Center of Excellence for HIV care that was established in 2001.
