Assisting the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services to Achieve Epidemic Control under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) | CDC RFA GH19 1931

Opportunity Information: Apply for CDC RFA GH19 1931

This funding opportunity, titled "Assisting the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services to Achieve Epidemic Control under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)," is a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cooperative agreement intended to help Namibia accelerate progress toward HIV epidemic control. The award is designed to strengthen Namibia's national HIV response by expanding targeted, evidence-based prevention, testing, treatment, and monitoring efforts, especially for populations that are not yet being reached effectively by existing services. The overall intent is to reduce new HIV infections, lower HIV-related illness and deaths, and improve the quality of life for people living with HIV through stronger service delivery and sustained treatment outcomes.

The opportunity is grounded in the reality that Namibia has a generalized HIV epidemic, with roughly 10 percent of the overall population living with HIV. Among adults older than 25, the epidemic affects women more heavily than men, with a reported prevalence of 19.8 percent among women compared to 14.9 percent among men. Because these gaps reflect both biological and social vulnerabilities, the grant emphasizes approaches that identify where treatment coverage is lagging and then intensify services in those specific groups and locations. In practical terms, the program is meant to help the Ministry of Health and Social Services better pinpoint people who are HIV-positive but undiagnosed, improve the speed and reliability of linkage to antiretroviral therapy (ART), and keep people engaged in care so they achieve and maintain viral load suppression.

A central focus is scaling up HIV testing services (HTS) with strong quality and fidelity, particularly through index partner testing, which uses information from people newly diagnosed or already in care to offer testing to their partners and other contacts. The announcement also highlights HIV self-testing as an additional tool to reach individuals who may not access facility-based testing due to stigma, inconvenience, or privacy concerns. Another technical priority is the use of recency testing, which can help programs distinguish likely recent infections from long-standing infections, allowing the response to concentrate prevention and testing resources where transmission is most active. Together, these strategies are intended to improve case-finding efficiency and ensure testing efforts translate into immediate clinical action.

Beyond testing, the grant prioritizes tailored approaches to find, test, and link populations with low ART coverage, specifically young women and men and older men. These groups are often harder to reach consistently through conventional clinic-centered models, so the program supports differentiated, evidence-based strategies that improve uptake of services and reduce drop-off between diagnosis and treatment initiation. While the detailed implementation is left to the applicant and CDC collaboration, the stated goal is to close treatment coverage gaps and increase the proportion of people living with HIV who are both on ART and virally suppressed, which is essential for epidemic control because viral suppression dramatically reduces onward transmission.

The opportunity also supports targeted HIV prevention programming beyond testing and treatment initiation. It explicitly includes work on HIV and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention, reflecting the close relationship between violence, power dynamics, and heightened HIV risk, as well as barriers to care. It also includes voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), a proven biomedical intervention that reduces heterosexual male acquisition risk, and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), which provides HIV-negative individuals at substantial risk with medication to prevent infection. These prevention components indicate the award is not limited to clinical HIV care alone but is meant to strengthen combination prevention, especially in the populations and settings driving ongoing transmission.

Elimination of mother-to-child transmission is another core element. This typically involves ensuring pregnant and breastfeeding women are tested early, started promptly on effective ART if positive, and retained in care through pregnancy and the breastfeeding period, while also ensuring infants receive appropriate prophylaxis and early infant diagnosis where indicated. By including this objective, the grant aligns with broader public health goals of preventing pediatric HIV infections and safeguarding maternal health, while strengthening the continuity between antenatal services, HIV services, and long-term chronic care systems.

In terms of how the work will be carried out, the notice describes several types of support that can be funded. These include providing human resources for health (such as clinical, laboratory, pharmacy, data, and community-based personnel), training and mentoring to build workforce capability, technical assistance for direct service delivery to improve quality and efficiency, and support for equipment and supplies needed to deliver services. A strong monitoring and evaluation component is also emphasized, signaling that the program expects robust data systems, routine performance tracking, and the ability to use data to adjust strategies quickly. The intended result of these combined investments is sustained high retention in care and high viral load suppression among people living with HIV, which are key measures of program success under PEPFAR.

Administratively, the award is issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the CDC Center for Global Health as a discretionary cooperative agreement, meaning CDC is expected to have substantial involvement in the program's direction and oversight rather than acting solely as a pass-through funder. The funding opportunity number is CDC RFA GH19-1931, and it is tied to CFDA 93.067. The award ceiling listed is $12,000,000, with one expected award, indicating a single implementing partner or lead organization would likely coordinate the overall package of support in close collaboration with Namibia's Ministry of Health and Social Services and other stakeholders. The original posting date was October 4, 2018, with an original closing date of December 4, 2018, and applications were required to be submitted electronically by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the due date.

Overall, the grant is structured to help Namibia move from high burden to epidemic control by sharpening the focus on who is being missed, improving the precision of testing and prevention, accelerating linkage to treatment, and strengthening long-term retention and viral suppression. By combining targeted case-finding (including index testing and self-testing), prevention interventions (PrEP, VMMC, and GBV-related programming), elimination of mother-to-child transmission efforts, and health system supports such as staffing, training, supplies, and data-driven monitoring, the opportunity aims to produce durable improvements in both individual health outcomes and national-level HIV transmission trends.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control - CGH in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Assisting the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services to Achieve Epidemic Control under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.067.
• This funding opportunity was created on Oct 04, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Dec 04, 2018 Electronically submitted applications must be submitted no later than 1159 p.m., ET, on the listed application due date.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $12,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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