DISTRICT COVERAGE OF HEALTH SERVICES (DISCOVER-Health)

With an HIV prevalence rate of 11.1 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 HIV epidemic control in Zambia. DISCOVER-Health partners with Zambia’s Ministry of Health to implement HIV prevention and treatment, family planning, and maternal and child health programs. 

Active in densely populated peri-urban and rural communities across 28 districts, DISCOVER-Health provides comprehensive HIV and other health services at clinics, health posts, hospitals, and prisons to achieve the following objectives:

• Ensure 95 percent of HIV positive individuals know their HIV status;
• Initiate 95 percent of those who tested positive on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART); and
• Ensure 95 percent of those on ART are virally suppressed.
• Other project objectives include: 
• Reach 90 percent of eligible HIV-positive adults and children with nutrition, assessment, counseling, and support;
• Ensure biomedical prevention through: 
  • Voluntary medical male circumcision and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to priority populations to avert new infections;
  • Institutionalizing cervical cancer screening and treatment services for HIV infected women;
  • Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV; and
• Increase access to, and quality of, family planning services.

Social isolation, poverty, discriminatory cultural norms, orphanhood, gender-based violence, and inadequate schooling all contribute to girls’ vulnerability to HIV and a life not lived to its full potential. DREAMS goes beyond typical health initiatives to address these factors, working toward meeting the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of ending AIDS by 2030. Under DREAMS, DISCOVER-Health works with five other implementing partners to reduce HIV incidence among AGYW.  As part of the DREAMS package of services, DISCOVER-Health also provides community-based PrEP to girls and young women at highest risk of contracting HIV.  

Expected Results

By December 2021, USAID DISCOVER-Health aims to provide HIV treatment to 90,000 antiretroviral naive clients and PrEP to 40,000 clients. The project will also contribute to a reduction in new HIV infections, AIDS-related morbidity and mortality through the circumcision of 250,000 eligible males, and sale and distribution of 86 million socially marketed condoms. DISCOVER-Health will also provide family planning services to over 300,000 new acceptors, antenatal services to over 140,000 women (minimum four visits), and will immunize nearly 150,000 children against measles.