As country HIV programs face urgent decisions about which services they can continue to provide, CQUIN is working closely with the 21 countries in the network to support the prioritization of HIV services and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators.
Building on CQUIN’s June 2025 Strategic Planning Meeting, the network provided support to a series of country-led meetings in July that convened national HIV program teams and key stakeholders, including civil society organizations, to prioritize and cost essential elements of HIV service delivery. These discussions also focused on planning for the integration of HIV services into broader national health systems to ensure service continuity and sustainability.
“The most valuable part of this meeting for us was the focus on sustainability, integrating HIV services into existing programs, and mobilization for domestic funding,” said Amos Mulbah, BSc, DSD focal at the Ministry of Health, Liberia. “The outcome of the meeting is helping us push the government through the Ministry of Health to have budgetary allocations for HIV services.”
“The tools provided by CQUIN made the prioritization process structured and easy to follow,” said Saidi Karemangingo, MD, DSD advisor for Burundi. “The tools helped us break down decisions and focus on what is most essential for maintaining HIV services in our context. The Burundi AIDS program also has a better understanding of what activities to prioritize in the global fund and other partner planning discussions.”
In June 2025, the Global Fund released new guidance asking countries to revise their HIV, TB, and malaria programs by identifying essential services and aligning them with available resources. The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) also issued guidance urging countries to resume key HIV services and to clearly document how they are making service decisions in the face of funding challenges. Against this backdrop, the country HIV prioritization meetings in July and August came at a pivotal moment, enabling CQUIN-member countries to respond proactively and collaboratively to the shifting funding landscape.
“These meetings were designed to equip country teams with the resources needed to engage stakeholders early, align priorities, and make informed planning decisions,” said Maureen Syowai, MBChB, MSc, program director for CQUIN. “The process was fully adaptable as it was meant to support country-led planning and adjusted to fit national contexts. We anticipate that the outcome of these discussions will be invaluable to countries as they prepare their responses to anticipated.”
The Sierra Leone team during their HIV prioritization exercise
CQUIN shared an HIV prioritization package with countries to guide their prioritization work, which included tools and resources from WHO, UNAIDS, IAS, and CQUIN. To support the initial prioritization of HIV services, CQUIN leadership suggested countries use two specific tools. First, the IAS TIER tool, which allows each country to incorporate their HIV epidemiologic context and progress toward the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets. The second tool was a CQUIN-adapted tool based on the IAS TIER tool, enhanced to incorporate funding scenario considerations and support decision-making under resource constraints. The CQUIN team also shared a strategic planning document to help country teams identify the main challenges to their HIV programs and identify areas for technical assistance support from CQUIN. Countries were also encouraged to update their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators to align with their revised HIV services.
“When M&E indicators are aligned with prioritized services, countries can focus on measuring what truly matters,” said Karam Sachathep, PhD, CQUIN’s senior strategic information manager. “Reliable data empowers national programs to make informed decisions that safeguard service quality and accurately track the impact of HIV programs, even in the face of resource constraints.”
Prior to the funding crisis, CQUIN focused on carrying out its CQUIN 2.0 mandate of supporting countries to scale up person-centered differentiated service delivery and to integrate non-HIV services with HIV services, including NCDs, family planning, and TB services. Since early 2025, CQUIN’s technical assistance to countries in the network has shifted to supporting countries to reimagine their HIV response, centering it on coverage, quality, and sustainable impact.
“Now more than ever, country teams see the importance of owning and prioritizing their HIV programs in sustainable national care plans and packages,” said Jessica Justman, MD, senior technical director for ICAP and principal investigator for CQUIN. “The CQUIN platform is well-positioned to support member countries as they take on the difficult tasks of prioritizing HIV services and revising systems to adjust to reduced external funding.
On August 12, 2025, CQUIN hosted a webinar featuring experiences with HIV prioritization exercises in Mozambique and Eswatini. Watch the webinar recording and access the presentations here.
