Strategic Information

HIV Surveillance and epidemiology (S&E) has a robust structure for planning, implementation and monitoring at National, Regional and State-levels .NACO is the nodal agency for guiding the epidemic monitoring under NACP. NACO’s Technical Resource Group (TRG) and Technical Working Group (TWG) on S&E/Estimation, comprising experts from the fields of epidemiology, demography, Surveillance, biostatistics, and laboratory services, advises NACO on the broad strategy for HIV Surveillance and Estimations. Two national institutes—AIIMS, New Delhi and ICMR-NIMS, New Delhi—support National level activity planning and coordination. Six public health institutes in India have been identified as Regional Institutes (RIs) for HSS to provide technical support to the SACS for all epidemic monitoring activities, including identification of new Surveillance sites, training, monitoring and supervision, and improving the quality of the data collected and their analysis. SACS are the primary agency responsible for the implementation of HIV Surveillance activities. Under the leadership of SACS, District AIDS Prevention and Control Units (DAPCUs) coordinates the implementation of HSS activities. Laboratory support to Surveillance is provided by a network of testing and reference laboratories. The reference laboratories provide external quality assurance by repeat testing of all positive blood specimens and 2-5% of the negative specimens collected during Surveillance for a given bio-markers.

Monitoring and Evaluation: SOCH is an IT-enabled MIS system under NACP Integrated Person Centric Information Management System with Embedded Supply Chain Information Management System Principle of One Beneficiary One Database Longitudinal information for each beneficiary.

Research and Evaluation:

Research & Evaluation is a vital component of Strategic information Management under the

National AIDS Control Program (NACP). National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) focuses on ensuring translation of research outputs into programmatic action and policy formulation. There are well defined processes pertaining to both review and approval under NACO, which have been disseminated from time to time and also available on the NACO website. lt has come to light that few State AIDS Control Societies are reviewing and approving proposals not defined in their mandate.

The review and approval of research proposals received from independent institutions and researchers is mandated under NACO headquarters through Strategic information-Research & Evaluation. At State level, all PG, MD, M.Phil and PhD Thesis requests received for both primary data

Collection or secondary data analysis have been mandated for review and approval through the mechanism oI Research Review Committee (RRC) constituted at SACS. Therefore, if any institution or researcher, other than PG/MD/lV. Phil/PhD thesis request, directly approaches SACS and submits a proposal which is funded by another organization/agency or outside the mandate of SACS purview, it is requested that the same may be forwarded to NACO immediately. Review and approval of all such

Proposals would be undertaken at NACO level, and as per procedure a No Objection Letter (NOL) or a

Letter of Support (LOS), as lhe case may be, will be issued on the project proposal by NACO.

Data Analysis and Use:

• Under NACP, large volumes of data are being generated through various mechanisms
• Involvement of many organizations in fighting against HIV/AIDS
• Section 11 of the HIV and AIDS (P and C) Act, 2017, to ensure confidentiality of data as obligation of establishments
• Adequate measures for data security are therefore needed for restricting unauthorized access at various levels of stakeholders, and conditional permission protocols need to be established