ICAP has been awarded funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support and strengthen strategic information systems for health in Lesotho. This five-year cooperative agreement aims to increase system, institutional and individual capacity in Lesotho for strategic information with a focus on strengthening national health information systems.

Through this project, ICAP will partner with Lesotho’s Ministry of Health (MOH) to: strengthen coordination of SI activities; promote a strategy that facilitates streamlined and efficient data flow, management and use across the health system; and strengthen human resources to support country ownership of sustainable SI activities.

Led by Charon Gwynn, deputy director of ICAP’s Strategic Information Unit, this project will reinforce Lesotho’s National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan for 2010-2016, which identifies strengthening SI systems as a key focus area. “Working with our partners at the Ministry of Health, ICAP will help Lesotho enhance health information systems to monitor and plan the national HIV/AIDS response,” Gwynn said.

ICAP began it work in Lesotho in 2005, supporting HIV services for pregnant women. Through the success of those efforts, ICAP became the lead PEPFAR partner strengthening TB/HIV services in Lesotho. ICAP has worked at all levels of the country’s health system, including providing support to the MOH for policy and programmatic decision-making, improving management and technical capacity of District Health Management Teams, and providing training and clinical mentorship at facilities in all ten districts. To support human resources for Lesotho’s nurse-driven health system, ICAP launched the Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI) in 2011.

Strategic information has been a cornerstone of ICAP’s technical assistance work in the areas of service delivery, health systems strengthening and workforce capacity building in Lesotho and the over 20 additional PEPFAR countries where ICAP works.