Eswatini Sets PrEP Targets Using New Monitoring and Evaluation Tool
Health officials in Eswatini have set new national pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) targets as part of a workshop outlining a new Microsoft Excel-based tool called PrEP-it. The tool has been designed to help governments and stakeholders plan, monitor, and evaluate their PrEP delivery to those in need. The pilot workshop, conducted by Health Policy Plus (HP+) experts, comes in response to challenges in setting targets, tracking the continuum of PrEP delivery, and estimating program costs and impacts.
Eswatini is the first country to use PrEP-it to set their national PrEP targets. Sindy Matse, the national key populations and PrEP coordinator in the Eswatini National AIDS Programme, attended the workshop and said that, historically, they have been struggling to set targets for PrEP and were very appreciative of the tool.
With a population of 1.4 billion, Eswatini in 2018, had over 200,000 people living with HIV and had an HIV prevalence rate of 27.3 percent among adults 15-49 years of age, with women disproportionally affected. The government has been attempting to make progress in reaching epidemic control.
PrEP-it has six main functions: assessing service delivery capacity and bottlenecks, monitoring the cascade of PrEP service delivery, projecting needs for PrEP drugs, setting national and subnational targets, estimating program costs, and projecting impact based on targets and service delivery. The tool is a collaboration between the OPTIONS Consortium, HP+, and EATAP-II, all of which are projects funded by PEPFAR through USAID. It is now available for use and can be accessed along with a user guide and instructional videos.
In September, the PrEP-it development team conducted a webinar to introduce the tool, including various functions that assist with program planning, monitoring, and evaluation for oral PrEP programs; user experiences with PrEP-it for target-setting; and further resources for using PrEP-it.
