MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Gathering and dissemination of strategic information is central to monitoring the performance of the country’s HIV and AIDS programme and tracking progress achieved towards a set of milestones enshrined in the country’s HIV and AIDS strategies. In the times, concerted efforts have been made towards aligning the country’s M&E systems with the national HIV and AIDS response to ensure harmonization and thereby substantially mitigate the effects of fragmentation of the national M&E systems on data quality. This is in spirit of the UNAIDS Three One’s Principle which promulgates one agreed country-level M&E system which, inter alia, spells out the key indicators against which all implementing organizations, funding mechanisms and self-coordinating entities will, under the leadership of one agreed national coordinating authority (the National AIDS Commission) and within a specified timeframe, monitor progress towards attainment of agreed milestones in one agreed national action framework(the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan. The 2011-2016 Malawi National HIV and AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Plan represents the M&E operational framework and it operationalizes the agreed national action framework, the 2015-2020 National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan.

The National AIDS Commission serves as a repository for all HIV and AIDS data that is collated from different sources including routine programme reports, surveillance studies, population-based surveys or commissioned studies. From these various data sources, the Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation and Research (PMER) Unit at the National AIDS Commission derives information and compiles quarterly reports which are disseminated to ministries, development partners, implementing partners and other stakeholders in the national HIV response. The Unit also contributes to compilation of global HIV pandemic reports including the Global AIDS Monitoring Report (which was previously known as Global AIDS Response Progress Report) as well as generation of HIV estimates and projections. Periodically, the unit issues briefs on the status of the HIV epidemic upon request by authorities.