CDC in South Sudan: HIV Services, Laboratories and Outbreak Response

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) opened its office in South Sudan in 2006, first to prevent and control HIV through the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). It has since supported HIV services in 88 health facilities across five high-burden states: Central Equatoria, Western Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Lakes, and Northern Bahr el Ghazal. It has also built up the National Public Health Laboratory and the country's data and surveillance systems. CDC describes the aim as protecting Americans' health while helping South Sudan build stronger, more resilient public health systems.

HIV results in 2025

Through its implementing partners CDC supports HIV testing, EID, index testing, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, ART, help for people who interrupt treatment to return quickly, viral load monitoring, and care for people with unsuppressed viral load or advanced HIV disease.

Laboratories

CDC is the only U.S. agency supporting South Sudan's national laboratory system. The work covers EID and viral load testing, an integrated sample referral network, continuous quality improvement, an HIV laboratory information system, and national guidelines, procedures and tools for HIV and TB diagnosis and outbreak investigation.

• Accreditation. The National HIV Reference Laboratory, first internationally accredited in 2022, has kept that accreditation for three consecutive years.
• Point-of-care testing. Laboratories for early infant diagnosis, viral load and TB testing now operate at 54 health facilities, and over 80% of infant HIV samples reach the laboratory within 5 days.
• Quality. CDC supplied HIV rapid-testing proficiency panels to 130 testing sites, supports five laboratories through the Strengthening Laboratory Management Towards Accreditation (SLMTA) framework, and supports biosafety and biosecurity practices to meet ISO 15189:2022.

Data and surveillance

• CDC supported the national DHIS2 system, bringing HIV program data completeness to 99% in PEPFAR-supported facilities and 90% in others, and set up electronic ART registers at five facilities.
• It supports the routine Antenatal Care (ANC) Sentinel Survey, including the 2025 round, whose data feed Spectrum HIV estimates used to monitor epidemic control and plan services.

Workforce and emergencies

• Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is the main platform for training and continuing medical education for health workers at PEPFAR-supported sites, covering epidemiology, surveillance, diagnostics, treatment, case management and prevention.
• South Sudan's first frontline Field Epidemiology Training Program class graduated in March 2022.
• In 2018 CDC, the Ministry of Health and other partners set up the country's first national Public Health Emergency Operations Center. It has since led responses to Ebola, Marburg virus disease, cholera, hepatitis E and COVID-19. CDC also advises the ministry on surveillance, laboratories, border health, data management and risk communication.

Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "CDC in South Sudan": https://www.cdc.gov/global-health/countries/south-sudan.html
• CDC South Sudan fact sheet: https://www.cdc.gov/global-health/media/pdfs/South_Sudan_factsheet.pdf; HIV and TB overview: https://www.cdc.gov/global-hiv-tb/php/where-we-work/southsudan.html