PEPFAR Malawi’s Country Operational Plan 2022 (COP22) embodies joint priorities from national and subnational dialogues building on the 2020-2025 National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS. The interagency team has developed a person-centered, district-tailored and Malawi Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (MPHIA)-informed strategy through extensive engagement with Government of Malawi (GoM) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to sustain HIV epidemic control. At the end of COP21, PEPFAR Malawi was commended for contributing to reaching epidemic control in strong collaboration with GoM and stakeholders including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund). This includes enrollment of 88% of recipients of care on three or more months of antiretroviral treatment (ART), better outcomes for Malawian children through remarkable efforts in Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programming and progress made towards reaching men with more intentional and focused programming.

PEPFAR Malawi’s COP22 strategy aims to advance epidemic control gains through personcentered prevention, care, and treatment interventions aligned with GoM priorities and complemented by health systems investments. The COP22 Strategy is aligned to the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) new guidelines and strategies, including revised integrated rapid testing guidelines, comprehensive HIV clinical guidelines, a PrEP scale- up plan and the upcoming National HIV/AIDS Prevention Strategy, 2022 - 2026. With Malawi estimated to have achieved epidemic control at 88-98-97 of the 95-95-95 UNAIDS goals, evidenced by MPHIA 2020/2021 results, the interagency team envisions a transformative path ahead enhancing data use to guide refinement in program strategies. The PEPFAR Malawi team continues its focus on direct funding to local partners including to government through its government to government (G2G) mechanisms. In COP22, PEPFAR Malawi will support development of an HIV financing strategy that will enhance efforts to expand the domestic resource base for the HIV/AIDS response. In COP22, the PEPFAR Malawi program has planned to identify the remaining 12% of people living with HIV who are not aware of their HIV status, reach 56,884 people living with HIV with ART, and retain the over 900,000 people living with HIV who are currently in care with comprehensive and well-integrated services. Using the equity lens and rights-based approach, PEPFAR Malawi and implementing partners (IPs) will intensify interventions that reduce the risk of HIV transmission for priority and key population through accelerated treatment literacy efforts and scale-up of high impact HIV prevention programs. The interventions will include PrEP and voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC).