Strengthening the Africa Society for Blood Transfusion (AfSBT) to Develop Regional Standards and Provide Accreditation and Quality Management Services to National Blood Services in Africa under the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) | Apply Online

Opportunity Information: Apply for CDC RFA GH15 1534

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Strengthening the Africa Society for Blood Transfusion (AfSBT) to Develop Regional Standards and Provide Accreditation and Quality Management Services to National Blood Services in Africa under the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.067 Global AIDS.
• This funding opportunity was created on Sep 23, 2014 and posted on Sep 23, 2014.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Nov 13, 2014. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2024.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).
• The Africa Society for Blood Transfusion (AfSBT) was launched approximately 10 years ago to address this challenge through the development and implementation of a step wise accreditation service based on internationally accepted quality standards that have been adapted to reflect current operational environments commonly found in Africa. The purpose of this FOA is to support the AfSBT, the only African standards and accrediting body, to develop, expand, and implement its Africa wide accreditation program, and to build the organizations capacity to deliver other training and quality management services to member countries in Africa. AfSBT is the only organization globally that has been approved by Africa member states to operate an accreditation system specifically for African blood transfusion services. No other organization maintains Africa specific standards for blood transfusion services or offers training, pre accreditation assessments, and formal accreditation assessments based on those standards. African countries currently rely on US or European based accreditation services to validate their domestic quality management systems. However, these non Africa based services are typically designed for blood services in industrialized, high income, countries. As such, African blood services, especially those in resource limited settings, face substantial challenges in obtaining accreditation. During the last decade, AfSBT has benefited from substantial volunteer contributions from technical experts in several African countries, and counts most countries in the WHO AFRO region (as well as several countries in the WHO EMRO region) as dues paying members. But a volunteer based Secretariat has proved unsustainable and inefficient. As the only standards based organization supporting blood services in Africa, AfSBT is uniquely positioned to benefit from CDC and PEPFAR support to strengthen indigenous capacity to provide accreditation to its members. CDCs Division of Global HIV/AIDS, the primary implementing agency for PEPFARs blood safety initiative, recognizes AfSBT as a powerful example of the kind of indigenous technical organization PEPFAR seeks to support as part of its long term transition and sustainability strategies. In addition, accreditation is a core objective of the PEPFAR quality strategy. Unlike North America, Europe, and other developed regions of the world, the African continent lacks a diversity of capacity and organizations capable of implementing the standards based accreditation project proposed by AfSBT. Indeed, AfSBT is the only organization of its kind in Africa dedicated to a regional approach to quality and blood service accreditation. AfSBT also has a history of collaboration with CDC via work by several CDC partner governments to attain AfSBT accreditation. The FOA associated with this SEJ seeks to expand on that collaboration to build a sustainable organizational structure from which AfSBT may continue to offer its Africa specific accreditation services to partner countries. AfSBT is a registered not for gain (non profit) organization based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Societys officers are selected from member states across Africa. This is the first time CDC seeks to provide direct funding to AfSBT.

Apply for CDC RFA GH15 1534

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: