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 President's Emergency

The summary for the 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 President's Emergency grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

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 President's Emergency: The program goal and objectives relevant to this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) are to strengthen the Africa Society for Blood Transfusion’s ability to serve as a regional center of excellence and provider of a standards-based accreditation service to blood services in Africa. SMART objectives related to this project include:

• Specific: AfSBT will develop and implement an Africa-wide accreditation system for African blood transfusion services.
• Measurable: An increasing number of African blood transfusion services will attain AfSBT accreditation through the three step process.
• Appropriate: AfSBT’s step-wise accreditation system will be based on internationally accepted standards, but tailored to operational environments in low-resource African countries.
• Realistic: AfSBT is a 10 year old organization with a strong cadre of volunteer technical experts. This project seeks to leverage that volunteer-based experience and expertise to strengthen AfSBT’s Secretariat into a sustainable permanent organization.
• Time-bound: The above objectives can realistically be achieved during the five year project period.

These activities will also contribute to CDC’s and PEPFAR’s strategic objective to transition bi-lateral activities to local organizations and a diverse, sustainable and, where possible, largely local, source of long-term funding.
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 organization's 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.

CDC's Division of Global HIV/AIDS, the primary implementing agency for PEPFAR's 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 Society's officers are selected from member states across Africa. This is the first time CDC seeks to provide direct funding to AfSBT.