CARES Act is a six months COYID-19 contact tracing and risk mitigation project awarded by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC) to Caritas Nigeria under the 4GATES Program.
The project is being implemented in six states: Rivers, Lagos, Enugu, Kaduna, Gombe, and Plateau plus the FCT and seeks to support faith-based organizations and communities, working in close collaboration with relevant government agencies at various levels, to identify COVID-19 cases and their contacts, and link them to appropriate structures for effective and efficient management.
The CARES Act project has four strategic objectives namely:
- To leverage existing faith-based platforms and relationships to strengthen identification and tracking of contacts of COVID-19 cases.
- To strengthen early notification systems for contacts of COVID-19 cases.
- To link identified contacts of COVID-19 cases to appropriate structures for risk categorization and management;
- To scale up-approaches to community-based reduction efforts for COVID-19.
Key partners for the project include Nigerian Interfaith Action Association(NIFAA), Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN).
The CARES Act Project is a sub-grant under Caritas Nigeria’s five-year comprehensive HIV prevention, care and treatment program in Delta, Enugu and Imo States funded by the United States' President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) titled: Global Action Towards Epidemic control in Sub-national units in Nigeria (4GATES). The 4GATES program is supporting over 120,000 people living with HIV across these three states.