The NACP provides coordination to a large nationwide programme, is the exclusive procurer of many items such as ARVs and other supplies and provides national guidance in technical and procedural issues of the HIV response. This requires in-house expertise (in the way of specialists) on HIV care, epidemiology, Communication and Advocacy, M&E, STIs, programme management, procurement and HRG interventions. The following outline of the NACP is proposed:

The overall leadership of the programme is to be provided by the National Programme Manager (NPM) who is also responsible for maintaining appropriate link/ liaison with the MoH and will report directly to the Secretary of Health and other competent authorities. The NPM will oversee the workings of an Administration Section and a Technical Wing, along with the HIV Care and Support Section and the Monitoring, Evaluation,
Surveillance and Research Unit. The technical wing will have national specialists for HIV control activities such as STIs, harm reduction, laboratory based services, blood safety, advocacy and communication etc to provide national guidance on their theme areas. This guidance will include production of appropriate assessment of the components of national response that are pertinent to their areas of expertise, producing guidelines or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and providing hands on training to national actors (i.e. NGOs, other takeholders in the public or private sectors).

The Administration Section will provide the basic support functions of the NACP. The NACP is the main procurer of many items such as those involved in HIV care (i.e. antiretroviral medicines), HIV testing kits etc and will provide guidance to the PACPs in areas of procurement of goods and services, financial management etc. Finally it will also participate in the financial monitoring of the national HIV response and even produce
sophisticated analysis such as National AIDS Spending Assessments and other modalities that assess the financial and economic aspects of the HIV response.

The role of the HIV Care and Support Section is described in the section on HIV care, and includes overall national guidance for HIV Treatment, Care and Support, such as national guidelines/ SOPs for procedures (treatments, handling of HIV emergencies etc), monitor the conduct of HIV care in Pakistan (including production and supervision of monitoring tools and their usage), provide guidance about procurement of HIV medicines etc. This section is to be headed by a specialist with expertise in clinical care of HIV patients and in the public health of HIV treatment, care and support. Support for the salaries of the programme staff is sought in this PC-1. In order to recruit and maintain staff that have received specialized training in HIV/AIDS programme management, a project allowance is being provided to some of the staff at the rate of 4 times the basis pay and is based on other precedents within the GoP. This rate is applied to all positions in all AIDS Control Programmes. A few positions, for skills that are difficult to hire in a competitive marketplace are to be hired at market based salaries. Additionally an allowance is made to support residential rents and reimbursement of (allowed) medical expenses. This is based on the actual expenses during the recent years of implementing the Enhanced Programme. The current employees will be adjusted into the revised PC-1 against the posts they are working in. The NACP will also engage the services of a Procurement Management and Monitoring support firm/ company. The purpose of this firm is to help with procurement of large contracts (for NACP or PACPs) and to oversee their monitoring. This is consistent with the negotiations with the World Bank on the topic. In this latter task the firm will follow the guidelines set up in the national M&E framework. Some actions anticipated from this firm are: support procurement of contracts, help develop a national MIS for SDPs, provide guidance/ support in programme monitoring activities etc.