The United States Agency for International Development has invested $62 million in a new project launched by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to expand HIV/AIDS care and treatment services for people in Lesotho.

The five-year Providing Universal Services for HIV/AIDS Project is intended to provide resources to help grow integrated care and treatment coverage for children and adults to 80 percent by 2018 with the use of a prioritized district approach, USAID said Thursday.

“This is a vital step on the path towards universal access to HIV treatment and care for all in Lesotho,” said  Appolinaire Tiam, EGPAF-Lesotho country director.

USAID aims to help increase the deployment of HIV/AIDS care and treatment services across all health facilities in the districts of Maseru, Mohale’s Hoek and Mafeteng, and sustain services in the districts of Butha-Buthe, Mokhotlong and Thaba-Tseka.

The project also seeks to bring the transmission rate of HIV from mother to child to less than 5 percent and EGPAF plans to use data and evidence to steer course of action and identify problems.

EGPAF will work with the Lesotho Ministry of Health, Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation – Lesotho, Lesotho Network of AIDS Service Organizations and the Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association to implement the project.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a total of $30 million in funding grants to six research teams to support the development of an HIV cure.

NIH said Wednesday the grant recipients will investigate HIV treatment strategies including immunotherapy, therapeutic vaccines and gene modification as the second batch of awardees under the Martin Delaney Collaboratory program.

“The two greatest challenges remaining in HIV/AIDS research are finding a cure and developing a safe and effective preventive vaccine,” said Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.

“A simple, safe and scalable cure for HIV would accelerate progress toward ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” he added.

NIH awarded grants for thest research projects:

• Bench to Bed Enhanced Lymphoctye Infusions to Engineer Viral Eradication at George Washington University
• Delaney AIDS Research Enterprise to Cure HIV at the University of California
• defeatHIV: Cell and Gene Therapy for HIV Cure at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
• BEAT-HIV: Delaney Collaboratory to Cure HIV-1 Infection by Combination Immunotherapy at the Wistar Institute
• Combined Immunologic Approaches to Cure HIV-1 at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication at the University of North Carolina

Awardees will carry out research work in various laboratories across five continents including Africa, NIH noted.

NIAID established the Martin Delaney Collaboratory program in 2010 to support international HIV cure research efforts and foster collaborations related to HIV treatment.

Dan Tangherlini, former General Services Administration chief, has said he believes GSA’s 18F organization should be given a chance to help foster innovation and modernize federal government information technology acquisition in an interview with Government Technology posted Tuesday.

“People are deeply satisfied with the work that 18F is doing … this is an internal government agency and we’re talking about a federal government that spends from $60 billion to $90 billion a year on IT,” Tangherlini told reporter Jason Shueh.

“I think the primary goal is for the federal government to be better at delivering technology investments over time.”

A Government Accountability Office oversight report on 18F says the government spends 75 percent of a $90 billion IT budget for acquisition on outdated technology, according to Government Technology.

Tangherlini told Shueh the combination of 18F, the U.S. Digital Service and accountability platforms such as ITDashboard.gov represents an effort to support the federal government’s ability to buy and deliver IT.

The U.S. Census Bureau has begun its search for a new executive to serve as the agency’s chief technology officer.

According to a notice posted Monday on USAJobs, the CTO will perform duties as the principal adviser to the associate director for information technology and chief information officer and provide expertise on the technological environment to help manage the Census Bureau’s businesses.

The CTO will design and recommend technology systems that support CIO-issued directives, oversee technology research and development efforts and drive compliance with Federal Enterprise Architecture principles and guidance, the notice stated.

The selected candidate will also develop EA policies and procedures for technology acquisition, development and implementation as well as determine the impact and feasibility of project proposals, applications and database designs.

The notice said the CTO position that will be based in Maryland and Washington.

The Census Bureau will accommodate all applications from qualified candidates through Aug. 9.