1.	Cooperative Agreement (Co Ag) projects

NCDC is officially notified that they are awarded the funding. Now they will be submitting a full package of required documents which might take 1 month and will be cleared by the Government of Georgia. CDC will have SMEs/POCs for each project. 
There are 6 Approved projects
1) Utilize the NCDC Laboratory Collaborating Center for Hepatitis to conduct regional training on laboratory EQA and hepatitis diagnostics to building regional laboratory capacity 
2) Viral Hepatitis C and B Surveillance Capacity Building (The proposed project will build sustainable viral hepatitis surveillance capacity throughout the country). 
3)  Strengthening HCV and HBV outbreak detection capacity within harm reduction
setting in Georgia by utilizing GHOST technology (The proposed project will describe the re-infection and seroconversion within the PWID population).
4) HCV surveillance capacity building - follow up of children born to HCV-infected
mothers in Georgia within the Hepatitis C Elimination Program. (The proposed project will develop more viral hepatitis surveillance in Georgia through creating a surveillance system targeting children born to HCV positive mother).
5) Finding Loss to Follow-up and Linking them to the Hepatitis C Elimination
Program (The proposed project is to link to care individuals who tested HCV positive but have not received a viremia test or entered into the HCV elimination program).
6)  Assessing the Burden of Hepatitis C and B in Georgia (The proposed project is to perform a national serosurvey to determine the success thus far of the HCV elimination program and to establish a baseline burden of HBV).
7) Evaluation of HCV transmission through endoscopy procedures
2.	Blood safety program NAT project 

There was a presentation on a biomarker study funded by Abbot. CDC provided technical assistance with the support from Evan Bloch (Associate Professor of Pathology and Associate Director, Transfusion Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine). As part of the blood safety program and NAT, testing has been piloted in selected Blood banks.
Major variables were extracted from the dataset (earlier requested from NCDC and Lugar).