Professional Experience:
physician with more than 12 years of experience working across all levels of the Mozambique health system, from the community to the national level. She has worked directly with HIV for more than 11 years, held technical leadership roles in several projects and organizations, and successfully worked at a senior policy level.
She is currently ECHO Technical Director. Efficiencies for Clinical HIV Outcomes (ECHO) is a $239 million project to support the Government of Mozambique’s achievement of HIV/AIDS epidemic control and establishing a sustainable, government-led HIV response by 2025 in provinces where USAID is the primary clinical support partner. Previously she was Technical Director of the community HIV project Hlayisa with N’weti in Mozambique. As the Director of the Elimination 8 project, Dr. Chauca monitored project performance and liaised with senior officials at the Ministries of Health in the eight project countries to ensure a favorable policy environment. Dr. Chauca gained intimate knowledge of the realities of delivering HIV services in health facilities through more than six years of clinical work. She later applied that knowledge to support and strengthen HIV services with the CHASS-SMT project, as a Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment Technical Officer in Tete Province. Upon joining the project, Dr. Chauca quickly emerged as a leader, evolving into new roles with progressively higher responsibilities. From Technical Officer, she was promoted to Provincial Technical Coordinator for Tete Province, where she monitored and provided technical leadership to the provincial team of approximately 30 staff. In this capacity Dr. Chauca also went beyond her original role and developed a ground- breaking public-private partnership, achieving policy change at the national and provincial levels through her advocacy efforts.
As Senior Integration Advisor under the CHASS-SMTN project, Dr. Chauca oversaw the work of the project’s provincial teams to ensure that DPS and SDSGCAS had the capacity to effectively deliver and manage HIV services.
Throughout all her project roles, Dr. Chauca has demonstrated her natural abilities to monitor performance to ensure results, collaborate with and advise senior MISAU officials, and has modeled effective use of data in decision-making. Dr. Chauca is fluent in Portuguese and English.