Guidelines

The Asian HIV/AIDS Resource Needs Estimation and Costing Model (The Asian Model) is an Excel-based
tool designed to help the government and other stakeholders with short, medium and long-term resource
needs estimation exercises on the comprehensive HIV/AIDS response. It is important to understand that
the Asian Model is not designed to examine the epidemiological trajectory based upon intervention variables
or assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions.

Use this guideline to conduct population size estimate studies to measure and understand the populations most at risk to HIV in your country. Note that the guideline does not cover issues around behavioural and biological surveillance among these populations. Refer to the Guidelines on Surveillance on Most at Risk Populations and Second Generation Surveillance in this same series for additional information.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the most complex public health crises in recent history. No single data source can fully explain the status and direction of the epidemic. However, research studies, surveillance projects, and prevention, treatment, care and support programmes have accumulated a massive amount of data over the past decade. Synthesizing and interpreting these data is a daunting task.

WHO recommendations on infant feeding and HIV were last revised in 2006 (published in 2007 as an HIV and Infant Feeding Update – ISBN 978 92 4 159596 41). Significant programmatic experience and research evidence regarding HIV and infant feeding have accumulated since then. In particular, evidence has been reported that antiretroviral (ARV) interventions to either the HIV-infected mother or HIV-exposed infant can significantly reduce the risk of postnatal transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. This has major implications for how women living with HIV might choose to feed their infants, and how health workers should counsel mothers when making these choices. The potential of ARVs to reduce HIV transmission throughout the period of breastfeeding also highlights the need for guidance on how child health services should communicate information about ARVs to prevent transmission through breastfeeding, and the implications for feeding of HIV exposed infants through the first two years of life.

This document provides technical guidance to countries on setting ambitious, but achievable national targets for scaling up towards universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care for injecting drug users (IDUs).

This document has been developed collaboratively by three United Nations (UN) agencies (the World Health Organization [WHO], United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime [UNODC] and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS [UNAIDS]) and international experts in the field.

The guideline Antiretroviral therapy for HIV Infection in Adults and Adolescents, developed by World Health Organization (WHO), was first published in 2002, simplified in 2003 and was updated in 2006. The guideline continues to follow the principles of a public health approach, aiming to optimize outcomes, including the quality of life and survival, of people living with HIV (PLHIV), and to act as a reference tool for countries to adopt and adapt according to their national circumstances.

The World Health Organization (WHO) worked on the revision of the Use of antiretroviral drugs for treating pregnant women and preventing HIV infection in infants: recommendations for a public health approach, 2006, through a series of coordinated efforts to review and synthesize emerging evidence.

The aim was to identify evidence-based recommendations that would be likely to deliver high quality care. The evidence and its quality, risks and benefits, acceptability, feasibility, cost and financial implications, were considered by the Guideline Review Committee and the Peer Review Group, who agreed on a series of updated recommendations.

This toolkit provides a table of output indicators that includes several program- or project-level indicators. This is to ensure the selection of indicators that can be routinely reported for areas in which countries have requested substantial funds from the Global Fund. This table also includes indicators for services provided by civil society or community-based organizations. International and national M&E experts and donors have selected, discussed and agreed on these indicators in a workshop in Pretoria.

More Global Fund M&E tools are available at The Global Fund Website. 

This toolkit focuses on TIs for FSW populations. It draws upon almost two decades of experience from programmes implemented by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Western Pacific and South-East Asia Regions (WPRO/SEARO). While examples and issues specific to FSWs are highlighted, many of these issues would be common to male sex worker (MSW) interventions, and the approaches can be adapted to meet the needs of MSWs.

This toolkit aims to demonstrate how a small number of recommended indicators can provide critical information to guide interventions. These tools can be used at different levels of management to track the progress of a programme and focus efforts on achieving targets. Special attention is paid to how data can be used by on-site managers to help them make periodic decisions.

The idea for this tool grew out of a global consultation on Integrating Gender into HIV/AIDS Programmes held on 3–5 June 2002 at WHO headquarters in Geneva. This meeting brought experts on gender and HIV/AIDS together with national AIDS programme managers to discuss how gender could be addressed more systematically within existing HIV health sector programmes. The participants recognized that for this goal to be achieved it was necessary to produce an operational tool for programme managers, and to address specific types of HIV/AIDS programmes.