Publications

The action plan sets out a vision of a world in which there are no preventable deaths of newborns or stillbirths, where every pregnancy is wanted, every birth celebrated and women, babies and children survive, thrive and reach their full potential. Nearly 3 million lives could be saved each year if the actions in the plan are implemented and its goals and targets achieved. Based on evidence of what works, and developed within the framework for Every Woman Every Child, the plan enhances and supports coordinated, comprehensive planning and implementation of newborn specific actions within the context of national reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) strategies and action plans, and in collaboration with stakeholders from the private sector, civil society, professional associations and others. The goal is to achieve equitable and high quality coverage of care for all women and newborns through links with other global and national plans, measurement and accountability.

The HIV/AIDS Diagnostics Technology Landscape is published annually and is prepared as part of a broad and ongoing effort to understand the technology landscape for HIV/AIDS. This document is a semi-annual update on the technologies for CD4, viral load, and early infant diagnosis (EID) testing, as well as for the diagnostic pipeline.

This brief discusses important new opportunities to reverse the HIV epidemic in specific locations and among key populations at higher risk of HIV exposure. More and more countries are collecting and analysing data that enable these locations to be identified and addressed. Data collection is expanding, and new methods are being used to identify where localized epidemics may be emerging, where specific populations are the most affected by HIV and where vital HIV services are deficient or absent. These data are being combined in innovative ways, including with geographical information, to produce a more detailed and vivid understanding of the HIV epidemic, down to the district and subdistrict levels. This makes it possible to focus HIV programmes more precisely and effectively and to offer or adapt services to reach greater numbers of people in need.

The Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) Progotir Pathey was carried out in 2012-2013 by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), as part of the global MICS programme. Technical and financial support was provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The global MICS programme was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s as an international household survey programme to collect internationally comparable data on a wide range of indicators on the situation of children and women. MICS surveys measure key indicators that allow countries to generate data for use in policies and programmes, and to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed upon commitments. The objective of this report is to facilitate the timely dissemination and use of results from the Progotir Pathey MICS prior to the release of full tables and the final report that will contain detailed information on all survey findings by various demographic, social, economic and cultural characteristics.

The vision for the post-2015 global tuberculosis strategy is "a world free of tuberculosis", also expressed as "zero deaths, disease and suffering due to tuberculosis". The goal is to end the global tuberculosis epidemic.  The Millennium Development Goal target "to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of tuberculosis by 2015" has already been achieved. The related Stop TB Partnership targets of reducing tuberculosis prevalence and death rates by 50% relative to 1990 are on track to be achieved by 2015. Under this strategy, new, ambitious yet feasible global targets are proposed for 2035. These include achieving a 95% decline in deaths due to tuberculosis compared with 2015, and reaching an equivalent 90% reduction in tuberculosis incidence rate from a projected 110 cases/100 000 in 2015 to 10 cases/100 000 or less by 2035. These targets are equivalent to the current levels in some lowincidence countries of North America, western Europe and the Western Pacific. An additional target proposed to ascertain progress of universal health coverage and social protection is that by 2020, no tuberculosis-affected person or family should face catastrophic costs due to tuberculosis care.

Outreach workers have been the focal point for the success and failure of the Needle Syringe Exchange Program (NSEP program) in Malaysia. They are the back bone and considered the front line workers for the NSEP program in Malaysia. They are instrumental in providing all of the services that have been stipulated under the NSEP program and the rightly so individuals to deal with people who inject drugs (PWID) in the community. Outreach workers often face many daily challenges when they work with PWID. Additionally, they also have to face stakeholders who completely reject or give very little support to the NSEP in Malaysia. The general aim of this study is to examine factors that can influence the quality of services provided by the outreach workers to the PWID through the NSEP program. 

A five-day consultation meeting on STI and HIV with the national stakeholders in Nauru was conducted by the Ministry of Health of Nauru, together with the World Health Organization (WHO) Office of the Representative in the South Pacific and the Division of the Pacific Technical Support and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community from 26-30 May 2014. Over-all, the five-day consultations achieved two main outputs: (1) the new implementation plan developed for Nauru that is aligned with Nauru’s National Health Plan, the Nauru’s Sustainable Development Strategy, the Australia and Nauru’s Partnership Priority Agreement; and (2) the documented country dialogue process that will feed into the development of the concept note of the Multi-country Western Pacific for the Global Fund’s New Funding Model covering 2015 to 2017.  

Various levels of stakeholders from government, civil society and UN agencies actively engaged in preparing the Global AIDS Response Progress Report (GARPR), 2014 for Bangladesh and the National AIDS/STD Programme (NASP) of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Bangladesh, facilitated the process with UNAIDS support.

In the case of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of both HIV and syphilis, testing pregnant women is a critical intervention for prevention, care and treatment of both mother and child. There are a number of combined HIV/ syphilis (treponemal) tests emerging that could be effective tools in the dual elimination of MTCT of HIV and syphilis. This document reviews the current testing landscape for such diagnostic tools.

The 2014–2015 biennium is critical in the fight against HIV: It is the culmination of a major global effort to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other global HIV goals and targets by 2015. Significant opportunities exist to build on progress to date and bring the world closer to its ultimate goal of ending the HIV pandemic. The past decade produced some remarkable achievements. By the end of 2012, nearly 10 million people were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries. Universal access for all people in most urgent need of ART has been achieved in many countries, and the global target of ART for 15 million people by 2015 is within reach.