Tools and Guidelines

This early-release guideline makes available two key recommendations that were developed during the revision process in 2015. First, antiretroviral therapy (ART) should be initiated in everyone living with HIV at any CD4 cell count. Second, the use of daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is recommended as a prevention choice for people at substantial risk of HIV infection as part of combination prevention approaches. The first of these recommendations is based on evidence from clinical trials and observational studies released since 2013 showing that earlier use of ART results in better clinical outcomes for people living with HIV compared with delayed treatment. The second recommendation is based on clinical trial results confirming the efficacy of the ARV drug tenofovir for use as PrEP to prevent people from acquiring HIV in a wide variety of settings and populations.

The purpose of this manual is to provide guidance to public health professionals tasked with managing a response to viral hepatitis. As every country’s needs are different with respect to its epidemiology and the current level of response, people would use this manual in different ways. This manual is intended:

• to help think more comprehensively about the hepatitis response in a country;
• to provide a step-by-step approach to setting up a national hepatitis plan and/or programme;
• to propose a governance structure that can be adapted according to needs; and
• to propose the outline of a national hepatitis plan.

This document is written for national HIV surveillance programme staff responsible for monitoring trends in country HIV epidemics. Its purpose is to describe how routine prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) programme data can be used to conduct HIV surveillance among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics (ANC). These guidelines assume that surveillance programmes have already assessed the readiness of routine programme data to be used for surveillance. WHO’s 2013 Guidelines for assessing the utility of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme data for HIV sentinel surveillance among pregnant women describes these assessment methods.

This Toolkit brings together information, resources and practical activities to help Pacific Islanders apply a gendered analysis to the issue of violence against women and to design and implement effective and sustainable projects. It can be used for new projects or to integrate a gender analysis and human rights based approach to existing projects aiming to end violence against women.

The training module was developed as a result of the workshop which was organised for Community Action for Harm Reduction (CAHR) partners in December 2014. This three days training module can be used to build capacity of service providers aiming to improve access to care and treatment for HIV positive people using drugs. It aims to present participants with a theoretical basis and practical models of building effective programmes on access to care and treatment for PWIDs, using community-based outreach services for marginalized groups as a platform.

WHO guidelines on antiretroviral therapy (ART) have evolved during the past decade towards recommending earlier treatment, as evidence has shown clinical and public health benefit, treatment has become simpler, more tolerable and more affordable, and systems for ARV delivery have been streamlined for scale. This update summarizes experiences of countries that have already begun to implement earlier treatment approaches as part of a national policy or pilot programmes. Overall, these five country examples demonstrate that scaling up a treat-all policy, across diverse populations (adults, key populations and children) is acceptable and feasible, with early benefits and no immediate evidence of harmful effects.

This document provides guidance on monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the comprehensive package of interventions to address HIV among key populations: men who have sex with men, people in prisons and other closed settings, people who inject drugs, sex workers and transgender people. The framework presented here is designed to help plan and assess progress at the macro level, in particular for national and subnational programming. This planning and assessment process should involve government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), communities and service providers involved in developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating HIV prevention, treatment and care programmes for these key populations. This framework builds on a similar existing framework specific to programmes for people who inject drugs: WHO, UNODC, UNAIDS technical guide for countries to set targets for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care for injecting drug users. 

The Consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services bring together existing guidance relevant to the provision of HIV testing services (HTS) and addresses issues and elements for effective delivery of HTS that are common in a variety of settings, contexts and diverse populations. In addition, this document provides a new recommendation to support HTS by trained lay providers, considers the potential of HIV self-testing to increase access to and coverage of HIV testing, and outlines focused and strategic approaches to HTS that are needed to support the new UN 90 –90 –90 global HIV targets – the first target being diagnosis of 90% of people with HIV. Moreover, this guidance will assist national programme managers and service providers, including those from community-based programmes, in planning for and implementing HTS.

These are the first World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for the prevention, care and treatment of persons living with CHB infection. The recommendations are structured along the continuum of care for persons with CHB from initial assessment of stage of disease and eligibility for treatment, to initiation of first-line antiviral therapy and monitoring for disease progression, toxicity and HCC, and switch to second-line drugs in persons with treatment failure. They are intended for use across age groups and adult populations.

The recommendations in these guidelines promote the use of simple, non-invasive diagnostic tests to assess the stage of liver disease and eligibility for treatment; prioritize treatment for those with most advanced liver disease and at greatest risk of mortality; and recommend the preferred use of nucleos(t)ide analogues with a high barrier to drug resistance (tenofovir and entecavir, and entecavir in children aged 2–11 years) for first- and second-line treatment. Recommendations for the treatment of HBV/HIV-coinfected persons are based on the WHO 2013 Consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection, which will be updated in 2015.