Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment
These consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services (HTS) bring together existing and new guidance on HTS across different settings and populations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) first released consolidated guidelines on HTS in 2015, in response to requests from Member States, national pr...ogramme managers and health workers for support to achieve the United Nations (UN) 90–90–90 global HIV targets – and specifically the first target of diagnosing 90% of all people with HIV. In 2016, based on new evidence, WHO released a supplement to address important new HIV testing approaches – HIV self-testing (HIVST) and provider-assisted referral.
Since the release of 2015 and 2016 HTS guidelines, new issues and more evidence have emerged. To address this, WHO has updated guidance on HIV testing services. In this guideline, WHO updates recommendation on HIVST and provides new recommendations on social network-based HIV testing approaches and western blotting (see box, next page). This guideline seeks to provide support to Member States, programme managers, health workers and other stakeholders seeking to achieve national and international goals to end the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
These guidelines also provide operational guidance on HTS demand creation and messaging; implementation considerations for priority populations; HIV testing strategies for diagnosis HIV; optimizing the use of dual HIV/syphilis rapid diagnostic tests; and considerations for strategic planning and rationalizing resources such as optimal time points for maternal retesting
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Overwhelming evidence shows that a range of health concerns—mental illness, substance dependence, HIV/AIDS, and noncommunicable diseases—affect prisoners disproportionately. But, while incarceration poses risks to health—including inadequate nutrition and exposure to violence—prisons also pr...esent important opportunities to promote health and risk reduction that need to be tapped.
Some recommended remedies:
Health ministries, not ministries of justice, should manage health care responsibilities
Ensure that testing is available, but not mandatory, for infectious diseases
Make prison health part of the broader public health agenda
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This document updates recommendations for HIV testing by laboratories in the United States and offers approaches for reporting test results to persons ordering HIV tests and to public health authorities. The recommended algorithm is a sequence of tests used in combination to improve the accuracy of ...the laboratory diagnosis of HIV based on testing of serum or plasma specimens. The updated recommendations also include tests for HIV antigens and HIV nucleic acid because studies from populations at high risk for HIV demonstrate that antibody testing alone might miss a considerable percentage of HIV infections detectable by virologic tests
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The Namibia Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (NAMPHIA) 2017 | The Ministry of Health and Services is leading the NAMPHIA survey in collaboration with the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) and the Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP). The survey is supported by the United States President’s Eme...rgency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). | The goal of NAMPHIA is to examine the current distribution of the HIV epidemic and assess the impact of Namibia’s prevention, care and treatment response across all 14 regions of Namibia.
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The Namibia Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (NAMPHIA) 2017 | The Ministry of Health and Services is leading the NAMPHIA survey in collaboration with the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) and the Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP). The survey is supported by the United States President’s Eme...rgency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). | The goal of NAMPHIA is to examine the current distribution of the HIV epidemic and assess the impact of Namibia’s prevention, care and treatment response across all 14 regions of Namibia.
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This report investigates the impact of potential misclassification of samples on HIV prevalence estimates for 23 surveys conducted from 2010-2014. In addition to visual inspection of laboratory results, we examined how accounting for potential misclassification of HIV status through Bayesian latent ...class models affected the prevalence estimates. Two types of Bayesian models were specified: a model that only uses the individual dichotomous test results and a continuous model that uses the quantitative information of the EIA (i.e., the signal-to-cutoff values). Overall, we found that adjusted prevalence estimates matched the surveys’ original results, with overlapping uncertainty intervals. This suggested that misclassification of HIV status should not affect the prevalence estimates in most surveys. However, our analyses suggested that two surveys may be problematic. The prevalence could have been overestimated in the Uganda AIDS Indicator Survey 2011 and the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey 2013-14, although the magnitude of overestimation remains difficult to ascertain. Interpreting results from the Uganda survey is difficult because of the lack of internal quality control and potential violation of the multivariate normality assumption of the continuous Bayesian latent class model. In conclusion, despite the limitations of our latent class models, our analyses suggest that prevalence estimates from most of the surveys reviewed are not affected by sample misclassification.
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The goal of this assessment is to determine how far USAID/Senegal’s HIV/AIDS and TB programs have achieved their specific objectives with regard to identifying potential leads for improvement that are likely to make it easier to reach the planned results. After responding to the issues developed i...n various themes of the assessment, the results are placed in context and specific conclusions to each component are provided. The assessment also identifies the lessons learned from USAID/Senegal’s HIV/AIDS and TB programs and provides recommendations for future intervention.
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Live Life positively
Know your HIV status
Accessed: 03.03.2020
Participant Manual September 2012
Surveillance of Populations at High Risk for HIV Transmission
Participant Manual
February 2011
Edition 3.0
Participant Manual September 2009
In this guideline, WHO recommends that long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA) may be offered as an additional HIV prevention option for people at substantial risk of HIV infection. CAB-LA is an injectable form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) that has been shown to be highly effective at red...ucing the risk of HIV acquisition.
This guideline provides implementation considerations to support Member States, programme managers, policy makers, researchers, health workers, communities, and other stakeholders in the implementation of projects and programmes for CAB-LA. It also outlines critical research gaps for CAB-LA.
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Countries are making progress toward the global goal of 95% of people living with HIV knowing their status by 2025. However, considerable gaps remain in achieving these goals globally. Men in high HIV burden settings and men from key populations in all settings are consistently less likely to know t...heir HIV status than women. Globally, 78% of men ages 15 years and older who are living with HIV are aware of their HIV status, compared with 86% of women with HIV of these ages.
Offering HIV testing services, including HIV self-testing, at formal and informal workplaces has emerged as an effective, acceptable and feasible approach for reaching men. A 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) policy brief provides key guiding principles for HIVST implementation at workplaces. Building on the 2018 policy brief, this brief captures early experience with HIVST implementation at workplaces and discusses emerging approaches of sustainable financing that can be adapted for HIV self-testing at workplaces.
The primary audiences for this policy brief are ministries of health and labour, national HIV programmes, employers’ organizations, workers’ organizations (labour unions), enterprises, implementing partners, including civil society organizations, and health insurance agencies.
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In their 2015 declaration "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", Member States pledged to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases by 2030, and to combat hepatitis and other communicable diseases. This report reviews progress an...d challenges in the global response to reduce the burden of these diseases in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, and looks ahead to identify the strategies and approaches that will be needed to accelerate progress during the new development era. The report was developed by WHO's Cluster for HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2015.
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HIV testing programmes need to ensure that all clients who test for HIV are provided with correct diagnoses. The accuracy of HIV testing is critical to prevent misdiagnosis, as the consequences of giving an incorrect test result can be serious for clients, HIV testing services, HIV programmes and pu...blic health.
With the evolution of global HIV epidemiology, HIV testing approaches must also evolve to maintain accuracy and efficiency in population-level diagnosis. Reports suggest that misdiagnosis of HIV status may occur when suboptimal testing algorithms and out-of-date testing strategies are used. As a result of changing epidemiology and declining HIV positivity in testing, WHO recommends all countries use a standard three-test strategy to ensure a PPV of at least 99%, minimizing false-positive misdiagnosis. The WHO-recommended HIV testing strategy, along with quality assurance measures such as retesting to verify a positive diagnosis prior to initiation of HIV treatment, is cost-effective as it prevents misdiagnosis and unnecessary initiation of costly lifelong treatment.
This implementation guide provides practical advice on switching to a three-test strategy and instituting other measures that can help national HIV programmes deliver high-quality, accurate HIV testing services and ensure that misdiagnosis is minimized.
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