Improving the management of childhood tuberculosis within national tuberculosis programmes: research priorities based on a literature review
WHO/HTM/TB/2007.381, 07.02
"Achieving, maintaining and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability are major challenges for health laboratories. Countries worldwide committed themselves to build national capacities for the detection of, and response to, public health events of international concern when they decided to eng...age in the International Health Regulations implementation process. Only sound management of quality in health laboratories will enable countries to produce test results that the international community will trust in cases of international emergency. This handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive reference on Laboratory Quality Management System for all stakeholders in health laboratory processes, from management, to administration, to bench-work laboratorians. This handbook covers topics that are essential for quality management of a public health or clinical laboratory. They are based on both ISO 15189 and CLSI GP26-A3 documents"--Page 7.
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Seizures constitute the most common neurological problem in children and the majority of epilepsy has its onset in childhood. Appropriate diagnosis and management of childhood epilepsy is essential to improve quality of life in these children. Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, modified to... the Indian setting by a panel of experts, are not available.
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Guidelines for Good Clinical Laboratory Practices (GCLP) outlines the principles and procedures to be followed by medical laboratories involved in clinical research and/or patient care so as to provide quality data which can be used for health research and patient treatment. As the use of laboratory... tests (often expensive) are increasingly becoming a part of medical diagnosis and research, generation of quality data would be a cost-effective and ethically sound strategy.
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The Guidelines for the Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention of Leprosy provide state-of-the-art knowledge and evidence on leprosy diagnosis, treatment and prevention based on a public health approach in endemic countries. The target audience of this document includes policy-makers in leprosy or infec...tious diseases in the ministries of health (especially but not limited to endemic countries), nongovernmental organizations, clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, donors and affected persons
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This document aims to present an algorithm for deciding whom to test and provide guidance on the laboratory tests for Zika virus infection diagnosis in order to support clinical diagnostic and case reporting through surveillance among EU Member States. The algorithm is not intended for clinical man...agement of patients with suspected Zika virus infection.
The information is provisional and subject to revision when new information becomes available.
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Specific measures are being taken within the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) to address the MDR TB problem through appropriate management of patients and strategies to prevent the propagation and dissemination of MDR TB.
The term "Programmatic Management of Drug Resistant TB" (PMD...T) refers to programme based MDR TB diagnosis, management and treatment. This guideline promotes full integration of basic TB control and PMDT activities under the NTP, so that patients with TB are evaluated for drug resistance and are placed on the appropriate treatment regimen and properly managed from the outset of treatment, or as early as possible. The guidelines also integrate the identification and treatment of more severe forms of drug resistance, such as extensively drug resistant TB (XDR TB).
At the end, the guideline introduces new standards for registering, monitoring and reporting outcomes of multidrug resistant TB cases.
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The updated List of Essential Diagnostics contains 46 general tests that can be used for routine patient care as well as for the detection and diagnosis of a wide array of disease conditions, and 69 tests intended for the detection, diagnosis and monitoring of specific diseases.
The List is divid...ed into two sections depending on the user and setting: one for community settings, which includes self-testing; and a second one for clinical laboratories, which can be general and specialized facilities.
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The objectives of these WHO guidelines are to provide updated evidence- based recommendations for the treatment of persons with hepatitis C infection using, where possible, all DAA-only combinations. The guidelines also provide recommendations on the preferred regimens based on a patient’s HCV gen...otype and clinical history, and assess the appropriateness of continued use of certain medicines. This document also includes existing recommendations on screening for HCV infection and care of persons infected with HCV that were first issued in 2014
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This document describes the key areas that national governments should consider for the introduction and scale-up of point-of-care (POC) diagnostics within national programmes, as new innovative POC technologies are being introduced into the market. The next steps taken to include these new innovati...ons within the broader context of national diagnostic networks of conventional laboratories could influence the achievement of the 2030 Fast Track targets for ending the AIDS epidemic.
POC diagnostics, when strategically introduced and integrated into national diagnostic networks, may help catalyse changes that improve the way diagnostics and clinical services are delivered. This document distils this understanding based on programmatic and market experiences of introducing POC diagnostics through catalytic investments in POC HIV technologies across numerous countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Interium guidance, 25 June 2021Timely and accurate diagnostic testing is an essential tool in preventing and controlling the spread of COVID-19. This document describes recommendations for national testing strategies and the use of PCR and rapid antigen tests in different transmission scenarios of t...he COVID-19 outbreak, including how testing might be rationalized in low resource settings. All testing should be followed by a strong public health response including isolating those who test positive and providing them care, contact tracing and quarantine of contacts.
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The WHO Labour Care Guide is a tool that aims to support good-quality, evidence-based, respectful care during labour and childbirth, irrespective of the setting or level of health care. This manual has been developed to help skilled health personnel to successfully use the WHO Labour Care Guide. The... manual will also be of interest to staff involved in training health care personnel, health-care facility managers, and implementers and managers of maternal and child health services.
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18 Janaury 2021
EU/EEA Member States and the UK have increased their laboratory capacity tremendously over the past 11 months as the majority of the Member States reported sufficient testing capacity until March 2021.
Many countries are adding rapid antigen detection tests (RADT) to their ...testing strategies in order to reduce pressure on RT-PCR testing.
Some Member States have already included RADT in their case definition.
The main bottlenecks, such as shortages of laboratory consumables and human resources, as well as sample storing facilities, continue to exist and may affect the overall laboratory response to COVID-19.
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This FY 2018 Malaria Operational Plan (MOP) presents a detailed implementation plan for Ethiopia, based on the strategies of PMI and the National Malaria Control Program (NMCP). It was developed in consultation with the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), NMCP, Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EP...HI), and regional health bureaus, and with the participation of national and international partners involved in malaria prevention and control in the country. The activities that PMI is proposing to support align with the National Malaria Strategic Plan (NMSP 2014-2020) and build on investments made by PMI and other partners to improve and expand malaria-related services, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (Global Fund) malaria grants. This document briefly reviews the current status of malaria control policies and interventions in Ethiopia, describes progress to date, identifies challenges and unmet needs to achieving the targets of the NMCP and PMI, and provides a description of activities that are planned with FY 2018 funding.
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July 2021. This publication brings together important clinical and programmatic updates produced by WHO since 2016 and provides comprehensive, evidence-informed recommendations and good practice statements within a public health, rights-based and person-centred approach.
These guidelines bring in... the most recent guidance on HIV testing strategies - the entry point for HIV prevention and treatment - and include comprehensive guidance on infant diagnosis. Key recommendations are presented on rapid antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation and the use of dolutegravir. Updated recommendations are included on the timing of ART for people with TB, and the use of point-of-care technologies for treatment monitoring.
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Due to the particular Amazonian situation of vectorial transmission based mostly on the wild cycle of Trypanosoma cruzi with diversity of triatomine vectors involved in effective transmission, and the variety of eco-epidemiological situations that facilitate such transmission, the countries of the A...mazon agreed that the development and strengthening of preventive actions based on comprehensive surveillance and detection of effective vectorial transmission, based on mandatory notification of acute or chronic cases, was required. In addition, it was recommended that surveillance and prevention and/or vector control actioDue to the particular Amazonian situation of vectorial transmission based mostly on the wild cycle of Trypanosoma cruzi with diversity of triatomine vectors involved in effective transmission, and the variety of eco-epidemiological situations that facilitate such transmission, the countries of the Amazon agreed that the development and strengthening of preventive actions based on comprehensive surveillance and detection of effective vectorial transmission, based on mandatory notification of acute or chronic cases, was required.
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These guidelines provide updated evidence-based recommendations on the priority HCV-related topics from the 2018 WHO Guidelines for the care and treatment of persons diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C infection and the 2017 WHO Guidelines on hepatitis B and C testing. These priority areas are:
... direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment of adolescents and children ages ≥3 years of age
simplified HCV service delivery (decentralization, integration and task sharing)
HCV diagnostics – use of point-of-care (POC) HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) assays and reflex HCV RNA testing.
These guidelines also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as the inclusion of new manufacturers’ protocols on the use of dried blood spot (DBS) for HCV RNA testing and new data to inform the limit of detection for HCV RNA assays as a test of cure, in addition to their use for diagnosis.
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The socioeconomic factors and public health inadequacies that facilitated the rapid spread of this infection continue to exist. As it is a new and emerging disease it has not received sufficient coverage yet in the medical curricula of Member States. Specific treatment is not available, and there is... no vaccine for the prevention of chikungunya fever. It has therefore become imperative to develop guidelines, based on the limited clinical experience gathered from managing patients so far, for appropriate management of patients in communities and in health facilities. Experts engaged in managing patients with chikungunya fever in the Region were brought together by the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia to outline guidelines for managing various situations and stages of the disease.
The socioeconomic factors and public health inadequacies that facilitated the rapid spread of this infection continue to exist. As it is a new and emerging disease it has not received sufficient coverage yet in the medical curricula of Member States. Specific treatment is not available, and there is no vaccine for the prevention of chikungunya fever. It has therefore become imperative to develop guidelines, based on the limited clinical experience gathered from managing patients so far, for appropriate management of patients in communities and in health facilities. Experts engaged in managing patients with chikungunya fever in the Region were brought together by the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia to outline guidelines for managing various situations and stages of the disease. This publication is the end result of that exercise and is intended to assist health-care providers in planning and implementing appropriate care to patients with chikungunya fever according to their actual clinical conditions
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It is Zika virus (ZIKV) that most often causes these neurological effects it appears to be the only arbovirus than can cause congenital malformations such as microcephaly. In any case, more scientific tests are needed to establish the causal relationship between the virus and this malformation (7-10...).
This document is a practical tool designed to help health workers improve clinical diagnosis and provide timely care for patients infected
with the dengue, chikungunya, or Zika virus. It is intended mainly for
health workers in primary care facilities where laboratory diagnosis of
arboviruses is not always available. However, this guide may also be
very useful in hospitals that provide second- and third-level care, as it
describes the clinical manifestations of each of the three most important
arboviral diseases currently found in the Region, the elements for
differential diagnosis, and their clinical behavior.
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Following the publication of Guidelines on certification of elimination of human onchocerciasis in 2001 by the World Health Organization (WHO), these are the first evidence-based guidelines developed by NTD Department according to the international standards. They provide a set of recommendations th...at would guide national programme managers in collaboration with their respective oversight committees on when to stop mass drug administration (MDA) and conduct post-treatment surveillance (PTS) activities for a minimum period of 3 to 5 year before confirming the interruption of transmission of Onchocerca volvulus parasite and hence its elimination. They also include steps to undertake for verification of elimination of transmission of the parasite in the whole endemic country by the International Verification Team (IVT) prior to the official acknowledgement by WHO Director General.
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