The consolidated guidelines are complemented by an operational handbook which is designed to assist with implementation of the WHO recommendations by Member States, technical partners and others who are involved in the management of patients with DR-TB. The WHO Operational Handbook on Tuberculosis, ...Module 4: Treatment - Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment provides practical guidance on how to put in place the recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact.
The document provides information on different aspects of care and support for TB patients. In particular, the handbook provides practical guidance on the implementation of the interventions that enable treatment adherence such as social support, treatment administration options, digital adherence technologies. The practical guidance also includes models of care for all TB patients, models of care for children and adolescents, integrated care for TB, HIV and comorbidities, engagement of private sector, managing of TB in health emergencies. This new practical handbook also includes two important chapters on health education and counselling, and palliative care for patients with TB.
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Infection prevention and control practices need to be implemented to guarantee the safety of healthcare workers and patients in healthcare settings, it is fundamental to prevent cross contamination and containment of spread of COVID 19. As of the day of this publication, the following precautions ar...e recommended for the care of patients with suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19: - For any suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19: standard + contact + droplet precautions. -For any suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 and Aerosol Generated Procedure: standard + contact + airborne precautions. - The results of the application of this evaluation tool, in addition to other tools, will provide an overview regarding compliance with the activities of prevention and control of infections associated with provision of care in acute healthcare services in a health setting, without making judgments about the individual risk of patients, nor on particular cases. By its nature, this tool is only an external diagnostic to support IPC professionals and managers to assess the gaps and take corrective measures. To provide a tool for assessment of infection prevention and control practices in isolation areas in acute healthcare settings in the context of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). These recommendations are preliminary and subject to review as new evidence becomes available.
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This presentation presents the issues we confront in deciding how to communicate to the public that COVID-19 vaccine recommendations reflect the state of scientific knowledge.
The consolidated guidelines are complemented by an operational handbook which is designed to assist with implementation of the WHO recommendations by Member States, technical partners and others who are involved in the management of patients with DR-TB. The WHO Operational Handbook on Tuberculosis, ...Module 4: Treatment - Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment provides practical guidance on how to put in place the recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact.
The operational handbook provides practical information and tools that complement the recommendations in the guidelines. The strategies described in the operational handbook are based on the latest WHO recommendations which were formulated by Guideline Development Groups using the GRADE approach. In many cases however, the recommendations in their current form lacked sufficient clinical and programmatic detail, which is important for implementation. This operational handbook complements the guidelines with practical advice based on best practices and knowledge from the fields such as pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, microbiology, pharmacovigilance and clinical and programmatic management.
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The WHO and UNICEF-led Hand Hygiene for All Initiative aims at ensuring implementation for WHO's global recommendations on hand hygiene to prevent and control COVID-19 pandemic, and hand hygiene improvement sustainability in countries as a mainstay of wider infection prevention and control (IPC) and... water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) efforts.
But how can hand hygiene implementation be successful? By implementing strategies and approaches proven through the successes of the WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands campaign and fostering integration between hand hygiene and WASH improvements. This brief draws on learning from legacy work and the current evidence based and summarizes how joint action and collaboration are essential for successful strategies, in the context of the COVID-19 response and beyond
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3 March 2022
The WHO Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline contains the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the use of therapeutics in the treatment of COVID-19. The latest version of this living guideline is available in pdf format (via the ‘Download’ button) and via an ...online platform, and is updated regularly as new evidence emerges.
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This e-course will guide you through the essentials of latest existing WHO guidelines and policy recommendations on drug-resistant TB. You will also learn more about the rationale behind the WHO recommendations for the management of DR-TB, implementation considerations for different regimens for eli...gible patient groups, adjunctive treatment, the active TB drug safety monitoring and management framework, and the analysis and interpretation of performance indicators.
The main focus of the e-course is programmatic; clinical aspects are only discussed when relevant to specific topics.
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The COVID-19 CARE pathway is a living tool to support health care workers visualize the current clinical and therapeutic recommendations to be considered in the care planning for patients with COVID-19.
The COVID-19 CARE pathway is aligned with the eighth version of the WHO Therapeutics and COVID...-19: living guideline published on the 14 January 2022 and the third version of the WHO COVID-19 Clinical management: living guidance published on the 23 November 2021.
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The COVID-19 CARE pathway is a living tool to support health care workers visualize the current clinical and therapeutic recommendations to be considered in the care planning for patients with COVID-19.
The COVID-19 CARE pathway is aligned with the eighth version of the WHO Therapeutics and COVID...-19: living guideline published on the 14 January 2022 and the third version of the WHO COVID-19 Clinical management: living guidance published on the 23 November 2021.
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This article provides an overview of the current and projected climate change risks and impacts to mental health and provides recommendations for priority actions to address the mental health consequences of climate change.
The updated guidelines present a standard minimum dataset, priority indicators and recommendations to strengthen data use across HIV prevention, testing and treatment, and linkages to services for sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and cervical cancer. The guidelines also... cover the use of routinely collected data for HIV surveillance (including measurement of HIV prevalence and incidence) and emphasize the use of data from different sources to gain a better picture of epidemiologic trends. The whole collection you can download from here https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240055315
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The updated guidelines present a standard minimum dataset, priority indicators and recommendations to strengthen data use across HIV prevention, testing and treatment, and linkages to services for sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and cervical cancer. The guidelines also... cover the use of routinely collected data for HIV surveillance (including measurement of HIV prevalence and incidence) and emphasize the use of data from different sources to gain a better picture of epidemiologic trends.
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The WHO Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Clinical management: living guidance contains the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the clinical management of people with EVD. Providing guidance that is comprehensive and holistic for the optimal care of patients with EVD throughout their il...lness is important.
The living guidance is available in both pdf format (via the ‘Download’ button) and via an online platform in both French and English, and is updated regularly as new evidence emerges.
This first version of the Clinical management for EVD living guidance contains four new recommendations regarding use of therapeutics for EVD, this includes two strong recommendations for the use of monoclonal antibody therapies. This new living guideline is written to accompany the optimized supportive care (oSoC) for EVD standard operating procedures (5, 6). The living guideline aims to summarize high quality evidence for EVD therapeutics and make recommendations for their use.
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The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO), in accordance with recommendations from various WHO committees, has developed three flagship programmes to support Member States in the African region to prepare for, detect and respond to public health emergencies. They are the re...sult of extensive consultations with more than 30 African government ministers, technical actors, partners across the continent as well as regional institutions such as the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), whose contributions have shaped the priority activities. This report provides the second quarterly summary of progress in implementing the flagship programmes.
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The Practical manual on laboratory strengthening, 2022 update provides practical guidance on implementation of WHO recommendations and best practices for TB laboratory strengthening. It is an updated version of the GLI Practical Guide to Laboratory Strengthening published in 2017 and provides the la...test practical guidance on use of newly recommended diagnostics as well as guidance in key technical areas, including quality assurance and quality management systems, specimen collection and registration, procurement and supply-chain management, diagnostic connectivity, biosafety, data management, human resources, strategic planning, and model algorithms. The key changes are:
inclusion of recent or updated WHO recommendations for tests to diagnose TB and detect drug resistance;
alignment with the latest WHO critical concentrations for phenotypic drug-susceptibility testing (DST) and the new definitions of pre-XDR-TB and XDR-TB;
updated information on building quality-assured TB testing and management capacity using the Stepwise Laboratory Quality Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA) approach (Score-TB package1);
updated information on assessing, analysing and optimising TB diagnostic networks; and
updated information on the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect mutations associated with drug resistance for surveillance purposes.
The document also provides references to resources and tools relevant for work on laboratory strengthening.
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Goal and objectives of the guideline
The goal of this guideline is to provide evidence-based recommendations to countries in their efforts to accomplish schistosomiasis morbidity control and elimination as a public health problem, and to move towards interruption of transmission.
The recommendatio...ns contained herein will help countries to implement national schistosomiasis control and elimination programmes and support efforts to verify the interruption of transmission.
The specific objectives are to provide guidance on:
prevalence thresholds, target age groups and frequency of preventive chemotherapy for schistosomiasis;
establishment of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and snail control activities to support control and elimination of schistosomiasis;
use of diagnostic tests in humans in low transmission areas and for moving to, and evaluating the interruption of transmission of schistosomiasis;
tools for the assessment of Schistosoma spp. infection in snail hosts; and
diagnostic tests for the assessment of schistosomiasis infection in animal reservoirs of infection
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The WHO Living guideline: Drugs to prevent COVID-19 contains the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the use of drugs to prevent COVID-19. The latest version of this living guideline is available in pdf format (via the ‘Download’ button) and via an online platform.
Guidelines ...regarding the use of drugs to treat (rather than prevent) COVID-19 are included in a separate WHO document, Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline, that can via an online platform and in pdf format (or click ‘PDF’ in top right corner of online platform). Guidelines regarding the clinical management of COVID-19 patients are included in a further document, COVID-19 Clinical management: Living guideline, that can be accessed via an online platform and in pdf format (or click ‘PDF’ in top right corner of online platform).
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The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO), in accordance with recommendations from various WHO committees, has developed three flagship initiatives to support Member States in the African region to prepare for, detect and respond to public health emergencies. They are the r...esult of extensive consultations with more than 30 African government ministers, technical actors, and partners across the continent as well as regional institutions such as the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), whose contributions have shaped the priority activities. This report provides the fourth quarterly summary of progress in implementing the flagship initiatives.
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The Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly through a decision on sustainable financing, adopted the recommendations of the Member States Working Group on Sustainable Financing, contained in Appendix 2 of the Working Group’s report to the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly. As part of the recommendat...ions, the Secretariat was requested to “explore the feasibility of a replenishment mechanism to broaden further the financing base, in consultation with Member States and taking into consideration the Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors; and to present a report that includes relevant options for Member States to consider, to the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly, through the 152nd session of the Executive Board and the thirty-seventh meeting of the Programme, Budget and Administration Committee in January 2023” (paragraph 39(f) of Appendix 2 of the Working Group’s report). In response to this request, the Secretariat reviewed the feasibility of a WHO replenishment mechanism in line with the principles set out by the Working Group on Sustainable Financing. It consulted with Member States through the work of the Agile Member States Task Group on strengthening WHO’s budgetary, programmatic and financing governance and benchmarked a set of replenishment mechanisms within and beyond the global health arena. This report outlines the Secretariat’s review and proposals on key elements of a potential WHO replenishment mechanism.
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WHO has updated its guidelines for COVID-19 therapeutics, with revised recommendations for patients with non-severe COVID-19. This is the 13th update to these guidelines.
Updated risk rates for hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19
The guidance includes updated risk rates for... hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19.
The current COVID-19 virus variants tend to cause less severe disease while immunity levels are higher due to vaccination, leading to lower risks of severe illness and death for most patients.
This update includes new baseline risk estimates for hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19. The new ‘moderate risk’ category now includes people previously considered to be high risk including older people and/or those with chronic conditions, disabilities, and comorbidities of chronic disease. The updated risk estimates will assist healthcare professionals to identify individuals at high, moderate or low risk of hospital admission, and to tailor treatment according to WHO guidelines:
**High: **People who are immunosuppressed remain at higher risk if they contract COVID-19, with an estimated hospitalization rate of 6%.
**Moderate: **People over 65 years old, those with conditions like obesity, diabetes and/or chronic conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney or liver disease, cancer, people with disabilities and those with comorbidities of chronic disease are at moderate risk, with an estimated hospitalization rate of 3%.
Low: Those who are not in the high or moderate risk categories are at low risk of hospitalization (0.5%). Most people are low risk.
Review of COVID-19 treatments for people with non-severe COVID-19
WHO continues to strongly recommend nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (also known by its brand name ‘Paxlovid’) for people at high-risk and moderate risk of hospitalization. The recommendations state that nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is considered the best choice for most eligible patients, given its therapeutic benefits, ease of administration and fewer concerns about potential harms. Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir was first recommended by WHO in April 2022.
If nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is not available to patients at high-risk of hospitalization, WHO suggests the use of molnupiravir or remdesivir instead.
WHO suggests against the use of molnupiravir and remdesivir for patients at moderate risk, judging the potential harms to outweigh the limited benefits in patients at moderate risk of hospital admission.
For people at low risk of hospitalization, WHO does not recommend any antiviral therapy. Symptoms like fever and pain can continue to be managed with analgesics like paracetamol.
WHO also recommends against use of a new antiviral (VV116) for patients, except in clinical trials.
The update also includes a strong recommendation against the use of ivermectin for patients with non-severe COVID-19. WHO continues to advise that in patients with severe or critical COVID-19, ivermectin should only be used in clinical trials.
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