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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WHO, in partnership with the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has published global standards for prosthetics and orthotics. Its aim is to ensure that prosthetics and orthotics services are people-centred an...d responsive to every individual’s personal and environmental needs. The standards advocate for the integration of prosthetics and orthotics services into health services, under universal health coverage. Implementation of these standards will support countries to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and towards the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
The standards provide guidance on the development of national policies, plans and programmes for prosthetics and orthotics services of the highest standard. The standards are divided into two documents: the standards and an implementation manual. Both documents cover four areas of the health system:
policy (governance, financing and information);
products (prostheses and orthoses);
personnel (workforce);
and provision of services.
The Standards have been developed through consultation with experts from around the globe via a steering group, development group and external review group.
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The goal of this course is to provide participants with the foundational skills needed to begin the development, implementation and ongoing improvement of a congenital anomalies surveillance programme, in particular for countries with limited resources. It focuses on the methodology needed to devel...op either population-based or hospital based surveillance programmes.
A set of congenital anomalies will be used as examples throughout this course. The specific examples used are typically severe enough that they would probably be captured within the first few days after birth, have a significant public health impact and, for some of them, have the potential for primary prevention.
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This analytical report reviews and discusses the potential role and influence of political commitment in implementing endorsements and conducting policy in the field of tuberculosis (TB) prevention and care. It promotes discussion by comparing and analysing the extent to which selected international... commitments, set out in declarations and other committal documents between 2000 and 2018, may have translated into sustainable action. This reflection is relevant and timely, as the United Nations high-level meeting (UNHLM) on TB recently took place, offering countries the opportunity to take stock of progress made, refocus efforts, and step up global commitments to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating TB by 2030
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This guide provides practical, step-by-step guidance on how to organize, implement, and monitor community-based care for DR TB. It is equally useful for program planning or supervision. The target audience for this guide is TB Program Managers, governments, policy makers, nongovernmental organizatio...ns (NGOs), donors and TB advocates.
This guide does not replace other guidelines and documents that contain important medical information, such as Guidelines for the Programmatic Management of Drug-resistant TB (WHO, 2008 and 2011 updates), and Management of MDR-TB: A Field Guide (WHO, 2009).
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WHO, in partnership with the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has published global standards for prosthetics and orthotics. Its aim is to ensure that prosthetics and orthotics services are people-centred an...d responsive to every individual’s personal and environmental needs. The standards advocate for the integration of prosthetics and orthotics services into health services, under universal health coverage. Implementation of these standards will support countries to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and towards the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
The standards provide guidance on the development of national policies, plans and programmes for prosthetics and orthotics services of the highest standard. The standards are divided into two documents: the standards and an implementation manual. Both documents cover four areas of the health system:
policy (governance, financing and information);
products (prostheses and orthoses);
personnel (workforce);
and provision of services.
The Standards have been developed through consultation with experts from around the globe via a steering group, development group and external review group.
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This guidance has been developed in line with the WHO corporate risk management framework, the WHO business continuity and contingency plans, as well as the Inter-Agency Emergency Response Preparedness Framework. It is based on a common organiza-tional approach and procedures for managing including ...emergency response across all hazards and at each level of the Organization. It relates WHO’s responsibilities (1) under the International Health Regulations (2005) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, and other international treaties; (2) as the United Nations’ lead agency for health and the health cluster; and (3) as a member of the United Nations or Humanitarian Country Teams
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The Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) is a document to guide WHO’s work in countries. CCS is a medium-term vision for WHO’s technical cooperation with a given Member State, and supports the country's national health policy, strategy or plan. The CCS time frame is flexible to align with national... cycles and processes. It is the basis for aligning WHO’s collaboration with other United Nations bodies and development partners at the country level.
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SHOPS and HIA finalized a scope of work with USAID Senegal in April 2015, and a team of five private sector experts conducted the onsite assessments between May and June 2015. The Private Sector Assessment (PSA) team worked closely with Senegalese key stakeholders throughout the process. The PSA tea...m interviewed more than120 individuals from approximately 78 organizations, including the government of Senegal (GOS), donors, USAID implementing partners, private sector umbrella organizations, private insurance companies, faith-based organizations (FBOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private health care facilities, and private pharmacies.
Through stakeholder interviews and review of government reports and online resources, the assessment team noted the following findings by theme.
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USAID Senegal and Health in Africa (HIA) initiative of the World Bank Group engaged the Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) project to conduct an assessment of the private health sector in Senegal. The assessment’s primary focus is family planning, and its secondary fo...cus is maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH), HIV and AIDS, malaria, and nutrition.
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6 July 2021. Three new nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) classes are endorsed by WHO and included.
The latest operational handbook includes the new classes recommended by WHO. It aims at facilitating the implementation of the WHO recommendations by the Member States, technical partners, and ot...hers involved in managing patients with TB and DR-TB. The operational handbook provides practical information on existing and new tests recommended by WHO, step-by-step advice on implementing and scale-up testing to achieve local and national impact and lastly, model diagnostic algorithms, which are updated to incorporate the latest recommendations. An overview of budgetary considerations and information sheets on each of the newly recommended tests is provided.
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The WHO End TB Strategy aims to end the global TB epidemic by 2030, in alignment with Goal 3 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN committed to ending the TB epidemic through adoption of WHO’s End TB Strateg...y and the UN SDGs in 2014 and 2015, respectivel
Almost half of the deaths worldwide caused by TB in 2019 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region, home to around a quarter of the global population. Maintaining robust progress in this Region is therefore essential if the global goal of ending the TB epidemic is to be realized. Despite substantial gains made in the Region, the threat to
health worldwide posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse these gains and eclipse the focus on the global TB emergency.
While continuing to tackle COVID-19-related challenges, countries will need to rapidly and urgently deploy supplementary measures to address the large numbers of missed cases, poor treatment outcomes and, potentially, a higher TB burden.
The Regional Strategic Plan towards Ending TB in the Region 2021–2025 clearly articulates priority interventions, analyses the challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities, and focuses on implementation considerations in the Region.
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This companion document to Ending the neglect to attain the Sustainable Development Goals: a road map for neglected tropical diseases 2021-2030 ("the road map") aims to support a range of stakeholders - including countries in which neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are endemic, international organi...zations and non-State actors - to achieve the road map targets through a transdisciplinary, cross-cutting One Health approach. Specifically, it provides guidance on the One Health actions needed by major stakeholders and how to support a paradigm shift towards One Health in national NTD programmes. Examples of common One Health challenges and how they can be overcome as well as illustrative cases studies are provided throughout. The companion document was developed through a global consultative process involving stakeholder interviews, interactive workshops, and online public consultation.
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ndependent of the current conflict, the health sector in Ukraine faces several critical shortcomings. In particular, the country has an oversupply of hospitals and an undersupply of primary care and diagnostic facilities. Addressing these limitations will require substantial amounts of capital inves...tment, but constraints on public finances in the post-war context will reduce the Government’s ability to fund the needed reconfiguration. Multiple international financial institutions have stated their intention to support reconstruction in the aftermath of the war. The use of public–private partnerships (PPPs) may support the achievement of these outcomes and their use in Ukraine is likely to remain an important issue for Government policy-makers and their partners to consider in a variety of post-war scenarios.
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To improve the quality of care during labour and childbirth, facilitate effective implementation of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations: Intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience, published in 2018, and promote a shift towards improving the experience of childbirth, WHO d...eveloped the WHO Labour Care Guide (LCG) and an accompanying WHO labour care guide: user's manual. The WHO LCG is a tool to facilitate implementation of quality, evidence-based, woman-centred care for a positive childbirth experience within the context of a broader, rights-based approach.
The goal of this policy brief is to provide maternal and newborn health stakeholders and decision-makers with an overview of the WHO LCG and its guiding principles, key advantages of making the shift from the WHO partograph to the WHO LCG, and what is required to ensure an enabling environment that will facilitate a sustainable introduction of the WHO LCG.
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Every day in 2020, approximately 800 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth - meaning that a woman dies around every two minutes.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.1 is to reduce maternal mortality to less than 70 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births by ...2030.
The United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group (MMEIG) – comprising WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (UNDESA/Population Division) has collaborated with external technical experts on a new round of estimates covering 2000 to 2020. The estimates represent the most up to date, internationally-comparable MMEIG estimates of maternal mortality, using refined input data and methods from previous rounds.
The report presents internationally comparable global, regional and country-level estimates and trends for maternal mortality between 2000 and 2020.
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Improving the survival chances and quality of life of women, newborns, and children remains an urgent global challenge. Since 2012, substantial progress has been made in reducing maternal and under-5 deaths, and a only handful of countries are on target to meet the SDG targets in 2030. Yet, 5 millio...n children still die each year under the age of 5, and nearly half of those are newborns less than a month old. Worse still, the global maternal mortality ratio is going in the wrong direction.
A Decade of Progress and Action for the Future will examine the tenacity and innovation that helped us make gains, the lessons learned through monitoring, country-led adaptation and leadership, analysis, and reflection, as well as the approaches we must take to reinvigorate the momentum and global commitment to improving maternal and child survival. Increasing coverage, strengthening the quality of care, and enhancing equity will be tantamount to our global progress.
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In 2012, all Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed a historical target to reduce premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases
(NCD). This commitment was echoed in 2015 by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which included a target to reduce premature morta...lity (the
measure of unfulfilled life expectancy and deaths between the ages of 30 and 70 years) from NCD by 30% by the year 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals are especially relevant to cardiovascular disease (CVD), the leading cause of death globally, with increasing prevalence in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).
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Evidence shows that oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces the risk of contracting HIV during sexual intercourse by more than 90% when taken daily. It is for this reason the National HIV Prevention Strategy 2015-2020 (2018 Revision) emphasises the role of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in ...reducing new HIV infections in Malawi.
The Ministry of Health has prioritised PrEP use among the populations most at-risk of HIV infection in Malawi: young women ages 10 to 24 years, sero-discordant couples, female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and other priority populations (such as members of the uniformed services, prisoners, and mobile populations).
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