Consolidated Guidelines On Hiv Testing Services 2019

These consolidated guidelines on HIV prevention, testing, treatment, service delivery and monitoring bring together existing and new clinical and programmatic recommendations across different ages, populations and settings, bringing together all relevant WHO guidance on HIV produced since 2016. It serves as an update to the previous edition of the consolidated guidelines on HIV. These guidelines continue to be structured along the continuum of HIV care. Information on new combination prevention approaches, HIV testing, ARV regimens and treatment monitoring are included. There is a new chapter on advanced HIV disease that integrates updated guidance on the management of important HIV comorbidities, including cryptococcal disease, histoplasmosis and tuberculosis. The chapter on general HIV care, contains a new section on palliative care and pain management, and up to date information on treatment of several neglected tropical diseases, such as visceral leishmaniasis and Buruli ulcer. New recommendations for screening and treating of cervical pre-cancer lesions in women living with HIV are also addressed in this chapter. Guidance on service delivery was expanded to help the implementation and strengthening the HIV care cascade. Importantly, this guidance emphasizes the need for differentiated approaches to care for people who are established on ART, such as reduced frequency of clinic visits, use of multi-month drug dispensing and implementation of community ART distribution. The adoption of these efficiencies is essential to improve the quality of care of people receiving treatment and reduce the burden on health facilities, particularly in resource limited settings.

These guidelines provide guidance on the diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection and the care of people living with HIV. They are structured along the continuum of HIV testing, prevention, treatment and care. This edition updates the 2013 consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs following an extensive review of evidence and consultations in mid-2015, shared at the end of 2015, and now published in full in 2016. It is being published in a changing global context for HIV and for health more broadly.

Digital Adaptation Kits (DAKs) are part of the WHO SMART guidelines initiative and include data and health content consistent with WHO’s HIV recommendations that are generically applicable to digital systems. They are software-neutral, operational, and structured documentation based on WHO clinical, health system and data use recommendations to systematically and transparently inform the design of digital systems. The components include: (1) linked health interventions and recommendations; (2) personas; (3) user scenarios; (4) business processes and workflows; (5) core data elements mapped to standard terminology codes (e.g. ICD); (6) decision support; (7) programme indicators; and (8) functional and non-functional requirements. This DAK focuses on HIV testing, prevention, and treatment.

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to national AIDS programmes and partners on the use of indicators to measure and report on the country response. The 2016 United Nations Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, adopted at the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AIDS in June 2016, mandated UNAIDS to support countries in reporting on the commitments in the Political Declaration. The Political Declaration on Ending AIDS built on three previous political declarations: the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, the 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS and the 2011 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS.

To ensure that countries can effectively benefit from digital health investments, “digital adaptation kits” (DAKs) are designed to facilitate the accurate reflection of WHO’s clinical, public health and data use guidelines in the digital systems that countries are adopting. DAKs are operational, software-neutral, standardized documentations that distil clinical, public health and data use guidance into a format that can be transparently incorporated into digital systems. For this particular DAK, the operational requirements are based on systems that provide the functionalities of digital tracking and decision support (DTDS) and include components such as personas, workflows, core data elements, decision-support algorithms, scheduling logic and reporting indicators. Web annexes provide certain components in additional detail including: data dictionary (Web Annex A), decision-support logic (Web Annex B), indicator definitions (Web Annex C), and functional and non-functional requirements (Web Annex D). Data elements within the DAK (Web Annex A) are mapped to standards-based terminology, such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), to facilitate interoperability. This DAK focuses on providing the content requirements for a DTDS system for HIV care used by health workers in primary health care settings. It also includes cross- cutting elements focused on the client, such as self-care interventions.