Publications

The objective of this Checklist is to support women living with HIV and community activists who care about the rights of women living with HIV to guarantee effective implementation of the WHO Consolidated guideline on sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV. This is important given that uptake of the guideline includes the meaningful engagement of women living with HIV in all their diversity.

WHO develops global norms and standards for STI treatment and prevention, strengthens systems for surveillance and monitoring, including those for drug-resistant gonorrhoea, and leads the setting of the global research agenda on STIs.

Maternal mortality is unacceptably high. About 830 women die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications around the world every day. In 2015, 303 000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth. Almost all of these deaths occurred in low-resource settings, and most could have been prevented.

In 2018, Youth LEAD conducted many new projects and activities, which will be implemented in partnership with both global and regional networks. For instance, the regional consortium for the Robert Carr Fund grant turned into a global consortium, thereby opening doors and opportunities for collaboration.

The publication provides information on contraceptive options and choice, the medical eligibility criteria for different methods of contraception for women and adolescent girls living with HIV and using antiretroviral therapy, a summary of the comparative effectiveness of contraceptive methods and contraceptive considerations at different stages of a woman’s life-course.  

This annual surveillance report is an initiative of Special Preventive Programme, Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health. The report aims to provide strategic information to facilitate planning of services and intervention activities for the prevention, care and control of HIV/AIDS. Following a commentary, data collected from the five main components of our surveillance programme (the HIV/AIDS voluntary reporting system, HIV prevalence surveys, sexually transmitted infections caseload statistics, behavioural studies and HIV-1 genotyping studies) were presented as tables and graphs. Findings of the risk behavioural surveys such as the HIV and AIDS Response Indicator Survey (HARiS) and other studies were also included in this report.

After years of neglect, greater global attention is being paid to the increasing incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). A recently published WHO report highlights that, annually, there are an estimated 376 million new cases of four curable STIs: chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and trichomoniasis. The need for greater focus on STIs has also been highlighted in the context of expanded use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention, where high STI prevalence at baseline and incidence during PrEP use have been observed. The epidemiological situation demands a call to action to ensure that these STIs are addressed, and that populations at risk have access to comprehensive STI prevention and care. Integration of STI services and PrEP has challenges, but it also provides an opportunity not only to induce much- needed progress in STI control, but also to optimize broader sexual and reproductive health services for key, underserved and overlooked populations.

These guidelines provide further reassurance of DTG as the preferred antiretroviral (ARV) drug in first- and second-line regimens due to the declining estimate of neural tube defect risk and observed efficacy. This reassurance comes at a time when pretreatment resistance to non-nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI) is increasing in low- and middle-income countries, creating demand for access to alternative non-NNRTI ARV drugs.

Although significant progress has been made towards ending AIDS as a public health threat, with 23.3 of the 37.9 million (62%) people living with HIV receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) by the end of 2018, many gaps in service access and quality remain. The objective of this brief is to consolidate WHO guidance to support the implementation of high-quality HIV services through approaches to policy, strategy and service delivery, to suggest considerations for selecting measures of high-quality services and to provide case examples of quality management in HIV services in low- and middle- income countries.

An increasing number of countries are adopting policies endorsing PrEP for HIV prevention. Emerging evidence from clinical research that different dosing strategies can be effective provides an opportunity to offer flexibility, choice and convenience to individuals who can benefit from PrEP and is considered by WHO in updating its guidance to countries. Based on the available evidence published so far, this technical brief updates the current WHO recommendation on oral PrEP to include an option of event-driven dosing for men who have sex with men.