Tools and Guidelines

The key aim of this guideline is to present recommendations based on a critical evaluation of the evidence on emerging digital health interventions that are contributing to health system improvements, based on an assessment of the benefits, harms, acceptability, feasibility, resource use and equity considerations. This guideline urges readers to recognize that digital health interventions are not a substitute for functioning health systems, and that there are significant limitations to what digital health is able to address.

This booklet is for young people living with HIV who want to be involved in advocacy. The booklet asks some important questions about why you want to be an advocate, and the issues that you care about. It offers suggestions for ways to get involved, top tips for your work, as well as some words of inspiration from famous people.

This leaflet informs health providers about the do’s and don’ts in service provision to adolescents and young people living with HIV. The leaflet was developed by and with young people living with HIV. It includes experience illustration, a charter for health facilities that offer friendly services and a scorecard that can be used to assess the quality of services provided to adolescents and young people living with HIV.

This Guide provides a conceptual and methodological framework for National Human Rights Institutions conducting country assessments and public inquiries in the context of sexual and reproductive health. The Guide aims to help develop more comprehensive information systems on human rights in the context of sexual and reproductive health, but also to ensure a standardized approach to the assessment of human rights violations in this area. Through featuring experiences from Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malawi and the Philippines, the Guide illustrates how these frameworks translate into practice.

The target of achieving universal health coverage is ambitious, but if met could be an important step towards ensuring that all people have good health and that HIV services are available for everyone who needs them. It is essential that efforts to achieve universal health coverage include a fully funded AIDS response and strong community engagement and that they build on the gains in human rights and gender equality made by networks of people living with HIV and key populations —gay men and other men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs, prisoners and other incarcerated people, migrants, as well as women and adolescent girls.

The WHO consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection recommend viral load as the preferred monitoring approach to detect and confirm the failure of antiretroviral therapy. As countries invest in scaling up of routine viral load testing, measuring the impact of and progress towards achieving the UNAIDS target that 90% of people receiving antiretroviral therapy have suppressed viral loads by 2020 (as part of the 90 –90 –90 targets) is critical.

The Consolidated strategic information guidelines for viral hepatitis summarize and simplify the overall approach proposed by WHO to collect, analyse, disseminate and use strategic information on viral hepatitis at local, subnational, national and international levels. The document describes the use of strategic information at various stages of the response in the context of strengthening broader health information systems. Strategic information can be defined as data collected at all service delivery and administrative levels to inform policy and programme decisions.

Drug control intersects with much of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the UN Member State pledge to leave no one behind. In line with the 2030 Agenda, the UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021 and the HIV, Health and Development Strategy 2016-2021: Connecting the Dots, the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy  provide a comprehensive set of international legal standards for placing human dignity and sustainable development at the centre of Member State responses to illicit drug economies. The guidelines cover a diverse set of substantive issues ranging from development to criminal justice to public health.

The present Consolidated guidelines include a comprehensive set of WHO recommendations for the treatment and care of DR-TB, derived from these WHO guidelines documents. The consolidated guidelines include policy recommendations on treatment regimens for isoniazid-resistant TB (Hr-TB) and MDR/RR-TB, including longer and shorter regimens, culture monitoring of patients on treatment, the timing of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in MDR/RR-TB patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), use of surgery for patients receiving MDR-TB treatment, and optimal models of patient support and care.  

These guidelines have been developed to provide updated, evidence-informed recommendations on tuberculosis (TB) infection prevention and control (IPC) in the context of the global targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Health Organization (WHO) End TB Strategy. The notion and practice of IPC encompasses a set of broader, practical, evidence-based approaches to preventing the community from being harmed by avoidable infections, preventing health care-associated infections (HAI), implementing laboratory biosafety and reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).