The IMCI chart booklet is for use by doctors, nurses and other health professionals who see young infants and children less than five years old. It facilitates the use of the IMCI case management process in practice and describes a series of all the case management steps in a form of IMCI charts. 

These charts show the sequence of steps and provide information for performing them. The IMCI chart booklet should be used by all health professionals providing care to sick children to help them apply the IMCI case management guidelines. Health professionals should always use the chart booklet for easy reference. 

The chart booklet is divided into two main parts because clinical signs in sick young infants (up to 2 months) and older children (2 months to 5 years) are somewhat different and because case management procedures also differ between these age groups.

In 2014, only 50% of all HIV-exposed infants were tested by the second month of age. Innovative approaches such as use of assays at the point-of care and adding virological testing at birth could speed up identification and ART initiation. Operational research to fully inform how to implement such innovations remains critical.

Despite this significant progress, the number of children becoming newly infected with HIV remains unacceptably high. About 150,000 [110,000–190,000] children became infected with HIV in 2015, down from 490,000 [430,000–560,000] in 2000.

This document is written for national HIV surveillance programme staff responsible for monitoring trends in country HIV epidemics. Its purpose is to describe how routine prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) programme data can be used to conduct HIV surveillance among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics (ANC). These guidelines assume that surveillance programmes have already assessed the readiness of routine programme data to be used for surveillance. WHO’s 2013 Guidelines for assessing the utility of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programme data for HIV sentinel surveillance among pregnant women describes these assessment methods.

In June 2016, ICAP and partners convened a three-day, PEPFAR-supported meeting to explore the practical challenges of scaling up routine viral load testing in sub-Saharan Africa. The meeting took place in Ezulwini, Swaziland and brought together over 150 public health experts from 15 countries. This meeting report provides a comprehensive summary of the convening.

The first WHO guidelines on HIV and Infant Feeding in 2010 recommended the use of antiretroviral drugs to prevent postnatal transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. Since then, almost all countries prioritised in the UNAIDS ‘Global Plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015 and keeping their mothers alive’ have adopted the approach of promoting and supporting breastfeeding and the provision of lifelong antiretroviral treatment as the strategy to optimise HIV-free survival among HIV-exposed, uninfected infants and children. The 2016 guidelines provide two recommendations and two guiding practice statements and they comment on the implications for: (1) routine monitoring and evaluation, and (2) conflict and emergency settings.

Supplement to consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services