Guidance

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.

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.

This guidance document and its accompanying tool, the Adolescent Assessment and Decision-Makers Tool (AADM), were devised to facilitate country assessments aimed at strengthening the adolescent component of national HIV programmes. The purpose of the country assessments is to: (1) support country teams in the identification of equity and performance gaps affecting adolescent HIV programming; and (2) define priority actions to improve the effectiveness of the national adolescent HIV response.

Report and recommendations from a meeting of the WHO and UNAIDS in collaboration with the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling and Projections, London, UK, 28-29 October 2015.

The 2015 WHO consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretrovirals updates the 2013 edition following an extensive review of evidence.

The guidelines include 10 new recommendations to improve the quality and efficiency of services to people living with HIV. In addition, for the first time the guideline includes "good practice statements" on interventions whose benefits substantially outweigh the potential harms. The guidelines will be a valuable resource for health-care providers and should shape the priorities of policy makers. Meaningful engagement of people living with HIV will be essential for successful implementation.