New HIV surveillance guidelines by the UNAIDS/WHO Working Group on Global HIV/AIDS and STI Surveillance
In 2000, WHO and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) developed second-generation HIV surveillance guidelines, which encouraged the expansion of HIV surveillance activities tailored to the epidemic state of a country. Since 2000, HIV surveillance systems have changed to adapt to new insights and needs and HIV interventions have expanded. Taking into account these changes the UNAIDS/WHO Global HIV Surveillance Working Group has produced a new comprehensive package for Second Generation Surveillance. This comprehensive package presents modules that address different issues and components of HIV surveillance.
Three modules of the package were published last month:
- Module 1: Guidelines for second generation HIV surveillance: an update: Know your epidemic (July 2013)
- Module 3: Guidelines for assessing the utility of data from prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programmes (July 2013)
- Module 5: Paediatric HIV surveillance among infants and children less than 18 years of age (July 2013).
Additionally, another four modules are forthcoming and will be released later in 2013:
- Module 2: Guiding principles on ethical issues in HIV surveillance
- Module 4: Surveillance of HIV infection using HIV case notification
- Module 6: Guidelines for HIV mortality measurement
- Module 7: Evaluating a national surveillance system.
Other recently published guidelines by the Global Working Group on methods for conducting HIV surveillance include:
- When and how to use assays for recent infection to estimate HIV incidence at a population level (September 2011)
- Guidelines on surveillance among populations most at risk for HIV (September 2011)
- Guidelines on estimating the size of populations most at risk to HIV (June 2010).
