The Consolidated guidelines on HIV, viral hepatitis and STI prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations outline a public health response for five key populations (men who have sex with men, trans and gender diverse people, sex workers, people who inject drugs and people in prisons and other closed settings). They present and discuss new recommendations and consolidate a range of recommendations and guidance from current WHO guidelines. Particularly for key populations, social, legal, structural and other contextual factors both increase vulnerability to HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs and obstruct access to health and other essential services. These guidelines highlight the critical importance of addressing structural barriers in all settings as a priority. In most countries, inadequate coverage and poor quality of services for key populations continue to undermine responses to HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs. All countries should prioritise reaching key populations and supporting key population communities to lead the response and provide equitable, accessible and acceptable services. In most countries, inadequate coverage and poor quality of services for key populations continue to undermine responses to HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs. All countries should prioritise reaching these key populations and supporting key population communities to lead the response and provide equitable, accessible and acceptable services to these groups.

In 2022, WHO published the Consolidated guidelines on HIV, viral hepatitis and STI prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations. These guidelines outline a public health response to HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for five key populations (men who have sex with men, sex workers, people in prisons and other closed settings, people who inject drugs and trans and gender diverse people). In this policy brief, we give an update on those parts of the guidelines which are relevant for men who have sex with men.

In 2022, WHO published the Consolidated guidelines on HIV, viral hepatitis and STI prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for key populations. These guidelines outline a public health response to HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for five key populations (men who have sex with men, sex workers, people in prisons and other closed settings, people who inject drugs and trans and gender diverse people). In this policy brief, we give an update on those parts of the guidelines which are relevant for sex workers.

Hepatitis B (HBV) infection is a major public health problem and cause of chronic liver disease. The 2024 HBV guidelines provide updated evidence-informed recommendations on key priority topics. These include expanded and simplified treatment criteria for adults but now also for adolescents; expanded eligibility for antiviral prophylaxis for pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV; improving HBV diagnostics through use of point-of-care HBV DNA viral load and reflex approaches to HBV DNA testing; who to test and how to test for HDV infection; and approaches to promote delivery of high-quality HBV services, including strategies to promote adherence to long-term antiviral therapy and retention in care. The 2024 guidelines include 11 updated chapters with new recommendations and also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as those on treatment monitoring and surveillance for liver cancer.

This publication has been developed to provide a national framework for monitoring the health sector’s response to sexually transmitted infections and a set of core indicators to: -support countries monitor their programming for sexually transmitted infections and to identify gaps and challenges; and -facilitate regional and global tracking of the progress of WHO Member States in strengthening STI programming towards achieving the targets outlined in the global health sector strategies on, respectively, HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections. The core indicators are structured around currently available STI interventions and data that are routinely collected or can be monitored at least annually. The indicators are aligned with global reporting requirements and to the targets detailed in the global health sector strategies. Collecting and analysing these data will provide a comprehensive picture of the health burden of STIs and will inform how best to allocate resources to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of STI services. The publication also outlines a stepwise approach to strengthen the monitoring of STI programmes and STI surveillance.

These consolidated guidelines are aimed at supporting the generation of responsive person-centred data from routine national health management information systems across the HIV cascade, from prevention, testing and treatment to longer-term health care. They build upon the 2017 Consolidated guidelines on person-centred HIV patient monitoring and case surveillance, which describe information that should be collected in primary HIV patient monitoring tools, and the 2020 Consolidated HIV strategic information guidelines, which cover aggregate indicators for managing and monitoring programmes. The purpose of this guideline consolidation is to provide the recommended data elements, indicators and guidance on data systems and their use across the spectrum of health sector HIV services in one place. This document focuses on strengthening the analysis and use of routine data at each stage of the cascade and emphasizes?/addresses? person-centred HIV prevention, testing and treatment, integration of HIV-related infections, the use of routine surveillance data to measure impact, and the development and use of digital health data systems and their governance. It also identifies the gaps and limitations in these data, and the need for strengthening the use of data in all HIV-related strategic information, including population-based surveys, modelling, community-led monitoring and other sources.

To ensure that countries can effectively benefit from digital health investments, “digital adaptation kits” (DAKs) are designed to facilitate the accurate reflection of WHO’s clinical, public health and data use guidelines in the digital systems that countries are adopting. DAKs are operational, software-neutral, standardized documentations that distil clinical, public health and data use guidance into a format that can be transparently incorporated into digital systems. For this particular DAK, the operational requirements are based on systems that provide the functionalities of digital tracking and decision support (DTDS) and include components such as personas, workflows, core data elements, decision-support algorithms, scheduling logic and reporting indicators. Web annexes provide certain components in additional detail including: data dictionary (Web Annex A), decision-support logic (Web Annex B), indicator definitions (Web Annex C), and functional and non-functional requirements (Web Annex D). Data elements within the DAK (Web Annex A) are mapped to standards-based terminology, such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), to facilitate interoperability. This DAK focuses on providing the content requirements for a DTDS system for HIV care used by health workers in primary health care settings. It also includes cross- cutting elements focused on the client, such as self-care interventions.