Consolidated Guidelines

Adams J, Bartram J, Chartier Y. Essential environmental health standards in health care. Geneva, Switzerland. World Health Organization. 2008.

Baussano I, Bugiani M, Carosso A et al. Risk of tuberculin conversion among healthcare workers and the adoption of preventive measures. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2007;64(3):161-166.

Churchyard G, Scano F, Grant A et al. Tuberculosis preventive therapy in the era of HIV infection: overview and research priorities. Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2007;196(Suppl 1):S52-62.

Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. (August 2009). Research Finding Highlights: Access to HIV-related services in positive women, men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender (TG) and injecting drug users. Report.

Connelly P, & Rosen S. (2006). Treatment of HIV/AIDS at South Africa's largest employers: Myth and reality. South African Medical Journal = Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif Vir Geneeskunde, 96(2), 128-133.

There are currently no existing guidelines that specifically address the issue of priority access for health workers to services for the prevention, treatment and care of HIV and TB, which, of course, is why the current Guidelines are needed. However, WHO documents do designate health workers as a high risk group (WHO, 2008) As noted in the Rationale for this Guideline, there is an abundance of evidence that HIV-infected health workers are at increased risk as a result of exposures they may confront in the course of their work. (e.g. Buve et al. 1994; Chanda at al. 2006; Corbett at al.

The development of these guidelines required a substantial evidence review and assessment using the GRADE process, as stipulated by WHO's Guidelines Review Committee [7]. The systematic reviews focused primarily on the randomized controlled trials with direct comparison between the intervention and comparator. However, data on the outcomes from the observational cohort studies were also summarized and assessed by the GDGs, especially when limited or no evidence from randomized controlled trials was available.

The recommendations in these guidelines qualify both their strength and in the certainty of the evidence on which they are based. The certainty of the evidence is categorized into four levels (Table 1). The criteria used by the evidence reviewers to qualify the certainty of evidence are summarized in the GRADE tables (see Web Annex 4). Several factors may increase or decrease the certainty of evidence (see tables 12.2b and 12.2c in the WHO handbook for guideline development [6].

Care and support interventions for all people with TB (Guideline update 2017)

1. In patients with TB, are any interventions to promote adherence to TB treatment more or less likely to lead to the outcomes listed below?

This section contains two new recommendations on the implementation of decentralized models of care and integrated family-centred models of care to improve both case detection and the provision of TB preventive treatment (TPT).