Consolidated Guidelines

Before being considered for group membership, each Guideline Development Group (GDG) and External Review Group candidate was required to submit a completed declaration of interest (DOI) form. In addition, a preliminary internet search was performed to identify any obvious public controversies or interests that may lead to compromising situations for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the expert concerned.

Current recommendations on the various methods and tools should not prevent or restrict further research on new, rapid molecular drug-susceptibility tests, especially for assays that can be used as close as possible to where patients with a presumptive diagnosis of TB are identified and where treatment can be initiated. Priorities for further operational research on diagnostics are listed below, grouped for each technology.

Molecular assays intended as initial tests

The target audience for these guidelines includes laboratory managers, clinicians and other health care staff, HIV and TB programme managers, policy-makers, technical agencies, donors and implementing partners supporting the use of TB diagnostics in resource-limited settings.

Individuals responsible for programme planning, budgeting, mobilizing resources and implementing training activities for the programmatic management of DR-TB may also find this document useful.

This document provides background, justification and recommendations on novel diagnostic tools for detecting MTBC and the presence or absence of mutations in target genes proven to be associated with anti-TB drug resistance.

The production of the WHO consolidated guidelines on tuberculosis. Module 2: screening was coordinated and written by Cecily Miller, with support from Annabel Baddeley, Dennis Falzon and Matteo Zignol, under the overall direction of Tereza Kasaeva, Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Programme. The WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme gratefully acknowledges the contribution of all experts involved in producing these guidelines¹.