Over recent decades, more and more pregnant
women around the world have undergone
induction of labour (artificially initiated labour)
to deliver their babies. In developed countries,
up to 25% of all deliveries at term now involve
induction of labour. In developing countries, the
rates are generally lowe...
It is estimated that 600 million preschool and school-age children worldwide are anaemic, and it is assumed that at least half of these cases are attributable to iron deficiency. This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on the intermittent use of iron supplements for preschool an...
The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed guidance for health care workers on
how to support children up to 12 years of age and their caregivers with disclosure of HIV
status. Health care workers (HCWs) know that disclosure decisions are complex because
of stigma, social support concerns, family ...
Conventional light microscopy of Ziehl-Neelsen-stained smears prepared directly from sputum specimens is the most widely available test for diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) in resource-limited settings. Ziehl-Neelsen microscopy is highly specific, but its sensitivity is variable (20–80%) and is significa...
HIV is increasingly affecting the health and welfare of children and undermining hard-won gains in child survival in some of the highly affected countries. Recent estimates from UNAIDS suggest that, globally, about 2.1 million children younger than 15 years of age have HIV. The roll out of paediatric HIV...
This 2011 update of Guidelines for the programmatic management of drug-resistant
tuberculosis is intended as a tool for use by public health professionals working in response
to the Sixty-second World Health Assembly’s resolution on prevention and control of
multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensi...
Maternal mortality rates remain high, with approximately 1000 women dying from
complications related to pregnancy or childbirth worldwide every day. Vitamin A
deficiency affects about 19 million pregnant women, mostly from the WHO regions of
Africa and South-East Asia. During pregnancy, vitamin A is esse...
Commercial liquid culture systems and molecular line-probe assays have been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as gold standards for rapid detection of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB); however, because of technical complexity, cost and the requirement for sophisticated laboratory...
Research over the past decade has resulted in the development of two commercial interferongamma release assays (IGRAs), based on the principle that the T-cells of individuals who have acquired TB infection respond to re-stimulation with Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antigens by secreting interferon...
Earlier and improved tuberculosis (TB) case detection - including smear-negative disease, often associated with HIV co-infection - as well as expanded capacity to diagnose multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are global priorities for TB control. Conventional laboratory methods are slow and cumberso...
