Compendium of WHO Guidelines:
Compendium of WHO guidelines and associated standards: ensuring optimum delivery of the cascade of care for patients with tuberculosis
The Compendium focuses on the first pillar of WHO’s End TB strategy – that is, activities related to integrated, patient-centered care and prevention for early detection, treatment and care of all TB patients, including children. Implementing this approach requires close collaboration among all stakeholders, including the social sector, civil society and local communities. The aim is to ensure that the patient’s needs, values, preferences and rights inform the access and delivery of services.
This Compendium is organized to follow the pathway of persons with signs or symptoms of TB in seeking care and also to include cross-cutting elements essential to the patient-centered approach to care delivery that is recommended by WHO. The document also addresses TB preventive care, principally treatment for latent TB infection. It consolidates all WHO policy recommendations, and outlines WHO’s standards for patient-centered care. This compilation of standards, prepared on the lines of the International Standards of TB Care and enriched further with easy access to source documents, is meant to meet the needs not only of national TB programmes (NTPs) and public health physicians but also the clinicians working in the private, corporate and voluntary sectors.
The Compendium is provided to be used as medical reference and TB knowledge base.