The 74th World Health Assembly today adopted a previous decision of the Executive Board to request that Global Health Sector Strategies on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections are developed for the period 2022-2030. New strategies will now be developed for the Assembly’s consideration in 2022 through a broad consultative process with Member States, communities and other stakeholders and in alignment with the strategies of UNAIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Existing
Global Health Sector Strategies on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually
transmitted infections 2016-2021 end this year and new strategies are
needed to bridge the gap
between 2021 and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The 148th Executive Board in January 2021 considered a report on 2016-2021 progress and requested that WHO develop new strategies for 2022-2030. The report noted that despite considerable progress in some areas of prevention and treatment, most interim 2020 targets across the strategies have not been reached. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the pace of progress in reducing new HIV infections, increasing access to treatment and ending AIDS-related deaths was slowing.
Major
advances in hepatitis prevention, testing and treatment were still
failing to reach the 290 million people globally unaware they are living
with viral hepatitis. And
prior to the pandemic more than 1 million sexually transmitted
infections (STIs) continued to be acquired every day worldwide with more
than 350,000 adverse birth outcomes including 200,000 stillbirths and
newborn STI-related deaths occurring annually.
In response, WHO is organizing the following series of virtual briefings and consultations to inform the strategies’ development process:
Discussions have already taken place in the Latin America and Eastern Mediterranean regions following the earlier mandate of WHO's Executive Board and virtual regional consultations are now planned for: the Caribbean from 2-4 June; the WHO Western Pacific and Southeast Asia regions from 15-16 June; the WHO European region from 16-17 June; and the WHO Africa Region from 22-24 June.
To complement these consultations a series of Member State briefings will be convened in Geneva, and an online survey is available to broaden the scope for input from additional stakeholders.
WHO encourages all interested individuals and organizations to complete the online survey. The survey is currently available online in English, Spanish, Russian and French, and in the coming working days Arabic will also be available.
WHO is proposing that the three strategies, when final, will be presented in one document with an emphasis on further strengthening integration opportunities including through primary health care and collaboration with community actors. The new strategies will seek to preserve an individual approach to each disease area while also emphasizing important synergies to be found in combatting HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs collectively.
Background
The global health sector strategies on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections 2016-2021 were adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2016. They set out strategies for tackling the three epidemics, set targets for 2020 and 2030, propose concrete actions to be taken by countries and WHO, and seek to ensure that the epidemics are ended as public health threats by 2030.