Consolidated Guidelines on Person-Centred Viral Hepatitis Strategic Information

The World Health Organization (WHO) released a publication summarizing the approach proposed by WHO to collect, analyse, report, disseminate and use strategic information on viral hepatitis at the subnational, national and global levels. The guidelines strengthen person-centred monitoring – with a priority for indicators that support person-centred health services, the core prevention, diagnosis and treatment interventions.

The guidelines describe the use of strategic information at various stages of the response in the context of strengthening broader health information systems. Strategic information can be defined as data collected at all service delivery and administrative levels to inform policy and programme decisions.

The guidelines recommend the stepwise guidance to build country health information systems so countries use data to strengthen the scaling up of viral hepatitis programmes. The key new additions to the guidelines are:

an updated strategic information framework for chronic viral hepatitis B & C;
a new section on person-centred data monitoring for chronic viral hepatitis B & C;
a stepwise recommendation for strengthening country surveillance for viral hepatitis; and
consolidated metadata tables for viral hepatitis indicators.