WHO releases new guidance on TB surveillance
Its goal is to ensure the continued worldwide standardization of TB surveillance, in the context of WHO’s End TB Strategy, the latest WHO guidelines on TB screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and commitments made at the 2023 UN High-Level Meeting on TB.
29 May 2024 | Geneva -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has released new guidance on TB surveillance. Its goal is to ensure the continued worldwide standardization of TB surveillance, in the context of WHO’s End TB Strategy, the latest WHO guidelines on TB screening, prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and commitments made at the 2023 United Nations (UN) High-Level Meeting on TB. It also aims to promote the establishment or strengthening of digital, case-based TB surveillance.
TB surveillance is the systematic and continuous collection, analysis, reporting and use of data related to TB infection and disease in the population. It is essential for the reliable monitoring of the TB epidemic at national, regional and global levels; for assessment of progress towards national, regional and global targets related to TB; for the assessment of the performance of TB services; and to inform planning, budgeting, policy, programmatic and clinical actions.
“This new guidance on TB surveillance is crucial to ensuring that all countries continue to track the TB epidemic and monitor the quality, coverage and effectiveness of TB prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment services in a consistent and standardized way, fully aligned with End TB targets and commitments, and the latest WHO consolidated guidelines on TB”, said Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, Director of WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Programme. “We urge all countries to use the new guidance as soon as possible.”
WHO guidance on TB surveillance (including standardized definitions and standard templates for recording and reporting of data about people diagnosed with TB and their treatment outcomes) has ensured a consistent approach to TB surveillance at national level since the mid-1990s. In turn, this standardization has facilitated the regular reporting of TB data to WHO from 215 countries and areas in annual rounds of global TB data collection, with findings published in an annual WHO global TB report since 1997 and data made publicly available via the online WHO global TB database.
The new 2024 edition of WHO guidance on TB surveillance provides a comprehensive and consolidated package, which is intended for everyone involved in the collection, management, reporting, analysis and use of TB surveillance data. It replaces WHO’s “Definitions and reporting framework for tuberculosis”.
The guidance includes six major chapters: purpose, principles and scope; definitions; core indicators to report and use; core data items to collect; digital surveillance; and data quality.
The guidance is accompanied by six web annexes. These comprise: a summary of commonly observed problems and associated solutions related to TB surveillance; a second edition of the WHO TB surveillance checklist; how to use record-linkage exercises to assess (and correct for) underreporting of people diagnosed with TB to the national TB surveillance system; reporting templates and formulae for calculation of core indicators; examples of reporting scenarios for TB diagnosis, the start of TB treatment and treatment outcomes; and a summary of an evaluation of case-based digital TB surveillance using DHIS2 packages in five countries.
The guidance constitutes “Module 1” of WHO’s consolidated guidance on TB data generation and use.
In association with the guidance, WHO has published a short slide-set that provides a quick introduction to, and overview of, its key content. A TB surveillance app (TB Surveillance on the App Store (apple.com) and TB Surveillance - Apps on Google Play), which provides results from assessments of the performance of TB surveillance using the WHO TB surveillance checklist, has also been released.
To facilitate uptake of the new guidance, translated versions in all official WHO languages will be published before the end of 2024. In addition, the guidance will be disseminated and promoted through webinars and multi-country workshops.
Source: WHO
