
UNITAR Online Catalogue
Understanding and using WHO guidelines on tuberculosis

The Defeat NCD Partnership
Background
Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the most important transmissible conditions of public health concern in both low- and high-resource settings, and is one of the single most important infectious disease killers. As part of its mandate, the World Health Organization produces evidence-based guidelines on different aspects of TB prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment. Since several years, TB guidelines are developed using using the GRADE method.
Event Objectives
- Describe the general process of WHO TB guideline development
- Describe what a WHO TB guideline includes
- Access WHO TB recommendations
- Describe the certainty of the evidence and what it means
- Explain strong and conditional recommendations
- Explain the rationale for adapting guideline recommendations
Content and Structure
Since 2009, WHO has produced tuberculosis (TB) guidelines using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation method. The WHO Global TB Programme has consolidated its TB guidelines into a modular series, including access to a recommendation map, focused on online access in contrast to paper documents. Evidence-based guidance across the continuum of care is instrumental to the global drive to end TB, a leading infectious disease cause of death in the world today despite being largely preventable and curable. This is enshrined in the WHO End TB Strategy for 2016-2035 endorsed by all Member States. Efforts to keep consolidated guidelines updated as “living guidelines” are important for WHO so that practice is based on the best available, latest evidence.
This online course explains how TB guidelines are developed by WHO, how the GRADE approach relates to TB guidelines, how to interpret the certainty of evidence and strength of recommendations, how WHO TB guidelines can be accessed, and how guidelines can be adapted to the local context.
The target audience for these training modules include personnel involved in the public health response to TB, including clinicians and other healthcare professionals, public health officials, programme managers, academics as well as other interested learners including the public.
Methodology
Approximate course duration: 4 hours
Languages
This course is available in the following language: English
Assessment & Awards
You will receive a Confirmation of Participation upon completing all the modules in this course. Please note that this award does not serve as a professional qualification.
Targeted Audience
Guideline users and teams supporting guideline development.
Additional Information
Guidance note
The content of this course has been validated, verified, and is owned by the WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme. This course is not a WHO Academy co-produced course. In case of any concerns or feedback on the course content, please share your feedback in the survey form at the end of this course.
Browser and device compatibility
For the best experience, we recommend using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to access the courses.
Produced by: WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme.