Overview

Infection prevention and control consists of evidence-based measures intended to prevent exposure and reduce the risk of transmission of infectious agents. The revised guidelines contain recommendations for specific administrative, environmental controls and respiratory protection, following the assessment made by an external group of experts convened as members of the Guideline Development Group. Moreover, these guidelines focus on interventions specific to preventing transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bridging with the core components of infection prevention and control programmes at the national and acute health care facility level.

Contents

• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Declarations of Interest
• How to Use These Guidelines
• Executive Summary
• 1. Introduction
  • Scope of the guidelines
  • Objective
  • Target audience
  • Summary of changes in the evidence-based recommendations between the 2009 and 2019 guidelines
• 2. Recommendations
  • Evidence summary and rationale
  • 2.1. Administrative controls
  • 2.2. Environmental controls
  • 2.3. Respiratory protection
• 3. Core Components of IPC Programmes
• 4. Methods
  • 4.1. Preparation for evidence assessment
  • 4.2. Evidence retrieval, quality assessment and grading of the evidence
  • 4.3. Formulation of the recommendations
  • 4.4. Guideline Development Group decision-making
  • 4.5. Guideline preparation, peer-review and content presentation
• 5. Research Priorities
  • Triage
  • Respiratory isolation
  • Rapid diagnosis and initiation of effective treatment
  • Respiratory hygiene
  • Upper-room GUV systems
  • Ventilation systems
  • Respiratory protection programmes
• 6. Publication, Dissemination and Implementation
• References
• Annexes
  • Annex 1. List of participants to the Guideline Development Group meeting
  • Annex 2. Summary of declarations of interest and management
  • Annex 3. Risk of acquiring tuberculosis infection, progression to active disease and the effect of treatment on infectiousness
• Online Annexes
  • Annex 4. GRADE evidence summary tables
  • Annex 5. GRADE evidence-to-decision tables
  • Annex 6. Results of the systematic reviews used to inform the development of these guidelines

Suggested citation:

WHO guidelines on tuberculosis infection prevention and control, 2019 update, Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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