Interim guidance for country validation of viral hepatitis elimination

Book excerpt: In 2016, the World Health Assembly adopted the Global Health Sector Strategy (GHSS) on viral hepatitis. The GHSS called for elimination of viral hepatitis B and C infection as a public health problem (defined as a 90% reduction in incidence [95% for HBV and 80% for HCV] and 65% reduction in mortality by 2030, compared with the 2015 baseline). A broad range of countries have now developed national viral hepatitis plans, and several countries also requested guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) on the establishment of global criteria for measuring elimination of viral hepatitis and a standardized process for validation of elimination. WHO has developed this interim guidance for countries and other stakeholders seeking validation of elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health problem, with a specific focus on hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). It provides a global framework for the processes and standards for validation of elimination, and overall proposes the use of absolute impact targets to validate elimination at the national level (instead of, although equivalent to, the relative reduction targets originally defined in the 2016 GHSS) in combination with a set of programmatic targets.