Project Summary

The WHO’s Global Health Sector Strategy (GHSS) on Viral Hepatitis 2016-2021, identified information for focused action as a priority area for the viral hepatitis response, highlighting the importance of developing a strong strategic information system to understand viral hepatitis epidemics and focus the response. Although there is excellent existing WHO Guidance, it is the experience of this project team, together with other experts in the region that a range of countries request further guidance and technical assistance in practically operationalizing this guidance in their own context.

The Operational Guide to be produced by this project will bridge WHO recommendations and in-country experiences - spanning high-level global guidance and in-country implementation efforts. This Guide will assist Ministries of Health and their partners and key stakeholders to:

• identify appropriate data sources for collection, while also considering crucial issues such as universality, representativeness, diversity and the need for data triangulation; and
• harness the existing disparate datasets to report progress towards the globally endorsed indicators and the elimination targets to which they relate.

Objective

The project aims to catalyze global viral hepatitis elimination efforts by developing an operational manual to guide national approaches to collecting, utilizing and analyzing strategic information for focused action in the WPRO and SEARO regions.

Tasks and Outputs

The project will develop, pilot and produce an operational guide for the in-country implementation of the WHO core indicators to monitor and evaluate the health sector response to hepatitis B and C.

The Operational Guide will be tested in 4 priority countries to ensure that the approach developed is appropriate, useful and able to be adapted to differences in hepatitis epidemic context and health system architecture, in order to achieve generalizable utility.

The in-country testing will include workshops with key stakeholders, epidemiologists and policy makers who will be evaluating the practical utility of the Operational Guide and associated training. Countries will also be provided with hands-on support and further guidance to progress the collection and analysis of data to report against the WHO’s Core Indicators to monitor and evaluate the health sector response to hepatitis B and C.

Feedback from workshop participants, country representatives, WHO staff, and other key stakeholders during the pilot testing will be incorporated back into the Operational Guide.

Project Partners

WHO Collaborating Centre for Viral Hepatitis, VIDRL, The Doherty Institute

Project lead:  Zoe Stephens 

The operational guide will be developed in partnership with the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) and WHO Regional Office in South-East Asia (SEARO) in conjunction with member states, with the objective of becoming a regional WHO guidance document for these regions.

Support

EndHep2030, formally referred to as The Fund for Elimination of Viral Hepatitis, is the only grant-making organization dedicated exclusively to the mission of ending viral hepatitis in accordance with the Global Health Sector Strategy for Viral Hepatitis, as well as in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which called for specific action to combat viral hepatitis. This project was funded by track 1 of their funding stream, Harnessing the power of data to capture the attention of senior leaders and make the data easy to understand for key stakeholders so that they are moved to confront the burden of hepatitis.