HIV Incidence

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The WHO Technical HIV Incidence Assay Working Group Objectives

The WHO Technical HIV Incidence Assay Working Group aims to:

• Share and advance the science on HIV incidence assays and create a central resource/knowledge repository.
• Provide guidance and advocacy documents on the use of HIV incidence assays.
• Assess and foster the development of improved HIV incidence assays

Strategies to achieve the objectives:

• Literature review: A search will be conducted of all published papers that have reported on the evaluation of a test for recent HIV infection. A database will be created and a scientific journal published.
• Needs assessment: An assessment will be conducted to better understand the global need and demand for assays to detect recent infection.
• Definition of the statistical requirements for the appropriate use of HIV incidence assays.
• Establishment of specifications for HIV incidence assays development.
• Protocol development: Develop a protocol outlining the pathway on how to evaluate and validate HIV incidence assays, including a description of the desired specimen panels for each step.
• Algorithm development: Investigate the possibility of combining assays to obtain more reliable incidence measures.