WHO's new hepatitis handbook bridges the gap between policy and action

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a landmark resource to help countries move faster on eliminating hepatitis B and C, as announced in an official statement published by the agency. The Consolidated Guidance and Implementation Handbook on Hepatitis B and C brings together more than a decade of WHO evidence-based recommendations into a single, practical reference for programme managers, policymakers, clinicians, donors, and partners. Released ten years after WHO’s first global hepatitis strategy, it is designed to close the persistent gap between what the evidence says and what countries are actually able to do on the ground.

The scale of the problem makes the timing urgent. An estimated 254 million people are living with hepatitis B and 50 million with hepatitis C worldwide. In 2022 alone, hepatitis-related liver disease caused 1.3 million deaths — more than 3,500 every single day — even as effective prevention tools, a hepatitis C cure, and hepatitis B vaccines have existed for years.

Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, Director of WHO’s Department for HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections, described the handbook as a tool to help countries move “from evidence-based recommendations to concrete action,” providing clear implementation pathways to expand equitable, person-centered hepatitis services at every level of the health system. The handbook consolidates over 80 WHO recommendations from 2015 to 2025 into a modular, streamlined format covering prevention — including mother-to-child transmission and birth dose vaccination — testing, simplified treatment approaches, and data monitoring systems.

A central thread running through the handbook is the role of primary health care. Rather than treating hepatitis as a specialist concern, it provides a framework for integrating hepatitis services into primary care settings and universal health coverage platforms, making them accessible to far more people.

WHO is now working with countries and partners to scale up the handbook’s adoption ahead of the 2030 hepatitis elimination target. The tools exist, the guidance is now consolidated — what remains is the commitment to use them.