Drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment

Box 1. WHO treatment recommendations incorporated into the present 
module on management and care of drug-resistant TB treatment
The objective of the present update is to provide evidence-based information on critical areas that will 
help to inform the use of novel all-oral regimens and potential label expansion for new TB medicines – 
for example, concomitant bedaquiline and delamanid use, extended bedaquiline use, and assessment 
of bedaquiline use in special populations – and that will supersede earlier guidance. In this updated 
document, stakeholders will be able to distinguish between previous recommendations that remain 
valid, those that have been updated, and those that have been newly developed based on additional 
studies, considering the range of known benefits and potential harms, modelling exercises and other 
data to inform the decision-making
process.
The recommendations included herein are a component of the WHO consolidated guidelines on 
tuberculosis, and are primarily intended for use by national TB control programmes (NTPs), public 
health agencies, and other key constituencies involved in the planning, implementation and monitoring 
of activities for the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB. 
The methods used to develop and formulate the recommendations complied with WHO standards 
for guideline development, and were based on up-to-date evidence reviews, complemented with 
additional information on values and preferences, feasibility and acceptability, and cost. The GRADE 
approach was used to rate the certainty in the estimate of effect (i.e. quality of evidence) as high, 
moderate, low or very low; it was also used to determine the strength of the recommendations, rating 
them as strong or
conditional.

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Executive summary
xiii
Current WHO recommendations on treatment and