Report of the 1st Meeting of the WHO Onchocerciasis Technical Advisory Subgroup. Varembé Conference Centre, Geneva, Switzerland, 10‒12 October 2017

Overview

The WHO Onchocerciasis Technical Advisory Subgroup (OTS) was established in order to provide advice to WHO in accordance with the terms of reference developed for the subgroup. The objectives of the 1st meeting were to review current strategies and provide recommendations on potential common strategies or components of common strategies for onchocerciasis elimination mapping, for determining when a stop-MDA evaluation should be performed, for performing stop-MDA evaluations, and to identify key research and operational questions that need to be answered to develop the evidence-base to support strategies for the above mentioned programmatic activities.

The key conclusions and recommendations of the OTS are described below. Please note that many of the recommendations are provisional and thus may change over time as new evidence emerges. Evidence that emerges after the meeting will not be reflected in this report. Some lessons will have to be learned while programmes continue to strive to eliminate the transmission of onchocerciasis. Recommendations are based on consensus unless otherwise noted. When consensus could not be reached, operational research questions were defined that should provide the evidence required to obtain a consensus in the future.