WHO releases HIV drug resistance report 2021

WHO’s latest HIV Drug Resistance Report gives an in-depth picture of the extent to which drug resistance is growing, and the steps that countries are taking to ensure people will receive effective medicine to treat and prevent HIV.

The report reveals that in 2020, 64% of focus countries (countries with a high burden of HIV infection) had national action plans to prevent, monitor and respond to HIV drug resistance. These plans are informed by the Global Action Plan on HIV drug resistance 2017–2021, a multi-stakeholder plan coordinated and published by WHO.

WHO encourages countries to monitor resistance and recommends that for people starting antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) called pretreatment HIV drug resistance (PDR). WHO recommends that when PDR to non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI) such as nevirapine and efavirenz reaches a threshold of 10% for a surveyed country, then the first-line HIV treatment should be urgently changed to a more robust dolutegravir-containing regimen.