Building Blocks:
Guidelines for Antiretroviral Treatment in Adults for
Latin American and Caribbean Countries

Based on Recommendations of a PAHO Advisory Group (August 2001) and on the WHO Document
"Expansion of Antiretroviral Treatment in Low-Resource Settings" (2002)
(Washington, DC, October 2002)

The Guidelines are available, in full text in Spanish (60 pages, PDF, 413 KB).

Go to the Spanish page

Among the barriers for the use of antiretroviral therapy in developing countries is the perception that these countries should be prepared to follow the guidelines produced in the richest countries, including the assumed availability of all antiretroviral agents and wide access to viral load testing.

These guidelines, part of the series of documents for the "Building Blocks" strategy, are a response to numerous requests by health authorities of the Region of the Americas on how to ensure improved care and especially greater access to antiretroviral treatment for people who live with HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean. In preparing these guidelines, we followed a series of principles described in the introduction that were intended to be as concrete as possible, in order to give precise recommendations. At the end of the document, we included a series of tables to be used for consultation. These tables cover essential aspects in the use of antiretrovirals, as well as in the laboratory tests used in monitoring the HIV infection. To better profit from these guidelines, we suggest reading the whole document, as the text of different chapters contain comments that help to integrate and contextualize the information.

It is our hope that these guidelines will be taken as a guide and not prescription, that can be adapted and updated in accordance with national experiences and the development of new knowledge in the area of antiretroviral therapy.

This document is only available in Spanish.