These guidelines are the product of collaboration between the
International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. In view of their complementary mandates, their
long-standing and close cooperation in the area of occupational health, and their more recent partnership as co-sponsors of UNAIDS, the ILO and the WHO decided to join forces in order to
assist health services in building their capacities to provide their workers with a safe, healthy and decent working environment, as the most effective way both to reduce transmission of HIV and other blood-borne pathogens and to improve the delivery of care to patients. This is essential when health service workers have not only to deliver normal health-care services but also to provide HIV/AIDS services and manage the longterm administration and monitoring of anti-retroviral treatments (ART) at a time when, in many countries, they are themselves decimated by the epidemic.