Climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessment
In 2013 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the report Protecting health from climate change:
vulnerability and adaptation assessment. The aim was to provide basic and flexible guidance on conducting national or subnati...onal assessments of current and future vulnerability (the susceptibility of a population or region to harm) to the health risks of climate change, and of policies and programmes that could increase resilience, taking into account the multiple determinants of climate-sensitive health outcomes.
That guidance has been a very useful tool, applied to more than 50 countries and settings, and has helped countries to prepare their health contributions to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change national adaptation plans.
Since the launch of the guidance, WHO, technical partners such as Health Canada, and countries have learned much in terms of its applicability in different countries, at national and local levels.
At the same time, knowledge on climate change and health has increased.
WHO, the Pan American Health Organization and Health Canada have produced this updated version, which aims to better support countries in their assessments by proposing a simpler tool that incorporates all lessons learned.
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Operational Guidelines for Planning and Implementation in District Hospitals
Policy Brief, Updated in March 2017
Key messages
• Meaningful involvement of sex workers in the HIV response through peer-based education and outreach and consultation in policy making and programme planning is vital to reduce their vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted inf...ections (STIs) and ensure that the challenges they face are addressed adequately.
• Sex workers (female, transgender and male) have the right to protect their health through accessing comprehensive and evidence-informed HIV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions.
• Innovative HIV prevention strategies and creative use of combination interventions are needed to reach mobile and ”hard to reach” sex workers.
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This document defines the framework for Malawi’s National HIV Programs. Considering public health benefits and risks, as well as funding and resource implications, deviations from these guidelines are not supported by the Ministry of Health.
Summary of research into the consequences of the Ebola outbreak for children and communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone
The frequency of infectious disease epidemics is increasing, and the role of the health sector in the management of epidemics is crucial in terms of response. In the context of infectious disease epidemics, the use of climate-informed early warning systems (EWS) has the potential to increase the eff...ectiveness of disease control by intervening before or at the beginning of the epidemic curve, instead of during the downward slope.
Currently, the initiation of interventions is heavily reliant on routine disease surveillance systems – data that often arrive too late for preventative response. However, forecasting of disease outbreaks using surveillance and weather information shows promising potential – there also remains further scope to examine seasonal climate forecasts. By combining these elements in new EWS based on computational models, it will be possible to improve both the timeliness and impact of disease control. The World Health Organization (WHO) is strengthening existing surveillance systems for infectious diseases to enable the development of more robust and timely EWS, which has resulted in the rapid development and innovation of EWS for disease outbreaks.
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Please download the latest report from the official website:
http://www.nacp.go.tz/site/publications/epidemiology-and-research-coordination
A healthcare worker manual. 2nd edition
The development of this National Manual for the Management of HIV-related Opportunistic Infections and Conditions for use by health care workers at the frontline of our fight against HIV/AIDS is intended to improve their understanding of the causes, preventio...n and appropriate management of opportunistic infections and conditions in adults and adolescents (OIs in children is covered effectively in the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses – IMCI – materials). It is also intended to be a practical guide at the clinic level, so as to improve quality of life, treatment outcomes and survival of PLHA. Crucially, this manual uses a “symptom-based” approach to support health care workers at the most basic primary level to be able to effectively initiate the care of PLHA with OIs and refer patients as appropriate (effective triage of patients at the primary care level). The result of this will be to move the management of OIs closer to the patient while ensuring that referral links with higher-level facilities and care is cultivated.
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The goal of this contingency plan for El Nino related epidemics is to contribute to the reduction in mortality and morbidity associated with El Nino epidemic threats by ensuring that appropriate systems to support health emergency preparedness, timely response and post disaster recovery and mitigati...on are in place at the national, district, health facility and community levels in Rwanda.
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The indicators and questions in this document are designed for use by national AIDS programmes and partners to assess the state of a country’s HIV and AIDS response, and to measure progress towards achieving national HIV targets. Countries are encouraged to integrate these indicators and questions... into their ongoing monitoring efforts and to report comprehensive national data through the Global AIDS Monitoring (GAM) process. In this way they will contribute to improving understanding of the global response to the HIV epidemic, including progress that has been made towards achieving the commitments and global targets set out in the new United Nations Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030, adopted in June 2021, and the linked Sustainable Development Goals.
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health crisis that resulted in 1.14 million deaths in 2021. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates, 96 416 of these deaths occurred in the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region. All 22 countr...ies/territories in the Eastern Mediterranean Region are enrolled in the global AMR
surveillance system, and 17 countries/territories reported data in 2024 (for the year 2023). The total number of isolates reported to the system increased sixfold between 2017 and 2022, but the proportion of blood isolates is relatively very low. Most of the data come from public sector laboratories or hospitals, although the private sector has increased its participation in some countries/territories recently. Three pathogens account for three quarters of all the reported pathogens – Escherichia coli
(26%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (23%), and Staphylococcus aureus (22%).
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What countries need: Investments needed for 2010 targets