Alcohol use is deeply embedded in the social landscape of many societies, and some 2300 million people drink alcoholic beverages in most parts of the world. At the same time, more than half of the global population aged 15 years and older reported having abstained from drinking alcohol during the pr...evious 12 months. Several major factors have an impact on levels and patterns of alcohol consumption in populations – such as historical trends in alcohol consumption, the availability of alcohol, culture, economic status and implemented alcohol control measures. At the individual level the patterns and levels of alcohol consumption are determined by multiple factors that include gender, age and individual biological and socioeconomic vulnerability factors as well as the policy environment. Prevailing social norms that support drinking behaviour and mixed messages about the harms and benefits of drinking may encourage alcohol consumption, delay appropriate health-seeking behaviour and weaken community action.
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Asbestos, the most frequent cause of occupational cancer, continues to be consumed ona massive scale, with millions of people exposed on a daily basis. This review explains why we havefailed in curtailing the silent epidemic of asbestos-related disease and why the numbers of asbestosvictims are like...ly to remain high. Emerging and developed countries have to be reminded that asbestosexposure has yet to become a problem of the past. The worldwide spread of asbestos, followed by thesurge of asbestos-related cancers, resembles the lung cancer epidemic caused by smoking andstimulated by manufacturers.
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BMC Infectious Diseases (2024) 24:1102
Communities living along the shoreline and on the islands of Lake Victoria in northwestern Tanzania
remain endemic for schistosomiasis and suffer from the life-threatening morbidities associated with the disease.
The interim Emergency Response Preparedness (ERP) guidance is designed to be a short technical step-by-step guide aimed at non-Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) countries to support the development, or strengthening, of preparedness measures to ensure that country teams are operationally ready to imp...lement activities to address the potential non-health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its compound effect on existing risks. The interim guidance is based on the IASC 2015 ERP Guidance.
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The toolkit is a collection of assessment tools and checklists that describe the key considerations to be taken into account when transitioning to Option B/B+. The toolkit provides a roadmap to support the planning and implementation of Option B/B+, and to help countries scale up more effective inte...rventions and programs to achieve the goals of the Global Plan Towards the Elimination of New HIV Infections among Children by 2015 and Keeping their Mothers Alive.
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Infection prevention and control practices need to be implemented to guarantee the safety of healthcare workers and patients in healthcare settings, it is fundamental to prevent cross contamination and containment of spread of COVID 19. As of the day of this publication, the following precautions ar...e recommended for the care of patients with suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19: - For any suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19: standard + contact + droplet precautions. -For any suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 and Aerosol Generated Procedure: standard + contact + airborne precautions. - The results of the application of this evaluation tool, in addition to other tools, will provide an overview regarding compliance with the activities of prevention and control of infections associated with provision of care in acute healthcare services in a health setting, without making judgments about the individual risk of patients, nor on particular cases. By its nature, this tool is only an external diagnostic to support IPC professionals and managers to assess the gaps and take corrective measures. To provide a tool for assessment of infection prevention and control practices in isolation areas in acute healthcare settings in the context of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). These recommendations are preliminary and subject to review as new evidence becomes available.
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The Global Programme on Tuberculosis & Lung Health of the World Health Organization (WHO/GTB) is now combining all current recommendations into one overall set of consolidated guidelines on TB. The guidelines contain recommendations pertaining to all areas related to the programmatic management of T...B (e.g. screening, preventive treatment, diagnostics, patient support, and the treatment of drug-susceptible TB and DR-TB). The consolidated guidelines contain modules specific to each programmatic area.
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In one of his final essays, statesman and former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan said, ‘Snakebite is the most important tropical disease you’ve never heard of’. Mr. Annan firmly believed that victims of snakebite envenoming should be recognised and afforded greater efforts at impro...ved prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. During the last years of his life, he advocated strongly for the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the global community to give greater priority to this disease of poverty and its victims.
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Climate change presents the single biggest threat to human development, and its widespread impacts disproportionately burden the poorest and most vulnerable households in fragile and rural developing contexts – particularly women and children.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate C...hange’s (IPCC) latest report, ‘between 2010 and 2020, droughts, floods and storms killed 15 times as many people in highly vulnerable countries, particularly in Africa — which is responsible for less than 3 percent of global emissions – than in the wealthiest countries’.
Recognising environmental degradation and climate change are key accelerators of extreme child vulnerability, World Vision (WV) approved the Environmental Stewardship Management Policy (‘the Policy’) and Guidelines (‘the Guidelines’) in 2021.
To support the implementation of the Policy and Guidelines, WV has developed this Environmental Stewardship and Climate Action Handbook (‘the Handbook’) to help offices across the WV Partnership implement best practice environmental management strategies both in the field and in our operations and facilities.
Integrating environmental stewardship and climate action into all our work – whether that be in our Area Programmes, grant projects, responses to disasters or advocacy – is critical to achieving WV’s strategy.
As a Christian organisation we are compelled to follow the ways of Jesus Christ, calling us to care for the ‘least of these’ (Matthew 25:40) – the vulnerable children who are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Our response to the degradation of the environment is not motivated by political expediency or funding – but because we are called to steward God’s creation (Genesis 1:28).
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Handbook of COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment, expecting to share their invaluable practical advice and references with medical staff around the world. This handbook compared and analyzed the experience of other experts in China, and provides good reference to key departments such as hospital infect...ion management, nursing, and outpatient clinics. This handbook provides comprehensive guidelines and best practices by China's top experts for coping with COVID-19.
This handbook, provided by the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, describes how organizations can minimize the cost while maximizing the effect of measures to manage and control the coronavirus outbreak. The handbook also discusses why hospitals and other healthcare institutions should have command centers when encountering a large-scale emergency in the context of COVID-19. This handbook also includes the following:
- Technical strategies for addressing issues during emergencies.
- Treatment methods to treat the critically ill.
- Efficient clinical decision-making support.
- Best practices for key departments like inflection management and outpatient clinics.
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This document puts forward the joint position and vision of an expert, global, multistakeholder working group on implementing Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for all preterm or low birth weight (LBW) infants as the foundation for small and/or sick newborn care within maternal, newborn, and child health p...rogrammes, and spur collaborative global action. The document summarizes the background information, evidence, and rationale for making KMC available to every preterm or LBW newborn and seeks to galvanize the international maternal, newborn, and child health community and families to come together to support the implementation of KMC for all preterm or LBW infants to improve their and their mothers and families health and well-being.
This position paper is intended to be used by policy-makers (i.e. those responsible for national policy, guideline development and budget allocation), development partners, programme managers, health workforce leadership, practising clinicians, civil society leadership (e.g. parent and professional organizations) and researchers/research organizations involved in KMC implementation research.
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Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable in humanitarian settings, yet they are often not able to access the services and protection they need. While multiple factors create these barriers, a major cause is how data about children with disabilities is collected and mapped. Data collect...ion processes often exclude or underrepresent the views of children with disabilities and thier caretakers. When the experiences of children with disabilities and their caretakers are not defined and collected, they become excluded from mainstreamed protective services, which are meant to serve all children. Children with disabilities also do not get the specialised interventions they need.
This guidance note explores how to use qualitative methods to create more robust assessment processes to ensure more effective programming and services for children with disabilities. This note provides promising practices for engaging with children with disabilities and includes sample tools that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular assessment process. The note also explores the importance of thoughtful cross-sectoral responses so that children with disabilities, and their families, are carefully considered in areas like water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), education, health, and nutrition, and therefore receive the holistic support they need and deserve.
This note is intended for a broad audience of relevant child protection actors, including practitioners, coordination groups, researchers, and donors. The information is not limited to one type of humanitarian setting, geographic region, or culture. As a result, the practices and guidance should be adapted to each specific context, ideally in partnership with well-informed local actors, such as representatives from local organisations for persons with disabilities.
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ndependent of the current conflict, the health sector in Ukraine faces several critical shortcomings. In particular, the country has an oversupply of hospitals and an undersupply of primary care and diagnostic facilities. Addressing these limitations will require substantial amounts of capital inves...tment, but constraints on public finances in the post-war context will reduce the Government’s ability to fund the needed reconfiguration. Multiple international financial institutions have stated their intention to support reconstruction in the aftermath of the war. The use of public–private partnerships (PPPs) may support the achievement of these outcomes and their use in Ukraine is likely to remain an important issue for Government policy-makers and their partners to consider in a variety of post-war scenarios.
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Every year, nearly 250 million people move across borders temporarily or permanently for a job opportunity, studying, to flee a crisis back home, or for other reasons. Another 750 million move for similar reasons within the borders of their countries. With the understanding that human mobility affec...ts public health, and health affects human mobility and migrants, for decades, IOM has been providing critical health services to women, children and men on the move, while standing by governments for technical and operational support as needed. In 2019, in lower-income settings and in complex emergencies, along the world’s most perilous migration routes, in the aftermath of natural disasters or in response to disease outbreaks, IOM’s health teams have provided hundreds of thousands with primary health-care consultations, mental health and psychosocial support, sexual and reproductive health care, pre-migration health services, and much more.
This year, more than ever before, as the world reels from the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19, we have experienced that health is a cross-cutting component of overall human development and well-being.
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When terrible things happen in our communities, countries and the world, we want to reach out a helping hand to those who are affected. This guide covers
psychological first aid which involves humane, supportive and practical help to fellow human beings suffering serious crisis events. It is writt...en for people in a position to help others who have experienced an extremely distressing event. It gives a framework for supporting people in ways that respect their dignity, culture and abilities. Despite its name, psychological first aid covers both social and psychological support.
Available in various languages: http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/guide_field_workers/en/
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Climate change (CC) impacts on health outcomes, both direct and indirect, are sufficient to jeopardize achieving the World Bank Group’s visions and agendas in poverty reduction, population resilience, and health, nutrition and population (HNP). In the last 5 years, the number of voices calling for... stronger international action on climate change and health has increased, as have the scale and depth of activities. But current global efforts in climate and health are inadequately integrated. As a result, actions to address climate change, including World Bank Group (WBG) investment and lending, are missing opportunities to simultaneously promote better health outcomes and more resilient populations and health sectors. Accordingly, with the financial support of the Nordic Development Fund (NDF), the World Bank Group set out to develop an approach and a 4-year action plan, outlined in this paper, to integrate health-related climate considerations into selected WBG sector plans and investments.
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[Preface]. For more than forty years Primary Health Care (PHC) has been recognized as the cornerstone of an effective and responsive health system. The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 reaffirmed the right to the highest attainable level of health, with equity, solidarity and the right to health as its ...core values. It stressed the need for comprehensive health services, not only curative but services that addressed needs in terms of health promotion, prevention, rehabilitation and treatment of common conditions. A strong resolutive first level of care is the basis for health system development [...] The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has supported the countries in the establishment of interprofessional PHC teams, in the transformation of health education and in building capacity in the strategic planning, and management of human resources for health. Nursing can play a critical role in advancing PHC. New profiles such as the advanced practice nurses, as discussed in this document, can be fundamental in this effort, and in particular, in health promotion, disease prevention and care, especially in rural and underserved areas.
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WHO, in partnership with the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has published global standards for prosthetics and orthotics. Its aim is to ensure that prosthetics and orthotics services are people-centred an...d responsive to every individual’s personal and environmental needs. The standards advocate for the integration of prosthetics and orthotics services into health services, under universal health coverage. Implementation of these standards will support countries to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and towards the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
The standards provide guidance on the development of national policies, plans and programmes for prosthetics and orthotics services of the highest standard. The standards are divided into two documents: the standards and an implementation manual. Both documents cover four areas of the health system:
policy (governance, financing and information);
products (prostheses and orthoses);
personnel (workforce);
and provision of services.
The Standards have been developed through consultation with experts from around the globe via a steering group, development group and external review group.
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The results of the report clearly show that in 2020, a year dominated by the emergence of COVID-19 and its associated health and economic crises, governments around the world rose to the challenge. Sharp increases in government spending on health at all country income levels underpinned the rise in ...health spending to a new high of US $9 trillion (approximately 11% of global GDP). Government health spending generally increased and offset declines in out-of-pocket spending. Importantly, the rise in government health spending was part of a much broader fiscal response to the pandemic. In high income and upper-middle income countries social protection spending also increased sharply in as governments attempted to cushion populations from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In contrast to health and social protection, growth in education spending was relatively subdued. Countries face the further challenge of sustaining increased public spending on health and other social sectors in the face of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and rising debt servicing. This also includes the challenge of sustaining external support for low income countries, which is essential for reducing ensuring poverty, ensuring access to health services and strengthening pandemic preparedness.
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This study, and similar studies in Kenya, Mozambique, Swaziland, Uganda, and Zambia is the outcome of close collaborative by a team in Swaziland, with technical and financial support from the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa, UNAIDS Geneva, and the World Bank's Global HIV.../AIDS Program (Global AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Team). The study entailed using existing data and collecting new data to better know the country's HIV epidemic, know the country HIV response and how funding was allocated, so as to improve the HIV response and strengthen prevention based on evidence on what works to prevent new infections.
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