The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, a collaborative endeavour of the World
Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and the Harvard School of Public Health,
drew the attention of the international health community to the burden of neurological
disorders and many other chronic conditions. T...his study found that the burden of neurological
disorders was seriously underestimated by traditional epidemiological and health
statistical methods that take into account only mortality rates but not disability rates. The
GBD study showed that over the years the global health impact of neurological disorders
had been underestimated.
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The new WHO Guidelines on Sanitation and Health summarize the evidence on the effectiveness of a range of sanitation interventions and provide a comprehensive framework for health-protecting sanitation, covering policy and governance measures, implementation of sanitation technologies, systems and b...ehavioural interventions, risk-based management, and monitoring approaches. Critically, the guidelines articulate the role of the health sector in maximizing the health impact of sanitation interventions.
The guidelines also identify gaps in the evidence-base to guide future research efforts to improve the effectiveness of sanitation interventions.
(French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic in production)
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The skin of a patient is the first and most visible structure of the body that any health-care worker encounters during the course of an examination. To the patient, it is also highly visible, and any disease that affects it is noticeable and will have an impact on personal and social well-being. Th...e skin is therefore an important entry point for both diagnosis and management. Many diseases of humans are associated with changes to the skin, ranging from symptoms such as itching to changes in colour, feel and appearance.
This training guide explains how to identify the signs and symptoms of neglected tropical diseases of the skin through their visible characteristics. It also contains information on how to diagnose and manage common skin problems that front-line health workers may encounter.
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Mental health issues are usually given very low priority in health service policies. Although this is changing, African countries are still confronted with so many problems caused by communicable diseases and malnutrition that they have not woken up to the impact of mental disorders. Every country m...ust formulate a mental health policy based on its own social and cultural realities. Such policies must take into account the scope of mental health problems, provide proven and affordable interventions, safeguard patients’ rights, and ensure equity.
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Glob Ment Health (Camb). 2015; 2: e12. Published online 2015 Jul 14. doi: 10.1017/gmh.2015.10
Low and middle income countries (LMICs) are facing an increase of the impact of mental health problems while confronted with limited resources and limited access to mental health care, known as the ‘me...ntal health gap’. One strategy to reduce the mental health gap would be to utilize the internet to provide more widely-distributed and low cost mental health care. We undertook this systematic review to investigate the effectiveness and efficacy of online interventions in LMICs.
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Across the Western Pacific Region COVID-19 is placing enormous strain on health and economic systems apart from direct threats to personal health safety and livelihood the pandemic also has significant implications on mental health and psychosocial well being adversity is an established risk factor ...for mental health problems thus the impact of COVID-19 on mental health is expected to be large diverse and far reaching mental health and psychosocial support mhpss are essential components of a public health response to COVID-19 this guidance note provides 10 activities that may be integrated in national COVID-19 response and mitigation plans
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A comprehensive briefing by Half of Syria
April 2020
A comprehensive briefing on the critical challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic to Syrians, as reported by Syrian civil society organisations. These challenges have been collated following extensive interviews with the teams of member and partner... organisations working in the field in various sectors: health, child care, education, women’s empowerment, media and culture, research, human rights and accountability, relief and social services, and local governance.
This comprehensive briefing also include concrete recommendations formulated by the Syrian civil society.
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While many of the countries hit by the COVID-19 in the first few months of the year are now beginning to relax lockdown measures as infection and death rates fall, in the regions most affected by HIV, TB and malaria, such as Africa, South Asia and Latin America, the pandemic continues to accelerate.... In lower resource settings, lockdowns are less effective and hard to sustain, and clinical care facilities are extremely limited. In such environments, the response to COVID-19 must focus on containing the pandemic’s spread as far as possible through testing, contact tracing and isolation, protecting the health workforce through training and the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and minimizing the knock-on impact on other diseases through shoring up fragile health systems, and adapting existing disease programs.
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This Interim Guidance outlines how key public health and social measures needed to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread and the impact of the disease can be adapted for use in low capacity and humanitarian settings. The recommendations outlined here need to be adjusted to the scale of transmission, co...ntext and resources, in order to achieve the objective of managing COVID-19, namely to reduce transmission and facilitate the detection and management of infected and exposed individuals within the population. The Guidance is intended for humanitarian and development actors of all operational levels working with communities ocal authorities involved in COVID-19 preparedness and response operations in these settings, in support of national and local governments and plans. Additional considerations for support to residents of urban informal settlements and slums are available in Annex 1.
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This assessment tool is to support municipalities and local authorities in identifying the risks and vulnerabilities that refugees and migrants face and to identify gaps where possible methods to minimize the impact of the pandemic exist so that they can be prioritized within local policy processes.
The purpose of the toolkit is to bring together existing learning and guidance as a starting point for stakeholders to begin SRH preparedness work. Within the SRH sector the field of preparedness is relatively new and growing. More collective effort is required to further evaluate the impact of prep...aredness efforts and push the field forward. This effort is a first attempt at a draft guidance for SRH preparedness, and is intended for field testing. The toolkit recognizes the longstanding work of the field of emergency and disaster risk management, and endeavors to bridge that work with the human rights-oriented and peoplecentered field of sexual and reproductive health.
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Urbanization, land use, global trade and industrialization have led to profound and negative impacts on nature, biodiversity and ecosystems across the world. The ongoing depletion of natural resources not only afects environmental conditions but also has an enormous impact on the well-being and secu...rity of societies.
This report provides an overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health.
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The spillover of infectious agents from animals to humans in recent decades has had a significant impact on the health of humans, animals, and our environment. To minimize the impact of future pandemic threats, the Southeast Asia One Health University Network (SEAOHUN) was established in 2011 to dev...elop the next generation of skillful and competent One Health (OH) workforce with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and its One Health Workforce project.
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This policy brief draws from the latest evidence on the impact of vaccination program start date and vaccine rollout rates on health benefits. The objective is to support policymakers on decisions to procure COVID-19 vaccines and roll out vaccination programmes in countries, especially those
where ...large proportions of the population remain unvaccinated.
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The COVID-19 HEalth caRe wOrkErs Study (HEROES): Regional Report from the Americas is a multicenter prospective cohort study to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of health care workers in 26 countries on four continents and how it is affected by several factors at diffe...rent interrelated levels: individual, family, occupational, and social. This brief report presents the evidence generated from the baseline survey of 11 participating countries in the Region of the Americas. Using validated scales, the findings show high rates of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and psychological distress in several countries of the Region. The spirit of the project is not only to generate quality scientific evidence on the mental health of health care workers, but also to help develop interventions (both individual and institutional) and policies to address the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.
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Global temperatures and the frequency and intensity of heatwaves will rise in the 21st century as a result of climate change. Extended periods of high day and nighttime temperatures create cumulative physiological stress on the human body which exacerbates the top causes of death globally, including... respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus and renal disease. Heatwaves can acutely impact large populations for short periods of time, often trigger public health emergencies, and result in excess mortality, and cascading socioeconomic impacts
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Human schistosomiasis otherwise called bilharzia, is a fresh- water snail transmitted intravascular debilitating disease resulting from infection by the parasitic dimorphic Schistosoma trematode worms, which lives in the bloodstream of humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) regards the disease ...as a neglected tropical disease, with an estimated 732 million persons being vulnerable to infection worldwide in renowned transmission areas. Steinmann and co-workers documented that over 200 million individuals from Africa, Asia, and South America are infected with this disease. The WHO further estimated that schistosome infections and geohelminths accounts for over 40% of the world tropical disease burden with the exclusion of malaria. Humans get infected with this disease when they make contact with water contaminated with the skin-penetrating cercariae. Prevalence of schistosomiasis, at present, is still high in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, 17.5 million people were treated globally for schistosomiasis, 11.7 million of those from sub-Saharan Africa only. Approximately 120 million individuals in sub-Saharan Africa have schistosomiasis-related symptoms while about 20 million undergo hardship as a result of chronic presentations of the disease.
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The recurrence of severe climate events combined with economic, social, and institutional fragilities leave El Salvador in an utterly critical humanitarian situation and highly vulnerable. Located in a disaster-prone subregion, El Salvador is among the 20 countries at the highest risk of disasters w...orldwide. The successive hydrometeorological hazards that impacted El Salvador over the past two years include tropical storms Amanda and Cristóbal and hurricanes Eta, Iota, and,
more recently, Julia. These storms profoundly affected the lives and livelihoods of almost 900 000 people and significantly disrupted health services, especially at the first level of care. In addition, the country’s exposure to earthquakes, floods, and droughts is also constant. Infrastructural and institutional limitations to deal with emergencies and
low capacity to respond to adverse events are an additional challenge, which leaves the population—particularly the most vulnerable—at even higher risk.
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When explosive weapons are used in populated areas, they have direct and indirect impacts
on the provision of services, community cohesion, humanitarian access, regular support for
basic needs, physical safety, mental health and psychological well-being, as well as other
social and economic impac...ts. The challenges and human impacts in hard-to-reach areas –
such as in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts – exemplify the specific and systematic
pattern of harm caused by explosive weapons during and after armed conflicts.
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Past the crucial midpoint to the SDGs, the 2024 SDG3 GAP progress report, ‘Aligning for country impact’, focuses on alignment as the overarching principle linking efforts to deliver greater impact in countries on the health-related SDGs. It contributes to the basis for further discussions among ...the 13 signatory agencies, on how to further improve the alignment and collaboration across multilateral agencies, as will the forthcoming Independent Evaluation findings due in late 2024.
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