Technical and operational ‘how-to’: practical considerations
"Achieving, maintaining and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability are major challenges for health laboratories. Countries worldwide committed themselves to build national capacities for the detection of, and response to, public health events of international concern when they decided to eng...age in the International Health Regulations implementation process. Only sound management of quality in health laboratories will enable countries to produce test results that the international community will trust in cases of international emergency. This handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive reference on Laboratory Quality Management System for all stakeholders in health laboratory processes, from management, to administration, to bench-work laboratorians. This handbook covers topics that are essential for quality management of a public health or clinical laboratory. They are based on both ISO 15189 and CLSI GP26-A3 documents"--Page 7.
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BMJ Global Health2019;4:e001504. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-00150
An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems
As more frequent droughts and floods threaten the global food supply, humans are increasing their demands on water and land,... The New York Times reports.
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report:
• 500 million people are living in areas that are becoming desert.
• Soil is depleted at 10X-100X the rate it’s being formed.
• More than 10% of the global population is undernourished.
Major threats include the risk of “multi-breadbasket failure”—simultaneous food crises on several continents—and migration triggered by food shortages.
Good News/Bad News: Catastrophe can be avoided, but it would require massive changes to agriculture, food systems and behavior.
A Key Action: Eat less meat. Cattle production is driving deforestation, consuming huge amounts of water, generating methane and causing other impacts, notes Nature.
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Bridging the gap between disaster resilience and conflict risk reduction
Community-based approaches to Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (CB MHPSS) in emergencies are based on the understanding that communities can be drivers for their own care and change and should be meaningfully involved in all stages of MHPSS responses. Emergency-affected people are first a...nd foremost to be viewed as active participants in improving individual and collective well-being, rather than as passive recipients of services that are designed for them by others. Thus, using community-based MHPSS approaches facilitates families, groups and communities to support and care for others in ways that encourage recovery and resilience. These approaches also contribute to restoring and/or strengthening those collective structures and systems essential to daily life and well-being. An understanding of systems should inform community-based approaches to MHPSS programmes for both individuals and communities.
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This document focuses on making recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of Chagas disease, an infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan agent of a systemic parasitic disease. Methodology: These clinical practice guidelines were prepared following the WHO handbook for guideline dev...elopment (5). A multidisciplinary development group was formed, comprised of thematic experts, epidemiologists, methodologists, and users. Since there were no existing guidelines that could be adapted, the guidelines were developed from scratch.
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The aim of this “model contingency plan” is to assist programme managers and planners in devel-oping a national, context-specific, dengue outbreak response plan in order to: (a) detect a dengue outbreak at an early stage through clearly defined and validated alarm signals; (b) precisely define w...hen a dengue outbreak has started; and (c) organize an early response to the alarm signals or an “emergency response” once an outbreak has started.
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This guideline examines the evidence and makes recommendations and remarks on the implementation of some of the details of breastfeeding counselling, such as frequency, timing, mode and provider of breastfeeding counselling, to improve breastfeeding practices. The objective of this guideline is to p...rovide global, evidence-informed recommendations on breastfeeding counselling, as a public health intervention, to improve breastfeeding practices among pregnant women and mothers who intend to breastfeed, or are currently breastfeeding, and their infants and children
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Guidelines for the care and treatment of persons diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C virus infection
Updated 17 April 2020
Improving care for women during pregnancy and around the time of childbirth to prevent and treat pre-eclampsia and eclampsia is a necessary step towards the achievement of the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Efforts to prevent and reduce morbidity a...nd mortality due to these conditions can help address the profound inequities in maternal and perinatal health globally. To achieve this, healthcare providers, health managers, policy makers and other stakeholders need up-to-date and evidence-informed recommendations to guide clinical policies and practices.
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UNHCR is committed to strengthening programming to prevent, mitigate and respond to sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV) in all operations. In 2018, through funding from Safe from the Start, UNHCR launched a mainstreaming project with the specific objective of supporting UNHCR’s institutionalisa...tion of SGBV prevention, risk mitigation and response. For UNHCR, SGBV mainstreaming refers to the integration of prevention, mitigation, and response strategies across all areas of programming. This proactive and ongoing process of mainstreaming is a shared responsibility whereby all colleagues across all sectors and functional levels must consider SGBV risks and take measures to reduce exposure to identified risks throughout all stages of the operations management cycle. By mainstreaming SGBV prevention, risk mitigation, and response throughout the organisation, each sector increases its own capacity to improve protection outcomes and attain sector-specific standards.
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