The early prevention project “Strong together!” supports refugee parents and their young children (0–4 years) in Berlin, Germany. It aims to mitigate the transmission of trauma to the generation born in exile. For refugee families who have only recently arrived in Germany, the COVID‐19 pande...mic poses a particularly great challenge. Not only are they confronted with numerous challenges in respect to rebuilding their lives in Germany after fleeing war and persecution, but are also vulnerable to conscious and unconscious anxieties, fantasies, and conflicts evoked by the pandemic and the threat it poses to their lives. This was observed in the context of the mother–child groups of “Strong together!”
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Human use of land has been transforming Earth's ecology for millennia. From hunting and foraging to burning the land to farming to industrial agriculture, increasingly intensive human use of land has reshaped global patterns of biodiversity, ecosystems, landscapes, and climate. This review examines ...recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, environmental history, and model-based reconstructions that reveal a planet largely transformed by land use over more than 10,000 years. Although land use has always sustained human societies, its ecological consequences are diverse and sometimes opposing, both degrading and enriching soils, shrinking wild habitats and shaping novel ones, causing extinctions of some species while propagating and domesticating others, and both emitting and absorbing the greenhouse gases that cause global climate change. By transforming Earth's ecology, land use has literally paved the way for the Anthropocene.
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The case for evidence- based communication of science
Covid-19 Social Policy Response Series / No.14
This report examines Ecuador’s social policy response to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects and protect
vulnerable populations. It chronologically traces containment, closure policies, social policies and programmes
put in place following t...he announcement of Covid-19 as a global pandemic. A combination of external con-
straints and domestic structures, i.e. informality and weak coordination, led to truncated efforts in the healthcare
response, while persistent inequalities in access to technology and high levels of informality led to fragmented
education, labour policies and social protection responses. The report zooms into the Family Protection Grant
(Bono de Protección Familiar or BPF), a new social protection programme that covers informal workers, which
captures the difficulties in reaching unregistered populations amid lockdown and containment measures.
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Community health worker teams are potential game-changers in ensuring access to care in vulnerable communities. Who are they? What do they actually do? Can they help South Africa realize universal health coverage? As the proactive arm of the health services, community health workers teams provide ho...usehold and community education, early screening, tracing and referrals for a range of health and social services. There is little local or global evidence on the household services provided by such teams, beyond specific disease-oriented activities such as for HIV and TB. This paper seeks to address this gap.
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Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its rel...ationship with perceived government response.
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Rev Panam Salud Publica. 2021;45:e74.
Some characteristics of patients and healthcare providers influence treatment success in MDR-TB cases. Physicians’ and nurses’ knowledge about MDR-TB must be improved, and follow-up of MDR-TB patients who are living with HIV and of those affiliated with the... subsidized health insurance scheme in Colombia must be strengthened, as these patients have a lower likelihood of a successful treatment outcome.
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Effective antibiotics are essential for childrens’ survival
Lancet Glob Health 2020Published OnlineNovember 27, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30449-6
This report presents examples from different agencies on how they approached community engagement in their Covid-19 responses, the tools and methodologies used, as well as the challenges they encountered and how they attempted to overcome these. It discusses what community engagement means to the va...rious agencies interviewed and in the literature consulted. And it puts forward some reflections on how CCCM and other sector agencies can take steps to ensure community participation in this and future pandemic responses.
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There is no secret to our procedure: the daily scanning of the literature helps us to stay afloat in the never-ending waves of new publications about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Many papers discussed in the Top 10 will eventually make it into subsequent editions of COVID Reference.
The rapid arrival of millions of asylum seekers and migrants in Europe in 2015–16 forced cities both large and small to rethink their approach to immigrant inclusion.
The speed of developing diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has been quite remarkable. Diagnostics have focused on nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) to identify infected individuals in acute-phase disease for timely implementation of mitiga...tion strategies and case management. More and more immunodiagnostics, mostly rapid diagnostic tests, are being made available as an alternative to NAATs. This type of test can be used out-of-laboratory conditions at large scale.
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WHO published guidance for clinicians and health care decision-makers on the use of corticosteroids in patients with COVID-19.
We recommend systemic corticosteroids for the treatment of patients with severe and critical COVID-19. We suggest not to use corticosteroids in the treatment of patients ...with non-severe COVID-19 as the treatment brought no benefits, and could even prove harmful. Treatment should be under supervision of a clinician.
Corticosteroids are listed in the WHO model list of essential medicines, readily available globally at a low cost. WHO encourages countries to maintain sufficient stocks of corticosteroids to treat COVID-19 and the other disease for which they are effective, while not maintaining excessive stocks which could deny other countries access.
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There is no secret to our procedure: the daily scanning of the literature helps us to stay afloat in the never-ending waves of new publications about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Many papers discussed in the Top 10 will eventually make it into subsequent editions of COVID Reference.
BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3026 (Published 11 August 2020)
The BMJ "practice pointer" inlcudes a one-page visual summary of assessment and initial management of patients with persistant symptoms following acute SARS-CoV-2 infection
Updated Interim guidance 29 July 2020
The provision of safe water, sanitation and waste management and hygienic conditions is essential for preventing and for protecting human health during all infectious disease outbreaks, including of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Ensuring evidenced-based ...and consistently applied WASH and waste management practices in communities, homes, schools, marketplaces, and healthcare facilities will help prevent human-to-human transmission of pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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16 June 2020
PAHO’s Smart Hospitals Project started in 2009 and has been implemented across nine countries in the Caribbean Region. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new lessons to be incorporated as part of Smart Retrofits. This document is intended to describe simple natural and... mechanical ventilation measures which can be implemented as an extension of the PAHO Smart Retrofits with the aim of reducing the risk of transmission of viruses like COVID-19.
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