In many low- and middle-income countries, there is a wide gap between evidencebased recommendations and current practice. Treatment of major CVD risk factors remains suboptimal, and only a minority of patients who are treated reach their target levels for blood pressure, blood sugar and blood choles...terol.
In other areas, overtreatment can occur with the use of non-evidence-based
protocols. The aim of using standard treatment protocols is to improve the quality
of clinical care, reduce clinical variability and simplify the treatment options,
particularly in primary health care. Standard treatment protocols can be developed by preparing new national treatment guidelines or by adapting or adopting international guidelines.
The Evidence-based protocols module uses hypertension and diabetes screening
and treatment as an entry point to control cardiovascular risk factors, prevent target organ damage, and reduce premature morbidity and mortality. A comprehensive risk- based approach for integrated management of hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol is included in the Risk-based CVD management module.
This module includes clinical practice points and sample protocols for:
1. hypertension detection and treatment
2. type 2 diabetes detection and treatment
3. identifying basic emergencies – care and referral.
HEARTS emphasizes adaptation, dissemination, and use of a standardized set of
simple clinical-management protocols, which should be drug- and dose-specific,
and include a core set of medications. The simpler the protocols and management tools, the more likely they are to be used correctly, and the higher the likelihood that a programme will achieve its goals.
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The main objective of these guidelines is to provide guidance on up-to-date, uniform, evidence-informed practices for suspecting, diagnosing and managing various forms of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) at all levels of healthcare delivery. They can then contribute to the National Programme to i...mprove detection, care and outcomes in EPTB; to help the programme with initiation of treatment, adherence and completion whilst minimizing drug toxicity and overtreatment; and contribute to practices that minimize the development of drug resistance.
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The West African Ebola outbreak has been the largest, most severe and most complex in human history. For more than a year, people from all over the world have answered the call to work with WHO to overcome this outbreak. Starting from the initial detection of the outbreak, to the arrival of the firs...t responders, to the overwhelming spread of cases in West Africa, to the moment when cases began to decline, ‘The Ebola Diaries’ is a series of first-person accounts describing what it has been like working on the front lines of a global health crisis of unprecedented proportions.
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The purpose of the WHO Manual for the Public Health Management of Chemical Incidents is to provide a comprehensive overview of the principles and roles of public health in the management of chemical incidents and emergencies. While this information is provided for each phase of the emergency cycle, ...including prevention, planning and preparedness, detection and alert, response and recovery, it is recognized that the management of chemical incidents and emergencies requires a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach and that the health sector may play an influencing, complementary or a leadership role at various stages of the management process. The target audience includes public health and environmental professionals, as well as any other person involved in the management of chemical incidents.
WHO and all those involved in the development of the publication hope that the publication will have wide application, especially in developing countries and countries with economies in transition, and that in the future the health sector will be better prepared to acknowledge and fulfill its roles and responsibilities in the management of chemical incidents and emergencies, thereby contributing to the prevention and mitigation of their health consequences.
The publication is also available in French: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/246117/9789242598148-fre.pdf?sequence=1 and in Spanish: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/246118/9789243598147-spa.pdf?sequence=1
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"Le Manuel de l’OMS pour la gestion de l’aspect santé publique des accidents chimiques a pour objet de passer en revue l’ensemble des principes et des rôles qui sont ceux de la santé publique dans la gestion des accidents et des situations d’urgence d’origine chimique. Tout en apportant... ce type d’information pour chaque phase du cycle de gestion des situations d’urgence, notamment en ce qui concerne la prévention, les plans d’urgence, la préparation, la détection et l’alerte, l’intervention et le rétablissement de la situation, les auteurs admettent que la gestion des accidents et des situations d’urgence de nature chimique nécessite une approche pluridisciplinaire et plurisectorielle et que le secteur de la santé est susceptible de jouer un rôle complémentaire influent, voire le rôle de chef de file, aux différents stades du processus de gestion. Le manuel s’adresse notamment aux professionnels de la santé publique et de la protection de l’environnement ainsi qu’à tous ceux qui sont partie prenante à la gestion des accidents de nature chimique."
Also available in english and spanish
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Rapport de mission, 10-14 juillet 2017
Madagascar a conduit la mission d’évaluation externe conjointe de la mise en œuvre des capacités du Règlement Sanitaire International (2005) du 10 au 14 juillet 2017. ...
Pour disposer de capacités fonctionnelles et pérennes, le pays devra ren...forcer encore d’avantage l’ensemble des 19 domaines techniques en mettant en œuvre les recommandations ci-dessous. A cet égard, il est primordial de mettre l’accent sur : i) l’élaboration et l’application de cadres législatifs, propices à l’application du Règlement sanitaire international (2005) et à la gestion des risques de catastrophe ; ii) la coordination multisectorielle dans la mise en œuvre du Règlement sanitaire international (2005) ; iii) le renforcement des capacités du point focal RSI ainsi que sa relation avec tous les secteurs clés dans la prévention, la détection et la riposte ; iv) la rédaction et la mise en œuvre des procédures requises en tenant compte de l’approche englobant l’ensemble des menaces ; et v) l’analyse et la cartographie des risques d’épidémies et de catastrophes, en utilisant une approche multisectorielle qui permettra d’actualiser et d’établir des plans de préparation et de riposte contre les zoonoses, les maladies infectieuses émergentes et ré-émergentes et les facteurs de risque environnementaux en utilisant l’approche « Une seule santé ».
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MMWR. Recommendations and Reports:
December 16, 2005 / 54(RR15);49-55
Despite the considerable improvement in global health, millions of people still lack access to quality health services, including access to effective antimicrobial medicines, or are impoverished as a result of health spending. At the same time, antimicrobial resistance – a consequence of overuse a...nd misuse of antimicrobials – is increasingly a barrier to accessing effective care. The declining effectiveness of antibiotics is driven by multiple factors, many of which can be addressed through well functioning primary health care. However, primary health care has not always had much attention in national health sector responses to
antimicrobial resistance, which often focus on tertiary care, laboratory detection and surveillance. The three pillars of primary health care (community engagement, front-line health services including primary care and essential public health, and multisectoral action on wider health determinants) are central not just to Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, but also to an effective response to antimicrobial resistance.
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Le projet de recherche intitulé « SMS4Care » est un projet mis en oeuvre par l’ONG camerounaise dénommée « M.A.SANTE » dans la région de l’Extrême-Nord Cameroun, en collaboration avec la Délégation régionale de la Santé Publique, l’Université de Johns
Hopkins et le Ministère de... la Santé Publique. Ce projet est mis en oeuvre dans sa phase pilote, dans 4 Districts de santé de la région à savoir Mada, Makary, Goulfey et Kousseri, avec pour objectif de tester la faisabilité de la mise en place d’une surveillance à base communautaire des maladies et des indicateurs démographiques en utilisant le Smart phone. Tel que planifié
dans l’agenda, 2 sessions de formation ont été organisées avec pour but de renforcer les capacités des relais communautaires dans la détection des cas et la transmission des données par SMS. Ces formations se sont déroulé les 4 et 6 février 2015 dans les districts de santé de Makary et Kousseri.
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Entretanto, à luz da possível introdução de um caso suspeito relacionado ao COVID-19 na Região das Américas, a Organização Pan-Americana da Saúde/Organização Mundial da Saúde (OPAS/OMS) recomenda que os Estados-membros garantam sua identificação oportuna, o envio de amostras a laborat...rios nacionais ou de referência e a implementação do protocolo de detecção molecular do COVID-19, dependendo da capacidade do laboratório. Até à data, o potencial patogênico e a dinâmica de transmissão do COVID-19 não são completamente claros. Por esta razão e à luz do conhecimento de outros vírus semelhantes (MERS-CoV, SRA-CoV), é necessário manter e reforçar as medidas de biossegurança e os equipamentos de proteção individual para o trabalho com amostras suspeitas de infecção com patógenos respiratórios.
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Muitos países já demonstraram que a transmissão por COVID- 19 de uma pessoa para outra pode ser desacelerada ou interrompida. Essas ações salvaram vidas e deram ao restante do mundo mais tempo para se preparar para a chegada da COVID-19: prontidão dos sistemas de resposta a emergências; aumen...to da capacidade de detecção e assistência aos pacientes; garantia de espaço, insumos e equipes necessárias nos hospitais, e desenvolvimento de intervenções médicas que salvam vidas. Todos os países devem urgentemente tomar as medidas necessárias para desacelerar a disseminação e evitar que seus sistemas de saúde fiquem sobrecarregados, em função de pacientes gravemente doentes por COVID-19.
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Frontline health workers (FHWs) provide services directly to communities where they are most needed, especially in remote and rural areas. Many are community health workers and midwives, though they can also include local emergency responders/paramedics, pharmacists, nurses, and doctors who serve in... community clinics.
The growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on low- and middle-income countries threatens many health systems that are already weakened. In many countries, health systems—and health workers—are not prepared to address the complex nature of NCDs. Health systems are often fragmented, and designed to respond to single episodes of care or long-term prevention and control of infectious diseases.1 Many countries also continue to face shortages and distribution challenges of trained and supported health workers. As most NCDs are multifactorial in origin and are detected later in their evolution, health systems face significant challenges to provide early detection as well as affordable, effective, and timely treatment, particularly in underserved communities.
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he WHO South-East Region in 2019 accounted for nearly a million missing TB patients from the estimated incidence. Active case-finding (ACF) or systematic screening for tuberculosis is an important tool to reach out to missing TB patients. When appropriately implemented, the activity is cost effectiv...e, helps to reduce diagnosis and treatment delays, and prevents the spread of the disease. This document presents an analysis of published ACF studies from the Region. It can be used by Member States for effective planning, implementation and monitoring of these activities.
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Journal of Clinical TB and other Mycobacterial Diseases
uberculosis (TB) in the gastrointestinal tract or peritoneum is an uncommon condition in clinical practice. Its rarity, combined with its nonspecific presentations, makes this kind of extrapulmonary tuberculosis difficult to diagnose as it can... mimic other inflammatory or malignant conditions. Delays in treatment and frequent misdiagnosis can lead to hazardous complications. In countries like Ecuador where the disease is endemic, TB should always be considered in the differential diagnosis of a patients who present with nonspecific abdominal symptoms. In these scenarios, laparoscopy can be an invaluable tool when used with sufficiently high clinical awareness and adequate training.
Case presentation
We present the case of a 37-year-old female patient from Ecuador with a 1-year history of abdominal pain, nausea, intermittent vomits, night sweats, and weight loss. After clinical evaluation and a laparoscopic intervention, abdominal TB was detected and promptly treated. Antituberculosis chemotherapy was initiated, and the patient successfully reco
High clinical awareness is imperative when approaching abdominal TB due to its wide spectrum of clinical symptoms and its rarity. Early detection and prompt treatment are critical to minimize the possibility of hazardous complications.
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Dengue is a significant public health problem. There are four dengue virus serotypes identified; however, its diagnosis is difficult due to the existence of many viruses, bacteria, and parasites producing the same clinical presentation, being present in the same geographical area and even producing ...coinfections. Therefore, determining whether a person has, had, or is infected with dengue virus is of great importance. In order to do so, direct and indirect laboratory tests have been developed to identify the virus or part of its structure that generally detects the antibody response. These techniques are used for diagnosis, epidemiological studies, monitoring, assessment and production of vaccines and antivirals, etc. They range from the use of cell cultures, animal models, inoculation by insects, and serology tests to the use of detection molecular tests and quantification of genetic material that are described in this chapter herein, a brief explanation of this methodology, its strengths and weaknesses, and its application in the dengue research.
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Over the past twenty years, huge efforts made by a broad coalition of stakeholders curbed the last epidemic and brought the disease to the brink of elimination. In this paper, the latest figures on disease occurrence, geographical distribution and control activities are presented. Strong evidence in...dicates that the elimination of sleeping sickness ‘as a public health problem’ by 2020 is well within reach. In particular, fewer than one thousand new cases were reported in 2018, and the area where the risk of infection is estimated as moderate, high or very high has shrunk to less than 200,000 km2. More than half of this area is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The interruption of transmission of the gambiense form, targeted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for 2030, will require renewed efforts to tackle a range of expected and unexpected challenges. The rhodesiense form of the disease represents a small part of the overall HAT burden. For this form, the problem of under detection is on the rise and, because of an important animal reservoir, the elimination of disease transmission is not envisioned at this stage.
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A century after its discovery, Chagas' disease still represents a major public health challenge in Latin America. Moreover, because of growing population movements, an increasing number of cases of imported Chagas' disease have now been detected in non-endemic areas, such as North America and some E...uropean countries. This parasitic zoonosis, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, is transmitted to humans by infected Triatominae insects, or occasionally by non-vectorial mechanisms, such as blood transfusion, mother to fetus, or oral ingestion of materials contaminated with parasites. Following the acute phase of the infection, untreated individuals enter a chronic phase that is initially asymptomatic or clinically unapparent. Usually, a few decades later, 40-50% of patients develop progressive cardiomyopathy and/or motility disturbances of the oesophagus and colon. In the last decades several interventions targeting primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of Chagas' disease have been attempted. While control of both vectorial and blood transfusion transmission of T cruzi (primary prevention) has been successful in many regions of Latin America, early detection and aetiological treatment of asymptomatic subjects with Chagas' disease (secondary prevention) have been largely underutilised. At the same time, in patients with established chronic disease, several pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions are currently available and have been increasingly used with the intention of preventing or delaying complications of the disease (tertiary prevention). In this review we discuss in detail each of these issues.
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Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) pose a substantial threat to many health systems, especially in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) where they are already overstretched. In the past few decades, deaths from NCDs in LMICs have spiked, whereas numbers in high-income countries have stabilis...ed. Worryingly, a large proportion of deaths from NCDs (29%) in LMICs occur among people younger than 60 years compared with the proportion in high-income countries (13%). This finding has been attributed to poor access to effective and equitable health-care services in most LMICs. The threat of NCDs in LMICs was recognised by the UN 2011 High-Level Meeting, and is now featured in Sustainable Development Goal 3 in the form of reducing premature mortality from NCDs by one-third before 2030. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of deaths from NCDs (ie, 48% of all NCDs deaths). Therefore, substantial reductions in CVDs will have a major impact on reducing the overall burden of NCDs globally. The good news is that most CVDs can be prevented by addressing the key underlying behavioural risk factors, such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, tobacco use, and harmful use of alcohol, through population-wide approaches. Among individuals with or at high risk of CVD, early detection and effective management with appropriate counselling and medicines can reduce cardiovascular deaths substantially.
The importance of effective treatment for CVD has been recognised in the Global NCD Action Plan 2013–20, for which one of the nine global targets is that at least 50% of eligible individuals should receive drug therapy and counselling to prevent heart attacks and strokes by 2025.5 Although admirable, this is a hard target to achieve given that secondary prevention strategies in LMICs are often unaffordable or unavailable.
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High variability in the definition and interpretation of organized cancer screening needs to be addressed systematically. Moreover, the relevance of the current practice of categorizing screening programmes dichotomously into organized or non-organized needs to be revisited in the context of conside...rable heterogeneity that exists in the delivery of cancer screening in the real world. We aimed to identify the essential and desirable criteria for organized cancer screening that serve as a charter of best practices in cancer screening.
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The One Health (OH) High-Level Expert Panel (OHHLEP) of the Quadripartite Organizations defined OH as an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems.”
It recognizes the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plan...ts, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and interdependent [1]. The Tripartite which comprised the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) later became the Quadripartite organizations when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) joined the OH alliance in 2022. There are Global and Regional Quadripartite Secretariats consisting of officials of headquarters and regional offices, respectively.
Over the years, the Tripartite/Quadripartite organizations and other partner agencies have developed several OH assessment and operational tools to support Member States in assessing their core capacities to achieve compliance with the requirements of international standards such as the International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR), WOAH’s Terrestrial and Aquatic Animal Health Codes, World Trade Organization’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (WTO-SPS), FAO/WHO Codex standards, etc. Technical areas that the existing tools currently support include progress monitoring, coordination and collaboration mechanisms, and capacity building for prevention, detection, preparedness, and response to health threats emerging at human-animal-environment interface. More OH B operational tools are in the pipeline.
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