The global coronavirus pandemic, which has brought death to hundreds of thousands and serious illness to millions more, also poses profound spiritual questions and real challenges to Christians everywhere.
The pandemic itself has become a fundamental test of our faith in God and God’s providence,... and it urges us to earnest re-examination of our relationship to God, each other, and the natural world.
In Healing the World, the World Council of Churches offers these eight Bible studies to facilitate our coming to terms—as individuals, groups, and communities of faith—with the loss, fear, and confusion engendered by the pandemic, and the bracing prospect of building the world anew.
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It describes and analyzes the theoretical-practical incidences of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, including but not limited to the Information Science framework. Besides, it aims to outline an understanding of these three concepts based on 16 arrangements intercon...nected according to their intentionality.
Conclusions: We highlight that the complexity that permeates the various fields in the present situation is due to the difficulty of reaching a consensus on the semantic definition of the concepts of information, misinformation, and its disambiguations since these concepts have various properties.
Also available in: Portuguese
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This mapping of community experiences for the defense of the right to adequate housing in situations of risk of eviction or eviction in progress brings together practices and strategies used by families, collectives and community organizations that have different origins and interests in the region,... and also those on other continents.
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Background paper 10
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
May 2021
The WHO Guidance on community mental health services: Promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches document is part of the WHO Guidance and technical packages on community mental health services set of publications. It provides a detailed description of person-centred and human rights-based ...approaches in mental health, and summary examples of good practice services around the world. It describes the linkages needed with housing, education, employment and social protection sectors, and presents examples of integrated regional and national networks of community-based mental health services. Specific recommendations and action steps are presented for developing community mental health services that respect human rights and focus on recovery. This comprehensive document is accompanied by a set of seven technical packages focused on specific categories of mental health services and guidance for setting up new services.
The WHO Guidance on community mental health services: Promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches is a set of publications that provides information and support to all stakeholders who wish to develop or transform their mental health system and services to align with international human rights standards including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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This guidance document provides basic principles for a spokesperson of any health authority on how to respond to vocal vaccine deniers. The suggestions are based on psychological research on persuasion, on research in public health, communication studies and on WHO risk communication guidelines.
When situations occur in which unwanted events are rightly or wrongly connected with vaccination, they may erode confidence in vaccines and the authorities delivering them. This document presents the scientific evidence behind WHO’s recommendations on building and restoring confidence in vaccines ...and vaccination, both in ongoing work and during crises. The evidence draws on a vast reserve of laboratory research and fieldwork within psychology and communication. It examines how people make decisions about vaccination; why some people are hesitant about vaccination; and the factors that drive a crisis, covering how building trust, listening to and understanding people, building relations, communicating risk and shaping messages to the audiences may mitigate crises. This document provides a knowledge base for stakeholders who develop communication strategies or facilitate workshops on communication and trust-building activities in relation to vaccines and immunization, such as immunization programme units, ministries of health, public relations and health promotion units, vaccine safety communication trainers and immunization advisory bodies.
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The primary audience of this report with the compendium of resources are youth engagement practitioners in the Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies as well as technical experts and policy makers across the humanitarian landscape that thrive for meaningful interventions with and for children, ad...olescents, and young adults experiencing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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For humanitarian organisations to respond effectively to complex crises, they require access to up-to-date evidence-based guidance. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of updating global guidance to context-specific and evolving needs in humanitarian settings. Our study aimed to under...stand the use of evidence-based guidance in humanitarian responses during COVID-19. Primary data collected during the rapidly evolving pandemic sheds new light on evidence-use processes in humanitarian response.
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A rapid review of evidence on the managing the risk of disease emergence in the wildlife trade - World Animal Health Organization (OIE)
The policy of repression in Venezuela has been based on the coordination of attacks and stigmatizing messages broadcast by media with links to Nicolás Maduro’s government and politically motivated arbitrary arrests by the security forces under his command, with a marked pattern of political discr...imination, concludes new research published today by Amnesty International in conjunction with the Foro Penal and the Centro para los Defensores y la Justicia (CDJ).
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Working towards better COVID-19 outcomes in the WHO European Region.From the first COVID-19 cases in Europe reported on
24 January 2020, the pandemic reached 1 million cases
within 3 months, 10 million cases within 8 months, and
100 million cases in Europe alone within 2 years. Over
the course o...f its two years, COVID-19 has claimed over
1.6 million lives across Europe and Central Asia. The
World Health Organization (WHO) European Region has
accounted for close to a third of the cumulative global
COVID-19 cases and deaths.
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This paper explores access to water, sanitation, and health in pastoral communities in northern Tanzania. It argues that the concept of gender, used on its own, is not enough to understand the complexities of sanitation, hygiene, water, and health. It explores pastoralists’ views and perspectives ...on what is ‘clean’, ‘safe’, and ‘healthy’, and their need to access water and create sanitary arrangements that work for them, given the absence of state provision of modern water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. Although Tanzania is committed to enhancing its citizens’ access to WASH services, pastoral sanitation and hygiene tend to be overlooked and little attention is paid to complex ways in which access to ‘clean’ water and ‘adequate sanitation’ is structured in these communities. This paper offers an intersectional analysis of water and sanitation needs, showing how structural discrimination in the form of a lack of appropriate infrastructure, a range of sociocultural norms and values, and individual stratifiers interact to influence the sanitation and health needs of pastoralist men, women, boys, and girls.
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Discussions about climate change often focus on the future, but millions of children are experiencing its devastating impacts now. The scale of the crisis is huge, and growing fast. It is children that will bear the brunt of climate change, yet its impact on them is understudied, their voices are no...t being heard, and current solutions are woefully inadequate. It is a perfect storm that we must stop in its path – before it is too late.
Available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic
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27 April 2022 Chronic land degradation: UN offers stark warnings and practical remedies in Global Land Outlook 2. GLO2 offers hundreds of examples from around the world that demonstrate the potential of land restoration.
The way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are currently mi...smanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own, warns a stark new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
It also points decision makers to hundreds of practical ways to effect local, national and regional land and ecosystem restoration.
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Human rights-based approaches to the creation of knowledge involve application of human rights principles to both the content and process of knowledge creation. Human rights-based approaches have special significance for the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of all people, in particul...ar for women and girls, people living with disability, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer or Intersex (LGBTQI) populations, refugees, migrants and other marginalised populations.
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This study emphasizes the contribution that women can play in the prevention of violent extremism within the family and society and analyzes the drivers and roles of women taking part in violent extremism and supporting violent and extremist groups.
UNDP Iraq is pleased to make this study and its r...ecommendations available to national and international partners and to all interested experts and researchers working in the field of preventing violent extremism to contribute to enriching the discussion and strengthening programmes to prevent violent extremism in the Arab region.
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Maternal mortality has fallen significantly in recent years, especially in countries that have emphasized the prevention of its main causes, such as hemorrhagic and infectious complications and hypertension , including in the Region of the Americas. In its final report on the Plan of Action to Accel...erate the Reduction of Maternal Mortality and Severe Maternal Morbidity, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported a continuing downward trend in maternal mortality, with an 18.1% reduction in the maternal morbidity ratio during the period 2010-2015 . From a pathophysiological perspective, death events are a common end result of a wide spectrum of complications leading to multi-organ dysfunction. However, there is a group of women in this situation who survive, despite the seriousness of their condition. This high number of patients––who were in serious condition
but did not die––reflects the actual health conditions in an institution or a country. For this reason, there is a need to create indicators to estimate morbidity in women due to diseases and incidents that occur during pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium. To this end, we propose conducting epidemiological surveillance of an indicator that includes women who survived after presenting a potentially fatal complication during pregnancy, childbirth, or the puerperium, reflecting quality medical attention and care (5, 6). This indicator
is maternal near-miss (MNM), which refers to extremely severe maternal morbidity––cases of a severity that
brings women very close to the death event. After adjusting the definition to a specific population and time,
MNM is defined as a case in which a woman nearly died, but survived a complication that occurred during
pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy
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As countries aim to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieving universal health coverage, health inequities driven by racial discrimination and intersecting factors remain pervasive. Inequities experienced by indigenous peoples as well as people of African descent, Roma ...and other ethnic minorities are of concern globally; they are unjust, preventable and remediable.
Health systems themselves are important determinants of health and health equity. They can perpetuate health inequities by reflecting structural racism and discriminatory practices of wider society. For instance, systemic racism, implicit bias, misinformed clinical practice, or discrimination by health professionals contributes to health inequities. However, health systems can also be a leading force for tackling the inequities faced by populations experiencing racial discrimination.
Primary health care (PHC) is the essential strategy for reorientating health systems and societies to become healthier, equitable, effective and sustainable. In 2018, on the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Alma-Ata, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) renewed the emphasis on PHC with their strategy,
WHO outlines 14 strategic and operational levers for policy-makers to strengthen PHC. Within each lever, there are multiple potential entry points for targeted actions to address racial discrimination, foster intercultural care, and reduce health inequities experienced by indigenous peoples as well as people of African descent, Roma and other ethnic minorities.
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A qualitative assessment of knowledge gaps about female genital schistosomiasis among communities living in Schistosoma haematobium endemic districts of Zanzibar and Northwestern Tanzania.
PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases September 30, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009789
Schistosoma... haematobium causes urogenital schistosomiasis and is widely distributed in Tanzania. In girls and women, the parasite can cause Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS), a gynecological manifestation of schistosomiasis that is highly neglected and overlooked by public health professionals and policy makers. This study explored community members’ knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) on and health seeking behavior for FGS.
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