A global hunger crisis -- fuelled by conflict, economic turbulence and climate-related shocks -- has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of people experiencing food insecurity and hunger has risen since the onset of the pandemic. The IRC estimates that the economic downturn alone w...ill drive the number of hungry people up by an additional 35 million in 2021. Without drastic action, the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 will suspend global progress towards ending hunger by at least five years.
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Background paper 9
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
May 2021
In the last quarter of 2019 Southern African Regional Interagency Standing Committee Africa (RIASCO) reported that more than 11 million people were experiencing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in nine Southern African countries1 due to deepening drought and climate related crisis. The ...Southern African Development Community (SADC) urged for urgent humanitarian action, and at the beginning of November 2019 Angola, Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia had declared states of drought emergencies, requiring international assistance to address the worsening food insecurity situation.
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English Analysis on World about Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment and more; published on 29 Sep 2021 by FAO and NEPAD
By almost any measure, human health is better now than at any time in history. Life expectancy has soared from 47 years in 1950–1955, to 69 years in 2005–2010, and death rates in children younger than 5 years of age have decreased substantially, from 214 per thousand live births in 1950–1955, ...to 59 in 2005–2010. But these gains in human health have come at a high price: the degradation of nature’s ecological systems on a scale never seen in human history. A growing body of evidence shows that the health of humanity is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment, but by its actions humanity now threatens to destabilise the Earth’s key life-support systems.
As a Commission, we conclude that the continuing degradation of natural systems threatens to reverse the health gains seen over the last century. In short, we have mortgaged the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present.
Despite present limitations, the Sustainable Development Goals provide a great opportunity to integrate health and sustainability through the judicious selection of relevant indicators relevant to human wellbeing, the enabling infrastructure for development, and the supporting natural systems, together with the need for strong governance.
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Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) is a decentralised community-based approach to treating acute malnutrition. Treatment is matched to the nutritional and clinical needs of the child, with the majority children receiving treatment at home using ready-to-use foods. In-patient car...e is provided only for complicated cases of acute malnutrition. CMAM consists of four components: (1) stabilisation care for acute malnutrition with complications, (2) out-patient therapeutic care for severe acute malnutrition without complications, (3) supplementary feeding for moderate acute malnutrition and (4) community mobilisation.
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3rd edition. Patient safety standards are critical for the establishment and assessment of patient safety programmes within hospitals. This third edition of the Patient safety assessment manual provides an updated set of standards and assessment criteria that reflect current best practice and WHO gu...idance. The manual will support the implementation of patient safety assessments and improvement programmes within hospitals as part of the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Framework to ensure that patient safety is prioritized and facilities and staff implement best practices. The manual is a key tool for use by professional associations regulatory accrediting or oversight bodies and ministries of health to improve patient safety.
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Nat Commun 9, 5370 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07804-8. Mycobacterium ulcerans is the causative agent of Buruli ulcer, a neglected tropical skin disease that is most commonly found in children from West and Central Africa. Despite the severity of the infection, therapeutic options are... limited to antibiotics with severe side effects. Here, we show that M. ulcerans is susceptible to the anti-tubercular drug Q203 and related compounds targeting the respiratory cytochrome bc1:aa3. While the cytochrome bc1:aa3 is the primary terminal oxidase in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the presence of an alternate bd-type terminal oxidase limits the bactericidal and sterilizing potency of Q203 against this bacterium. M. ulcerans strains found in Buruli ulcer patients from Africa and Australia lost all alternate terminal electron acceptors and rely exclusively on the cytochrome bc1:aa3 to respire. As a result, Q203 is bactericidal at low dose against M. ulcerans replicating in vitro and in mice, making the drug a promising candidate for Buruli ulcer treatment.
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2014-2020, Draft March 2014
Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a neglected infectious endemic disease that is transmitted through the bite of a vector insect (sandfly) of the Lutzomyia genus,typical of rural geographical territories, and causes disfiguring skin ulcers and disabilities. It is estimated that CL affects between 600 ...000 and 1 000 000 people a year around the world, mainly in the America s, the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East and Central Asia. Eighteen of the 21 countries that make up the Latin American (LA) region are considered endemic areas for this neglected tropical disease. Colombia is one of the countries that reports the majority of global cases with 6161 in 2020 and has the second highest number of cases in the Americas, after Brazil.
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According to most recent data, the world economy grew by 3.1 per cent in 2022. To many, the rebound
suggested that a soft landing was possible in 2023, and that the key problems of the year 2022 – rising
prices, supply-chain disruptions and recession risks – have been addressed. As a result, t...he very first
months of 2023 were viewed with optimism by decision-makers, as it appeared that the anti-inflationary
stance of the central banks had set a path to price stabilization without causing a major disruption to
growth.
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The Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP) project has conducted a multi-year, multi-country study that provides stark insights on the under-reported depth of the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis across Africa and lays out urgent policy recommendations to addr...ess the emergency.
MAAP reviewed 819,584 AMR records from 2016-2019, from 205 laboratories across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. MAAP also reviewed data from 327 hospital and community pharmacies and 16 national-level AMC datasets.
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The WHO Regional Office for Europe has established the Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative in more than half thecountries in the Region for routine monitoring of the policy response to the emerging obesity epidemic. The aim of the system is to measure trends in overweight and obesity in childr...en aged 6.0–9.9 years for accurate understanding of the epidemic and to allow inter-country comparisons. This document outlines the data collection procedures agreed for use in the Initiative.
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Background: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (ASCVD) including myocardial infarction, stroke and peripheral arterial disease continue to be major causes of premature death, disability and healthcare expenditure globally. Preventing the accumulation of cholesterol-containing atherogenic lipopr...oteins in the vessel wall is central to any healthcare strategy to prevent ASCVD. Advances in current concepts about reducing cumulative exposure to apolipoprotein B (apo B) cholesterol-containing lipoproteins and the emergence of novel therapies provide new opportunities to better prevent ASCVD. The present update of the World Heart Federation Cholesterol Roadmap provides a conceptual framework for the development of national policies and health systems approaches, so that potential roadblocks to cholesterol management and thus ASCVD prevention can be overcome.
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The epidemiology of wheeze in children, when assessed by questionnaires, is dependent on parents' understanding of the term “wheeze”.
In a questionnaire survey of a random population sample of 4,236 children aged 6–10 yrs, parents' definition of wheeze was assessed. Predictors of a correct ...definition were determined and the potential impact of incorrect answers on prevalence estimates from the survey was assessed.
Current wheeze was reported by 13.2% of children. Overall, 83.5% of parents correctly identified “whistling or squeaking” as the definition of wheeze; the proportion was higher for parents reporting wheezy children (90.4%). Frequent attacks of reported wheeze (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 3.0), maternal history of asthma (OR 1.5) and maternal education (OR 1.5) were significantly associated with a correct answer, while the converse was found for South Asian ethnicity (OR 0.6), first language not English (OR 0.6) and living in a deprived neighbourhood (OR 0.6).
In summary, the present study showed that misunderstanding could lead to an important bias in assessing the prevalence of wheeze, resulting in an underestimation in children from South Asian and deprived family backgrounds. Prevalence estimates for the most severe categories of wheeze might be less affected by this bias and questionnaire surveys on wheeze should incorporate measures of parents' understanding of the term wheeze.
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This toolkit was developed to provide detailed information and resources to support implementation of the WHO intrapartum and immediate postnatal care recommendations at the health-care facility level. The careful design of this toolkit is based on a rigorous evidence-based approach that includes im...plementation strategies of proven effectiveness to help close the gap between WHO’s care recommendations and current policies and practices.
The primary target audience for the toolkit includes policy-makers, health-care facility managers, implementers and managers of maternal and child health programmes, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and professional societies involved in the planning and management of maternal and child health services.
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INTRODUCTION: Health service use among the public can decline during outbreaks and had been predicted among low and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) started implementing public health measures across Kin...shasa, including strict lock-down measures in the Gombe health zone.
METHODS: Using monthly time series data from the DRC Health Management Information System (January 2018 to December 2020) and interrupted time series with mixed effects segmented Poisson regression models, we evaluated the impact of the pandemic on the use of essential health services (outpatient visits, maternal health, vaccinations, visits for common infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases) during the first wave of the pandemic in Kinshasa. Analyses were stratified by age, sex, health facility and lockdown policy (i.e, Gombe vs other health zones).
RESULTS: Health service use dropped rapidly following the start of the pandemic and ranged from 16% for visits for hypertension to 39% for visits for diabetes. However, reductions were highly concentrated in Gombe (81% decline in outpatient visits) relative to other health zones. When the lock-down was lifted, total visits and visits for infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases increased approximately twofold. Hospitals were more affected than health centres. Overall, the use of maternal health services and vaccinations was not significantly affected.
CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in important reductions in health service utilizsation in Kinshasa, particularly Gombe. Lifting of lock-down led to a rebound in the level of health service use but it remained lower than pre-pandemic levels.
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