Malawi’s first National Community Health Strategy (NCHS, 2017-2022) defines a new community health system in which community health cadres, both formal and non-formal, deliver services of the Essential Health Package, with a focus on child and maternal health. It envisages an integrated approach t...o service delivery and is embedded in Malawi’s Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSPII).
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Mpox continues to affect people around the world. A new framework released today by WHO will guide health authorities, communities and other stakeholders in preventing and controlling mpox outbreaks, eliminating human-to-human transmission of the disease, and reducing spillover of the virus from ani...mals to humans.
Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV). It can cause a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever. Most people fully recover, but some get very sick. The virus transmits from person to person through close, including sexual, contact. It also has animal reservoirs in east, central and west Africa, where spillovers from animals to humans can occasionally occur, sparking further outbreaks.
There are two different clades of the virus: clade I and clade II. Clade I outbreaks are deadlier than clade II outbreaks.
A major emergence of mpox linked to clade II began in 2017, and since 2022, has spread to all regions of the world. Between July 2022 and May 2023, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. While that outbreak has largely subsided, cases and deaths continue to be reported today, illustrating that low-level transmission continues around the world.
Currently, there is also a major outbreak of clade I virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where cases have been on the rise for decades. Since the beginning of the year, over 6500 cases and 345 deaths have been reported in the DRC. Almost half of these are among children under the age of 15 years.
The Strategic framework for enhancing prevention and control of mpox (2024–2027) provides a roadmap for health authorities, communities, and stakeholders worldwide to control mpox outbreaks in every context, advance mpox research and access to countermeasures, and to minimize zoonotic transmission.
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Ahead of World Malaria Day, the WHO Global Malaria Programme published a new operational strategy outlining its priorities and key activities up to 2030 to help change the trajectory of malaria trends, with a view to achieving the global malaria targets. The strategy outlines 4 strategic objectives ...where WHO will focus its efforts, including developing norms and standards, introducing new tools and innovation, promoting strategic information for impact, and providing technical leadership of the global malaria response.
In recent years, progress towards critical targets of the WHO Global technical strategy for malaria 2016-2030 has stalled, particularly in countries that carry a high burden of the disease. In 2022 there were an estimated 608 000 malaria-related deaths and 249 million new malaria cases globally, with young children in Africa bearing the brunt of the disease.
Millions of people continue to miss out on the services they need to prevent, detect, and treat malaria. Additionally, progress in global malaria control has been hampered by resource constraints, humanitarian crises, climate change and biological threats such as drug and insecticide resistance.
“A shift in the global malaria response is urgently needed across the entire malaria ecosystem to prevent avoidable deaths and achieve the targets of the WHO global malaria strategy,” notes Dr Daniel Ngamije, Director of the Global Malaria Programme. “This shift should seek to address the root causes of the disease and be centred around accessibility, efficiency, sustainability, equity and integration.”
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Anaemia is a serious global public health problem that particularly affects young children, menstruating adolescent girls and women, and pregnant and postpartum women. It is a condition in which the number of red blood cells or the haemoglobin concentration within them is lower than normal, affectin...g the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues.
To reliably monitor the prevalence of anaemia at a population level, it is vital to measure the haemoglobin concentration in an accurate and precise way. In large-scale surveys, however, haemoglobin is most commonly measured using single-drop capillary blood specimens in point-of-care devices. Emerging evidence suggests that the use of single-drop capillary blood can introduce random and/or systematic errors, which may lead to inaccurate estimates, complicating effective anaemia programming.
This technical brief describes the current best practices for haemoglobin measurement, providing guidance to help plan or implement field surveys to assess anaemia at a population level. Continuing work to review emerging evidence is led by members of the WHO-UNICEF Technical Expert Advisory group on nutrition Monitoring (TEAM).
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WHO has published the first-ever guidance on the clinical management of diphtheria. The only previously available guidance was an operational protocol. The new guidance followed the rigorous process for developing guidance at WHO.
It addresses the use of Diphtheria Antitoxin (DAT) in the treatmen...t of diphtheria. There is a worldwide shortage of DAT and evidence based recommendations on the use of DAT were requested by many Member States.
The guidance also includes new recommendations on antibiotics. In patients with suspected or confirmed diphtheria, WHO recommends using macrolide antibiotics (azithromycin, erythromycin) rather than penicillin antibiotics.
This clinical practice guideline has been rapidly developed recognizing the global increase in diphtheria outbreaks. Outbreaks of diphtheria in Nigeria, Guinea and neighbouring countries in 2023 have highlighted the urgent need for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of diphtheria. Given the sporadic nature of outbreaks, many clinicians in the affected regions have never managed acute diphtheria and its related complications. Diphtheria remains a neglected disease and vaccination is the top priority. At the same time, for patients with diphtheria, access to antibiotics, DAT and supportive care can be lifesaving.
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Previous advocacy efforts have achieved tangible goals in terms garnering political commitments
to increase financing for TB—as seen at the 2018 UN High-Level Meeting on TB. The challenge
now is to ensure that these commitments are actually met within a global biomedical research
ecosystem that... is designed and incentivized to prioritize the health needs of wealthy populations
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Cholera epidemics continue to be a major public health problem in many countries around the
world. When epidemics strike, they can spread rapidly. The disease can also evolve quickly;
patients with severe disease can die of dehydration hours after showing the first symptoms of
cholera.
The WHO COVID-19 Clinical management: living guidance contains the most up-to-date recommendations for the clinical management of people with COVID-19. Providing guidance that is comprehensive and holistic for the optimal care of COVID-19 patients throughout their entire illness is important.
This report highlights the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Zimbabwe towards contributing to the triple billion targets in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs
Provides clinical descriptions, diagnostic guidelines, and codes for all mental and behavioural disorders commonly encountered in clinical psychiatry. The book was developed from chapter V of the Tenth Revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (...ICD-10).
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The 2023 Country Presence Report provides an overview of what WHO does in countries to advance towards the SDGs and implement GPW13, how we do it, with whom we work, and what is needed to overcome challenges for achieving results and impact in countries.
Q13: Are strategies aimed at improving community attitudes towards mental, neurological and substance use conditions (e.g. anti-stigma campaigns) feasible and effective?
The report provides a global knowledge base on suicide and suicide attempts as well as actionable steps for countries based on their current resources and context to move forward in suicide prevention.
The global burden of disease (GBD) study provides information about fatal and non-fatal health outcomes around the world.
The objective of this work is to describe the burden of mental disorders among children aged 5–14 years in each of the six regions of the World Health Organisation. Data come ...from the GBD 2015 study. Outcomes: disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) are the main indicator of GBD studies and are built from years of life lost (YLLs) and years of life lived with disability (YLDs).
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The Fifty-first World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA51.11 in 1998, which targets the
global elimination of trachoma as a public health problem by 2020 (1). The strategy recommended
to achieve that goal is encapsulated by the acronym “SAFE”, which represents: Surgery for
individuals wi...th trachomatous trichiasis (TT; the late blinding stage of trachoma); and Antibiotics,
Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement (2). The A, F and E interventions are delivered to
entire districts in which active (inflammatory) trachoma is common in order to treat ocular infection
with Chlamydia trachomatis, the causative organism of trachoma, and sustainably reduce its
transmission.
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This report provides a review and analysis of the research landscape for three diseases – Chagas disease, human African trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis – that disproportionately afflict poor and remote populations with limited access to health services. It represents the work of the disease re...ference group on Chagas Disease, Human African Trypanosomiasis and Leishmaniasis (DRG3) which was established to identify key research priorities through review of research evidence and input from stakeholders' consultations.
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Snakebite envenoming is a potentially life-threatening disease that typically results from the injection of a mixture of different toxins (“venom”) following the bite of a venomous snake. Envenoming can also be caused by venom being sprayed into a person’s eyes by certain species of snakes tha...t have the ability to spit venom as a defence measure. Not all snakebites result in envenoming: some snakes are non-venomous and venomous snakes do not always inject venom during a bite. About 50–55% of all snakebites result in envenoming. Snake venoms are complex mixtures of protein and peptide toxins, varying from one species to another, and even within species. The toxins in snake venoms are evolutionarily adapted to interact with a large variety of cellular targets in the organisms exposed to them. In humans and animals, snakebite envenoming affects multiple organ systems (depending on the particular species of snake and the classes of toxins present in the venom) and can cause, among other things: haemorrhage and prolonged disruption of haemostasis, neuromuscular paralysis, tissue necrosis, myolysis (muscle degeneration), cardiotoxicity, acute kidney injury, thrombosis and hypovolaemic shock.
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Rabies is entirely preventable, and vaccines, medicines, tools and technologies have long been available to prevent people from dying of dog-mediated rabies. Nevertheless, rabies still kills about 60 000 people a year, of whom over 40% are children under 15, mainly in rural areas of economically dis...advantaged countries in Africa and Asia. Of all human cases, up to 99% are acquired from the bite of an infected dog.
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More than 700 000 people lose their life to suicide every year. A core foundation of suicide prevention is the timely registration and regular monitoring of suicide and self-harm. Surveillance data can be used to show important progress towards reaching global targets, such as reducing the suicide r...ate by one third by 2030 as articulated in the UN SDGs and in the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2030. However, there are considerable discrepancies in the quality of data on suicide and self-harm globally. The aim of this training manual is to equip fieldworkers and supervisors with the skills to collect and manage data on suicide and self-harm in the community via key informants, health-care facilities and police records. In doing so, the value and overall goal is to strengthen the surveillance of suicide and self-harm in communities, particularly in LMICs and hard-to-reach communities where CRVS systems are weak or absent.
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Over the past decade, the reduction of maternal mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean has shown signs of a marked slowdown and in some cases a reversal, jeopardizing commitments made at the global and regional levels and by the Member States themselves, including those established in the Sust...ainable Development Goals.
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