A set of basic guidelines on how to be accountable to local people and measure program impact in emergency situations. The "good enough" approach emphasizes simple and practical solutions and encourages the user to choose tools that are safe, quick, and easy to implement
This document provides an overview of the issues and challenges surrounding medical device donations, and offers considerations and best practices that may be useful for making and soliciting donations. The document highlights the importance of an active participatory role for the intended recipient...s of medical equipment donations and emphasizes the importance of treating donations with the same rigour typically applied when purchasing medical equipment.
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Version 3
Updates:
• Safe School reopening
• Special Events messages for sporting events and Africa Cup of Nations,
Elections and public gatherings and holidays
• Safe sex and condom use for Survivors
• Cemetery messages
The purpose of this guidance package is to provide government a...gencies, response committees and teams, media outlets, partners, and community leaders with accurate and consistent information to use for when communicating about Ebola in Liberia. All are encouraged to share this document widely as a guide for all communicating about Ebola
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In an effort to improve the capabilities and accountability of humanitarian and economic practitioners, the SEEP (Small Enterprise Education and Promotion) Network's Minimum Economic Recovery Standards focus on minimum industry standards for facilitating economic recovery in crisis situations.
Th...e handbook sets out strategies and interventions designed to improve income, cash flow, asset management, and growth among crisis-affected households and enterprises. These include financial services, productive assets, employment, and enterprise development. It emphasizes encouraging the re-start of enterprises and livelihoods strategies, and improving market productivity and governance
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The Priority medicines for mothers and children 2011 list was updated following the 18th Expert Committee Meeting
on Selection and Use of Medicines, the release of new treatment guidelines and feedback from partners following
the 2011 version. In alignment with the UN Global strategy f...or women’s and children’s health; and the recently
launched UN Commission on life‐saving commodities for women and children, the title of this updated list is
renamed as Priority Life‐Saving Medicines for Women and Children.
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Camps is intended to help address the absence of public and standardized training resources for those seeking to use high resolution satellite imagery in support of refugee/IDP assistance operations. Students, general audiences, and volunteers studying and analyzing satellite imagery of displaced po...pulation camps may find this training resource beneficial.
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The summary of the infection prevention and control (IPC) measures is for anyone providing direct and non-direct care to patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus disease (EVD) in health-care facilities (HCFs). Essential IPC measures are also included in the Table which can be used as a stand...-alone tool.
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A manual for health care providers.
This manual provides expert guidance on the laboratory techniques and procedures used in the diagnosis of Buruli ulcer, a disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. Aimed at laboratory technicians and scientists working on this disease, the manual details the exac...t procedures to follow when performing a range of diagnostic tests. Recommended procedures, intended for use throughout the health system, are presented at levels appropriate for peripheral, district and central services and in accordance with the varying resources, skills and equipment typically found in countries where Buruli ulcer is endemic.
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Updated 20 Nov. 2020
Countries can use this checklist of hospital governance, structures, plans and protocols to rapidly determine the current capacities of hospitals to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify gaps and major areas that require investment and action for the development of h...ospital readiness improvement plans. The tool can be used periodically to monitor hospital emergency operational readiness capacity development
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This paper reviews the effects of vertical responses to COVID-19 on health systems, services, and people’s access to and use of them in LMICs, where historic and ongoing under-investments heighten vulnerability to a multiplicity of health threats. We use the term ‘vertical response’ to describ...e decisions, measures and actions taken solely with the purpose of preventing and containing COVID-19, often without adequate consideration of how this affects the wider health system and pre-existing resource constraints.
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31 March 2021
This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
Countries around the world are rolling ou...t COVID-19 vaccines, and a key topic of interest is their safety. Vaccine safety is one of WHO’s highest priorities, and we’re working closely with national authorities to develop and implement standards to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
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Many African countries were amongst the most rapid to respond to the emerging threat of COVID-19, implementing large-scale interventions at very early stages of their epidemic. As demonstrated in this document using very simple models, this rapid mobilization and timeliness of implementing control m...easures is likely to be an important determinant of their success. Indeed, as these measures were relaxed, subsequent waves of disease have been observed in many countries including South Africa, Kenya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where such waves have severely impacted the health system by straining the supply of oxygen and ICU beds and inflicting a heavy toll on healthcare workers, often necessitating the re-imposition of control measures.
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14 July 2021 This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be safe, ...effective and life-saving. Like all vaccines, they do not fully protect everyone who is vaccinated, and we do not yet know how well they can prevent people from transmitting the virus to others. So as well as getting vaccinated, we must also continue with other measures to fight the pandemic.
Available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated, describes current healthcare waste management syst...ems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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PFA for Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has several parts that can be used separately or together. It comprises this guide, a small booklet on PFA, and four training modules on PFA. This guide has general information about psychological first aid. It can be used on its own for psycho-education ...and as a reference for the training modules that accompany it. The training modules include instructions, notes, and training resources for the facilitators.
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The WHO Trauma Bag 2021 is intended to provide the resources needed to care for care of acutely ill and injured patients in hospital emergency units, field hospitals or clinics providing acute care. The Trauma Bag may also be applicable in prehospital settings if care is provided by advanced practi...tioners. The bag allows users to access essential equipment in one location and is organized into removable color-coded pouches according to the clinical indication. The composition of the bag was determined by broad consensus among diverse emergency care stakeholders.
The new trauma bag is designed for trained medical doctors & first responders. The majority of the included supply can be used by trained first responders. A dedicated intubation module should only be handled by trained providers acting within their scope of practice. The WHO Trauma Bag aims to provide materials to meet the needs of 2 adults and 2 children requiring trauma care
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In emergency or humanitarian settings, mobile clinics are used to bring essential lifesaving health care to communities affected by crises. Though there are standard emergency benefit packages for health services during emergencies, there are however no agreed or standard way of running mobile clini...cs in such settings. Drawing on the experiences of running mobile clinics in the NWSW and relevant literature, this manual provides a practical example of how to set up and run a mobile clinic in an African humanitarian setting in hard to reach communities with limited resources.
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This guideline for the prevention and control of chikungunya fever
(CF) is intended for use by all peripheral health workers in the Region and
is based on the strategy outlined above. This document will focus mainly
on preventing, predicting and detecting outbreaks, and after detection,
investig...ating and containing them.
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Vector-borne diseases are responsible for 17% of the global burden of communicable diseases and more than 500 000 deaths annually. The ambitious global targets for the control of vector-borne diseases come in the context of the (re-)emergence of diseases, increasing resistances to insecticides and u...ncertainty related to the financing of global vector control efforts. The United Nations 2030 Agenda with its related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III)
in Quito in 2016 and WHO’s Global vector control response 2017–2030 (WHO, 2017a) emphasize the value of elevating multisectoral actions and strategies that extend beyond the health sector to the core of integrated vector control.
This policy brief underlines the important role housing conditions have in the transmission of vector-borne diseases and showcases interventions and policies the housing sector can contribute to effective, integrated and intersectoral vector-borne diseases management.
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Climate-induced water insecurity poses one of the biggest threats to humanity and will lead to more hunger, disease and displacement
Oxfam water engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, mo...re often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs.
Today, during World Water Week, Oxfam publishes the first of its series of reports, “Water Dilemmas”, about the growing water crisis, in large part driven by global heating from greenhouse gas emissions. The report describes how climate change will impact water security in different regions, leading to more hunger, disease and displacement.
Carlos Calderon, Humanitarian Advocacy and Partnerships Lead for Oxfam Aotearoa said, “This new Oxfam research is focused on the global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) situation, but it paints a picture that illustrates the complexity of elements that, combined, will continue to increasingly affect women, girls, boys and men in the decades to come. Changing weather, poverty, inequality, gender-based violence, political instability and conflicts are impacting the availability and quality of adequate water systems. All governments, particularly those from rich countries, should responsively take action at a global scale. The clock is ticking. Our children will judge us for our actions today, or for the lack of them.”
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