A MANUAL FOR WASH IMPLEMENTERS, BOTSWANA
Sightsavers | Department for International Development | The International Trachoma Initiative | Children Without Worms | WaterAid | WASH Advocates | Center for Global Safe Water, Emory University | CARE USA
How safe is our hospital sanitation? An example from a public hospital
Patient information on safe medical treatment. Available in: Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, German.
This is the English version. For other language versions visit: http://www.patienten-information.de/kurzinformationen/arzneimittel-und-impfungen/sichere-arzneimitteltherapie
This document provides guidance on the application of non-pharmaceutical countermeasures to minimise the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in the population. Some of the measures proposed refer specifically to certain phases of the epidemic (containment or mitigation phases), and can ...be adapted depending on the assessed severity/impact of the infection. Other measures are valid for all phases of an epidemic.
The guidance is based on the current knowledge of the 2019-nCoV and evidence available on other viral respiratory pathogens, mainly the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and seasonal or pandemic influenza viruses.
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Safe disposal of children’s feces is as essential as the safe disposal of adults’ feces. Th is brief provides an overview of the available data on child feces disposal in Burkina Faso and concludes with ideas to strengthen safe disposal practices, based on emerging good practice. Th e Joint Mon...itoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) tracks progress toward the Millennium Development Goal 7 target to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Th e JMP standardized defi nition for an improved sanitation facility is one that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact.
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Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are a significant burden globally, with millions of patients affected each year. These infections affect both high- and limited-resource healthcare settings, but in limited-resource settings, rates are approximately twice as high as high-resource settings (15 o...ut of every 100 patients versus 7 out of every 100 patients). Furthermore, rates of infections within certain patient populations are significantly higher in limited-resource settings, including surgical patients, patients in intensive-care units (ICU) and neonatal units. It is well documented that environmental contamination plays a role in the transmission of HAIs in healthcare settings. Therefore, environmental cleaning is a fundamental intervention for infection prevention and control (IPC).It is a multifaceted intervention that involves cleaning and disinfection (when indicated) of the environment alongside other key program elements to support successful implementation (e.g., leadership support, training, monitoring, and feedback mechanisms). To be effective, environmental cleaning activities must be implemented within the framework of the facility IPC program, and not as a standalone intervention. It is also essential that IPC programs advocate for and work with facility administration and government officials to budget, operate and maintain adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure to ensure that environmental cleaning can be performed according to best practices.
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Lessons from three African Countries.
Achieving Health for All, and in particular universal health coverage (UHC), will not happen without fully functioning basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in all health care facilities. Such services are needed to provide quality care, ensure ad...herence to infection prevention and control (IPC) norms and standards and guarantee that facilities are able to provide environments that respect the dignity and human rights of all care seekers, especially mothers, newborns and children. WHO undertook a series of national situational analyses in three countries (Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda) to understand current barriers to change, accountability structures and measures to strengthen WASH in health care facilities and more broadly, the quality of health service delivery.
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This document provides an overview of specific health care waste technologies for the treatment of solid infectious and sharp waste. For each technology, details of its operation, effects on the environment and health, requirements for installation, capacities for treating waste, examples of consuma...bles and advantages and disadvantages are described. The document is designed for health care facility administrators and planners, WASH and infection prevention control staff, national planners, donors and partners.
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This checklist is the first step in identifying and prioritizing areas of action for improving the protection of health and safety of health workers in line with WHO–ILO Global Framework for National Occupational Health Programmes for Health Workers.
It is designed to be filled out in discussio...n with management, responsible officers for occupational health, environmental health, infection prevention and control, human resources and representatives of workers in the health facility. This participatory approach will provide a variety of perspectives and a more comprehensive basis for identifying the existing preventive measures, possible problems and solutions for continuous improvement.
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Based on scientific evidence, expert consensus and country experiences, the WHO core components for infection prevention and control (IPC) are the foundation for establishing or strengthening effective programmes at the national and facility level.
These new guidelines on core components of infecti...on prevention and control (IPC) at the national and acute health care facility level will enhance the capacity of Member States to develop and implement effective technical and behaviour modifying interventions. They form a key part of WHO strategies to prevent current and future threats from infectious diseases such as Ebola, strengthen health service resilience, help combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and improve the overall quality of health care delivery. They are also intended to support countries in the development of their own national protocols for IPC and AMR action plans and to support health care facilities as they develop or strengthen their own approaches to IPC.
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COVID-19 infection affects all age groups including newborns, however, literature is scarce on the fetal and neonatal outcomes of babies exposed in-utero, especially in Africa. The objectiveof this study was to document the perinatal outcomes of COVID-19 pregnancies and del...iveries that occurredduring the pandemic in Nigeria.
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Investment in all the drivers and facilitators of hand hygiene action in health care to ensure that it occurs at the point of care and other critical moments requires a multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach. WHO describes such an approach as a “multimodal improvement strategy” (MMIS) which is... at the core of its implementation models for hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes. The focus of this document is on the resource considerations for investing in hand hygiene improvement in health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) using the MMIS approach.
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Saving Lives Through Safe Surgery (SaLTS)
نظرة عامّة على التقنيّات المستخدمة لمعالجة النفايات المُعدِية والحادّة الناتجة عن مرافق الرعاية الصحيّة
This document provides an overview of specific health care waste technologies for the treatment of solid ...infectious and sharp waste. For each technology, details of its operation, effects on the environment and health, requirements for installation, capacities for treating waste, examples of consumables and advantages and disadvantages are described. The document is designed for health care facility administrators and planners, WASH and infection prevention control staff, national planners, donors and partners.
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Safe water, sanitation and hygiene (collectively known as WASH) are crucial for human health and well-being. Yet, millions of people globally lack adequate WASH services and consequently suffer from or are exposed to a multitude of preventable illnesses.
Decontamination of medical devices plays an important role in the prevention of health care-associated infections. It includes cleaning, disinfection and/or sterilization. The processes involved in decontamination are complex, require specific infrastructure and equipment, and involve several sequen...tial steps that need to be performed correctly – from device collection and receipt by the decontamination unit to processing, storage and distribution throughout the facility. Quality control procedures (such as validation) at each step of the decontamination process are of the utmost importance to ensure the correct functioning of the equipment and processes. This aide-memoire presents a concise overview of important advice and key elements at a glance.
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Trachoma is an eye infection that for thousands of years caused many people to go blind across all continents. As the result of development and targeted interventions, trachoma is now limited to an estimated 57 countries, often affecting the poorest
populations of the world. Today, more than 2 mill...ion people are either blind or suffer from a very painful disability as the result of trachoma.
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The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste has the highest TB incidence rate in the South East Asian Region - 498 per 100,000, which is the seventh highest in the world. In Timor-Leste TB is the eighth most common cause of death.
The salient observations are as follows:
In 2018, 487 (12.5%) of the... 3906 notified TB patients were tested for RR-TB and only 12 lab confirmed RR-TB patients were initiated on standard MDR-TB treatment of 20-months duration, (a 3-fold increase in RR-TB detection compared with 2017). This amounts to treatment coverage of only 17% of 72 estimated MDR/RR-TB among notified TB patients (3906) and 5% of 240 estimated incident MDR-TB patients as compared to 62% treatment coverage of 6300 incident drug sensitive TB patients estimated in TLS. The treatment success in the 2016 annual cohort of 6 MDR-TB patients has been reported at 83%. 80% of TB patients know their HIV Status with around 1% TB-HIV co-infection, 37/ 77 (48%) TB-HIV Co-infection Detected. Of the 387 PLHIV currently alive on ART, exact status on TB screening and testing is unknown. % of PLHIV newly enrolled in HIV care who received IPT is not known.
In 2018, the mortality rate for TB was 94 deaths per 100,000 people (1200 per annum) in TL with an increasing mortality trend (Figure 1), despite TB services being available for nearly two decades.
A survey of catastrophic costs due to TB (2016) highlights that 83% of TB patients are reported to be facing catastrophic costs due to the disease. This is the highest rate in the world.
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This country cooperation strategy (CCS) outlines how the World Health Organization (WHO) will work with the Lao People’s Democratic Republic over the next five years (2024–2028), supporting the implementation of the five-year health sector development plans and the Health Sector Reform Strategy ...2021–2030 to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic experienced substantial economic growth in the 30 years prior to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, contributing to reduced poverty and significant progress toward the SDGs. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought this development to a halt. It was anticipated that the COVID-19 recovery and the tremendous population growth in recent years would provide opportunities for a shift toward more sustainable and inclusive development in the years ahead. In 2023, however, the contrary was the case. Rural residents, including many ethnic minorities, continued to face marginalization because of limited access to education, health care and economic opportunities.
Despite the challenges of COVID-19 and other disease outbreaks, the country has made significant improvements in health. Nonetheless, progress has been uneven and not everyone has benefited from these achievements. In the mountainous region, many people lack access to quality health care because of the unequal distribution of well-trained health-care workers. Preventable deaths due to poor-quality health care for children and newborns, infants and mothers remain a concern, as do communicable diseases such as sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis. The increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases and the health impact of worsening climate change further heighten the need for strengthened and resilient health systems, which are at risk due to an underfunded health sector and weak economy.
This CCS aims to address remaining and future challenges as well as health needs while creating an impact that is sustainable. It identifies three strategic priorities and nine deliverables (Table 1) to support the attainment of the national vision of Health for all by all, as articulated in the 9th Health Sector Development Plan 2021–2025. It contributes to the country’s goals to achieve universal health coverage, graduate from least developed country status by 2026 and attain SDGs by 2030.
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