Health care waste management (HCWM) and infection prevention and control (IPC) represent serious concerns for HIV programs. Improperly handled infectious health care waste poses risks to health workers, their clients, the community, and the environment. Improper injection practices can lead to new H...IV and other infections for health workers and clients. Beginning in 2015, AIDSFree continued the work started by the Government of Nigeria and USAID in 2004 to strengthen activities in IPC and HCWM. This report describes AIDSFree's results over 15 months of implementation of HCWM and IPC activities in seven Nigerian states prioritized by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
more
Exciting new treatment approaches make the management of hepatitic C one of the most rapidly developing areas of medicine. The Flying Publisher short Guide to Hepatitis C is an up-to-date source of information for physicians, residents and advanced medical students.
TB policies in 29 Countries
A survey of prevention, testing and treatment policies and practices
Barriers to HIV Services and Treatment for Persons with Disabilities in Zambia
The 80-page report documents the obstacles faced by people with disabilities in both the community and healthcare settings. These include pervasive stigma and discrimination, lack of access to inclusive HIV prevention ed...ucation, obstacles to accessing voluntary testing and HIV treatment, and lack of appropriate support for adherence to antiretroviral treatment. The report also describes the sexual and intimate partner violence women and girls with disabilities face, and the need for the government and international donors to do more to ensure inclusive and accessible HIV services.
more
Guidelines for Management and Treatment of Dyslipidemia in Indonesia
In order to maintain daily operations and patient care services, health care facilities need to develop an Emergency Water Supply Plan (EWSP) to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a total or partial interruption of the facilities’ normal water supply. Water supply interruption can be caused... by several types of events such as natural disaster, a failure of the community water system, construction damage or even an act of terrorism.
The planning guide provides a four step process for the development of an EWSP:
1. Assemble the appropriate EWSP Team and the necessary background documents for your facility;
2. Understand your water usage by performing a water use audit;
3. Analyze your emergency water supply alternatives; and
4. Develop and exercise your EWSP
more
Clinical management standard operating procedures.
Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a life-threatening multisystem illness associated with fever and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms that frequently leads to hypovolaemia, metabolic acidosis, hypoglycaemia, and multi-organ failure. The prolonged 2013–201...6 EVD outbreak in West Africa allowed for an evolution of care such that by outbreak end many patients received individualized and optimized supportive care (oSoC), including volume resuscitation, symptom control, laboratory and bedside monitoring of glucose, electrolyte levels and organ dysfunction, as well as rapid detection and treatment of co-infections, potentially contributing to the downward trend in the case fatality rate (CFR).
This guidance should serve as a foundation for oSoC that should be followed to ensure both the best possible chance for survival and allow for reliable comparison of investigational therapeutic interventions as part of a randomized controlled trial. This guideline provides recommendations for the management of adults and children.
more
National Tuberculosis Programme and Senior Paediatricians
This guideline was first developed in 2007 but further updated in 2012 and 2016 to ensure the use of the latest evidence-based international recommendations on childhood TB. The guidelines will fill the gaps in a systematic approach to T...B in children and will help to achieve an internationally recommended standard of care at all levels of the health system in Myanmar.
more
This manual guides trained health care providers through the LEEP procedure to remove precancerous cervical lesions that cannot be treated with cryotherapy in order to prevent cervical cancer. The Standard Operating Procedures describe the equipment, step-by-step procedure, safeguards in practice, a...nd infection prevention guidelines surrounding LEEP and recommended follow-up schedules and procedures. LEEP can be performed in an outpatient setting under local anesthesia. The procedure can be both diagnostic and therapeutic, and replaces traditional follow-up evaluations and treatments such as cold knife conization and hysterectomy
more
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak this risk communication package for healthcare facilities provides healthcare workers (HCWs) and healthcare facility management with the information, procedures, and tools required to safely and effectively work. The package contains a series of simplified messag...es and reminders based on WHO's more in-depth technical guidance on infection prevention and control in healthcare facilities in the context of COVID-19
more
The primary focus of the plan continues to be prevention, preparedness and treatment of the the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Central to the plan are the following overall objectives:
To prevent further transmission of COVID-19 in the oPt;
To provide adequate care for patients aff...ected by COVID-19 and to support their families and close contacts; and
To mitigate the worst effects of the pandemic.
more
Prevention, early diagnosis, and effective treatment are essential for the control and elimination of Neisseria gonorrhoeae as a public health problem. Currently, in Latin America and the Caribbean, treatment for gonorrhea infection is largely empiric and based on clinical diagnosis. In the Americas..., the high burden of new N. gonorrhoeae infections (estimated at 11 million new cases a year), the complexity of the disease epidemiology, and in many countries the limited resources, make it difficult to fully understand the burden of disease and the burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in N. gonorrhoeae.
PAHO has developed this document to facilitate the navigation of available guidance and recommendations for N. gonorrhoeae AMR surveillance by public health and health care professionals, at the national and subnational levels, involved in designing, implementing, and/or strengthening AMR surveillance of N. gonorrhoeae and overall surveillance of sexually transmitted infections.
more
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.
more
The WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2022 provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic, and of progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease, at global, regional and country levels. This is done in the context of global TB commitments, strategies and targets.
...
The 2022 edition of the report is as usual, based primarily on data gathered by WHO from national ministries of health in annual rounds of data collection. In 2022, 202 countries and territories with more than 99% of the world’s population and TB cases reported data
more
Globally, over two million women live with obstetric fistula with the majority of the cases
being from Africa. In low-resource settings such as Zambia, obstetric fistula (OF) is a visible indicator of
gaps in maternal health care resulting in failure to provide adequate, accessible and quality m...aternal health
care, including family planning, skilled birth attendance, basic and emergency obstetric and neonatal care,
and affordable treatment of fistula. OF is preventable and treatable, and no woman in Zambia should continue to endure the condition. It is therefore necessary that Zambia intensifies national scale up of OF management centers including
community based interventions, train more surgeons and other health workers to provide quality and
affordable care closer to the women who are silently suffering from obstetric fistula.
more
The goal of asthma treatment is to obtain clinical control and reduce future risks to the patient. To reach this goal in children with asthma, ongoing monitoring is essential. While all components of asthma, such as symptoms, lung function, bronchial hyperresponsiveness and inflammation, may exist i...n various combinations in different individuals, to date there is limited evidence on how to integrate these for optimal monitoring of children with asthma. The aims of this ERS Task Force were to describe the current practise and give an overview of the best available evidence on how to monitor children with asthma.
22 clinical and research experts reviewed the literature. A modified Delphi method and four Task Force meetings were used to reach a consensus.
This statement summarises the literature on monitoring children with asthma. Available tools for monitoring children with asthma, such as clinical tools, lung function, bronchial responsiveness and inflammatory markers, are described as are the ways in which they may be used in children with asthma. Management-related issues, comorbidities and environmental factors are summarised.
Despite considerable interest in monitoring asthma in children, for many aspects of monitoring asthma in children there is a substantial lack of evidence.
more