Recent efforts to fight malaria in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) have yielded impressive results. According to the latest WHO estimates, the six GMS countries cut their malaria case incidence by an estimated 54% between 2012 and 2015. Malaria death rates fell by 84% over the same period.
I...n May 2015, GMS Ministers of Health adopted the WHO Strategy for malaria elimination in the Greater Mekong Subregion 2015-2030. Urging immediate action, the plan aims to eliminate P. falciparum malaria from the subregion by 2025 and all species of human malaria by 2030.
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The World Health Organization is issuing a "roadmap" to guide and coordinate the international response to the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in West Africa.
The aim is to stop ongoing Ebola transmission worldwide within 6–9 months, while rapidly managing the consequences of any further interna...tional spread. It also recognizes the need to address, in parallel, the outbreak’s broader socioeconomic impact.
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During the past five decades, the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold. Some 50–100 million new infections are estimated to occur annually in more than 100 endemic countries, with a documented further spread to previously unaffected areas; every year hundreds of thousands of severe cases ari...se, including 20 000 deaths; 264 disability-adjusted life years per million population per year are lost , at an estimated cost for ambulatory and hospitalized cases of US$ 514–1394, often affecting very poor populations. The true numbers are probably far worse, since severe underreporting and misclassification of dengue cases have been documented.
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The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic in western Africa was the longest and most deadly Ebola epidemic in history, resulting in 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The Ebola virus has been known since 1976, when two separate outbreaks were identified in the Democratic Repub...lic of Congo (then Zaire) and South Sudan (then Sudan). However, because all Ebola outbreaks prior to that in West Africa in 2014–2015 were relatively isolated and of short duration, little was known about how to best manage patients to improve survival, and there were no approved therapeutics or vaccines. When the World Heath Organization declared the 2014-2015 epidemic a public health emergency of international concern in August 2014, several teams began conducting formal clinical trials in the Ebola affected countries during the outbreak.
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In 2015, WHO proposed the use of the Robson classification (also known as the 10-group classification) as a global standard for assessing, monitoring and comparing caesarean section rates both within healthcare facilities and between them. The system classifies all women into one of 10 categories t...hat are mutually exclusive and, as a set, totally comprehensive. The categories are based on 5 basic obstetric characteristics that are routinely collected in all maternities (parity, number of foetuses, previous caesarean section, onset of labour, gestational age, and fetal presentation).
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Recovery partnership preparation package: Building capacity to reactivate safe essential health services and sustain health service resilience.
In the aftermath of an emergency, the recovery partnership preparation package supports the establishment and implementation of institutional health partne...rships, or ‘twinning partnerships’. These partnerships focus on shared learning and improvement in the services that are being delivered. The Twinning Partnerships for Improvement (TPI) approach supports capacity-building, the re-establishment of safe essential health services and encourages joint long term efforts on service delivery strengthening
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Manual for use in primary care.
There is substantial evidence for the benefits of screening and brief intervention in primary health care for alcohol problems. However, there is a need for screening and brief interventions with cross-cultural relevance for substances other than alcohol or tobacco,... such as cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine and opiates.
The Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) was developed for the World Health Organization (WHO) by an international group of substance abuse researchers to detect and manage substance use and related problems in primary and general medical care settings. Primary health care professionals are well-positioned to provide interventions targeted to all substances irrespective of their legal status.
The ASSIST screening test version 3.0 is available in English and in 10 other languages (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Portugüse, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian).
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With this World Health Day, WHO is drawing attention to a group of diseases that are spread by insects and other vectors, the heavy health and economic burdens they impose, and what needs to be done to reduce these burdens. Many of these diseases have been historically confined to distinct geographi...cal areas, but this situation has become more fluid due to a host of ills, including climate change, intensive farming, dams, irrigation, deforestation, population movements, rapid unplanned urbanization, and phenomenal increases in international travel and trade. The control of vector-borne diseases can make a major contribution to poverty reduction, as it precisely targets the poor
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This handbook was designed primarily as a tool for district clinical specialist teams (DCSTs), and for the provincial specialists who will guide and support their work. This handbook will also be useful to managers of health facilities, heads of clinical units and nurses, doctors and allied health w...orkers at the coalface of clinical care. This handbook will be of interest to district managers and other members of the district management team who are dedicated to developing the capacity of the district health system to respond
effectively to the health needs of the population they serve. It will help them understand the role of the DCSTs and the type of
activities they need to engage in to improve the quality of care
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In this contingency planning guidance, a set of actions to prepare for emergencies from all hazards and to help minimize their impact, is proposed. These actions include the development, implementation, simulation, monitoring and regular update of risks-based contingency plans.
Pakistan Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP) was formed in the wake of international and national efforts for AMR curtailment. A group of experts from microbiology, infectious diseases and veterinary medicine formed a core group at the organizational meet...ing of GARP in Kathmandu, Nepal in July 2016. In the meeting, this core group was expanded to include other members from different sectors with the selection of the Chair and co-chairs. These were asked to serve on a voluntary basis, in their own individual capacities, with no personal gains, or gains to the institutions to which they are affiliated. The first phase of GARP took place from 2009 to 2011 and involved four countries: India, Kenya, South Africa and Vietnam. Phase one culminated in the 1st Global Forum on Bacterial Infections, held in October 2011 in New Delhi, India. In 2012, phase two of GARP was initiated with the addition of working groups in Mozambique, Tanzania, Nepal and Uganda. Phase three has added Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe to the network to date.
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While much progress has been achieved over the past year, the Region of the Americas has stubbornly remained the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. PAHO is launching its 2021 COVID-19 Response Strategy and Donor Appeal to continue supporting Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories i...n their fight against COVID-19. This document outlines PAHO’s regional strategy for the year 2021 to sustain and scale-up the response to COVID‑19 pandemic in the Americas, suppress the community transmission of the virus and mitigate the longer-term health impact of the pandemic.
US$ 239 million is needed to support critical response efforts in the Americas between 1 January and 31 December 2021
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Working Document Nov. 2020
The COVAX Supply and Logistics workstream lead by UNICEF, Gavi and WHO have released a working copy of the COVID-19 Vaccination, Country Readiness & Delivery: Supply and Logistics Guidance. Countries might find this Guide useful when developing and strengthening their sup...ply chain strategies to receive, store, distribute and manage the COVID-19 vaccines and their ancillary products, in line with their national deployment and vaccination plan (NDVP). The document also provides links to the different tools and resources to aid countries in performing assessment, planning and capacity-building activities.
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Evidence from a systematic review on antenatal zinc supplementation was evaluated as part of the World Health Organization (WHO) antenatal care (ANC) guideline development process in 2016, and the following recommendation on zinc supplementation was made: “Zinc supplementation for pregnant women i...s only recommended in the context of rigorous research.” The Guideline Development Group (GDG) made this recommendation because it felt that the evidence on the intervention was incomplete and that more research was necessary.
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World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations & World Organisation for Animal Health. (2021). Antimicrobial resistance and the United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework: guidance for United Nations country teams. World Health Organization
This guide is intended to promote a global health sector response to FGM for the provision of high-quality prevention and care services to women and girls at risk of FGM or living with the consequences of FGM. It also aims to support the systematic development of pre-service and in-service FGM conte...nt for midwifery and nursing education curricula which are relevant to context and need. This document could also be used for training materials of other cadres of health-care providers.
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Weekly Epidemiological Record No 9, 2022, 97, 61–80
This position paper supersedes the 2016 publication, “Malaria vaccine: WHO position paper-2016.”1 It includes the updated WHO recommendations on the wider use of the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine for the reduction of malaria morbidity and mortality in ...children living in areas of moderate to high malaria transmission. It also incorporates findings from the evaluation of the WHO-coordinated Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP), recommended by SAGE and MPAG in 2015, and from additional studies since 2015.
This paper does not include findings on vaccine efficacy in infants first vaccinated at 6–12 weeks of age. Because of the lower vaccine efficacy observed in this age category, WHO did not recommend pilot implementation or RTS,S/AS01 vaccine introduction for these young infants. Recommendations2 on the use of RTS,S/AS01 vaccine were discussed by SAGE and MPAG during a joint session in October 2021; evidence presented at the meeting can be accessed at https://terrance.who.int/mediacentre/data/ sage/SAGE_eYB_Oct2021.pdf
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This booklet presents key messages for action, summarized from a set of
chapters on different environmental health issues.
This booklet presents key messages for action, summarized from a set of chapters on different environmental health issues, available at www.who.int/ ceh/publications/healthyenvironmentsforhealthychildren. The work is a result of an on-going partnership between WHO, UNEP and UNICEF in the area of chi...ldren’s environmental health, and seeks to update the 2002 joint publication “Children in the New Millennium: Environmental Impact on Health.”
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Together for One Health. Building on the momentum of increased collaboration, the WHO, FAO, OIE and UNEP have developed a Strategic Framework for collaboration on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This Framework reflects the joint work of the four organizations to advance a One Health response to AMR ...at the global, regional and country level. It broadly supports the implementation of the five pillars of the Global Action Plan on AMR, as well as strengthening global AMR governance.
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