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.
This report, which involved input from across WaterAid, in particular from the Programme Support Unit (PSU) of WaterAid UK, includes case studies from a variety of countries, including Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal, each demonstrating what must be done now to i...mprove WASH services and address current challenges, in order to increase community resilience to climate change.
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El objetivo de este protocolo es facilitar la evaluación de los establecimientos de salud de América Latina y el Caribe en lo relativo a agua potable, alcantarillado, saneamiento, higiene, residuos sólidos y limpieza.
Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change pp 47–66
This chapter reviews the emerging importance of pollen allergies in relation to ongoing climate change. Allergic diseases have been increasing in prevalence over the last decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. ...Increased sensitisation rates and more severe symptoms have been the partial outcome of: increased pollen production of wind-pollinated plants resulting in long-term increased abundance of pollen in the air we breathe; earlier shifts of airborne pollen seasons making occurrence of allergic symptoms harder to predict and deal with efficiently; increased allergenicity of pollen causing more severe health effects in allergic individuals; introduction of new, invasive allergenic plant species causing new sensitisations; environment-environment interactions, such as plants and hosted microorganisms, i.e. fungi and bacteria, which comprise a complex and dynamic system, with additive, presently unforeseeable influences on human health; environment-human interactions, as the consequence of a combination of environmental factors, like air pollution, global warming, urbanisation and microclimatic variability, which create a multi-resolution spatiotemporal system that requires new processing technologies and huge data inflow in order to be thoroughly investigated. We suggest that novel, real-time, personalised pollen information services, like mobile-app risk alerts, must be developed to provide the optimum first line of allergy management.
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Extreme heat events (EHEs) are a leading cause of weather-related injury and death in the United States, and under a changing climate, these meteorological episodes are predicted to increase in both frequency and intensity. Prolonged heat exposure from EHEs places an increased strain on the heart an...d may lead to heat-related illness if the cardiovascular system fails to properly thermoregulate internal body temperature. Every individual is susceptible to heat-related illness, however, those with reduced cardiovascular function and pre-existing cardiovascular diseases are at a greater risk for morbidity and mortality during EHEs. This document gives an overview of our current understanding of heat exposure and its impact on cardiovascular health outcomes, an overview of the medications that may exacerbate heat-related cardiovascular illness, and asummary of the interaction between extreme heat and air pollutants, and their collective impact on cardiovascular health. Additionally, this document summarizes epidemiologic evidence and identifies gaps in the extant peer-reviewed literature on the effectiveness of strategies and interventions to protect against heat-related cardiovascular disease and death. This information is intended to aid health departments and other health professionals in understanding and responding to the impacts of heat exposure on cardiovascular health.
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Climate change has important implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to climate anxiety. This is the first large-scale investigation of climate anxiety in children and young people globally and its rel...ationship with perceived government response.
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The climate crisis has many consequences – among them widespread health impacts that will lead to immense societal, ecological, and economic harm.
Over the past two decades multiple large-scale reviews on climate change and health have made clear the need for a multi-sectoral approach to target t...he drivers and impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation. Despite this abundance of scientific evidence underscoring urgency of action, policy implementation responses lag behind. Even at COP26, itself delayed due to an ongoing pandemic, health continues to be considered by many countries a problem independent from climate and environment.
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Este documento apresenta um marco conceitual renovado das funções essenciais de saúde pública (FESP) para a Região das Américas, com o qual se pretende dar maior clareza conceitual e operacionalidade ao novo campo de atuação da saúde pública e preencher uma lacuna nas propostas conceituais... sobre o fortalecimento dos sistemas de saúde. O marco proposto apresenta um novo paradigma para a saúde pública, baseado em quatro pilares orientados para a ação: a necessidade de incorporar a abordagem dos direitos humanos às políticas públicas de saúde; a necessidade de a saúde pública ampliar seu enfoque para ter uma abordagem mais ampla dos determinantes sociais da saúde; o papel da saúde pública para garantir de forma integral e integrada o acesso a intervenções de base populacional e atenção individual de qualidade; e a necessidade de as autoridades de saúde atuarem em colaboração com outros setores e com a sociedade civil no desempenho das funções de saúde pública.
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Biodiversity and healthy natural ecosystems, including protected areas in and around cities, provide ecosystem benefits and services that support human health, including reducing flood risk, filtering air pollutants, and providing a reliable supply of clean drinking water. These services help to red...uce the incidence of infectious diseases and respiratory disorders, and assist with adaptation to climate change. Access to nature offers many other direct health benefits, including opportunities for physical activity, reduction of developmental disorders and improved mental health.
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IAEA Safety Standards for protecting people and the environment
IAEA Safety Standards for protecting people and the environment
This recommendation is an update of one of the 49 recommendations that were published in the WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy experience. The recommendation was developed initially using the standardized operating procedures described in the WHO handbook for guideline d...evelopment.
In summary, the process included: (i) identification of priority question and outcomes; (ii) retrieval of evidence; (iii) assessment and synthesis of the evidence; (iv) formulation of recommendation; and (v) planning for the implementation, dissemination, impact evaluation and updating of the recommendation. This recommendation was identified by the Executive Guideline Steering Group (GSG) as a high priority for updating in response to new evidence on this question.
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The WHO Global strategy on human resources for health: workforce 2030 encourages development partners and global health initiatives to leverage their support to health systems in countries to sustainably strengthen the health workforce. To assess the impact of these investments, a methodology was de...veloped and pilot tested by WHO.
The impact assessment tool (consisting of an MS Excel calculator with two subsets) supports users to:
• assess and quantify the health impact of HRH investments made in the context of HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria programmes through their modelled effect on health service coverage of these three diseases; and
• provide aggregate indicative estimates of the range of health workers required to attain high coverage of selected health services.
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The Strategy provides a high-level unifying framework to leverage existing capacities, address barriers and strengthen the use of genomic surveillance in the detection, monitoring and response to public health threats. Genomic surveillance is part of the broader surveillance and laboratory system, a...nd its implementation should reinforce end-to-end capacities including sample collection, diagnostics, data sharing and analysis. The strategy aims to facilitate the connectivity between different disease control programs and surveillance networks. This interoperability will strengthen the cross-cutting essential public health laboratory functions underpinning genomics holistically. The strategy articulates the overarching goal, objectives and strategic actions needed. These are dependent on commitments from countries, partners and WHO for their implementation.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that usually affects the lungs, though it can affect any organ in the body. It can develop when bacteria spread through droplets in the air. TB can be fatal, but in many cases, TB is preventable and treatable. This report examines the human rights impact of... the prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) and Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) among the Indigenous San peoples of Namibia. Combining political economy and root-cause methodology, the report explores the socioeconomic factors that make the San vulnerable to TB and limit their access to adequate health services.
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