Scientists have known for more than half a century that patients could develop resistance to the drugs used to treat them. Alexander Fleming, who is credited with creating the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928, cautioned of the impending crisis while accepting his Nobel prize in 1945: “There ...is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.” Since then antibiotics have proved one of the most effective interventions in human medicine. Sadly, the overuse and misuse of this precious resource have brought us to a global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To address this crisis nearly seven decades after Fleming’s lecture the first UN general assembly meeting on drug resistance bacteria was convened in September 2017.
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This publication provides guidance to governments, civil society organizations (nongovernmental organizations and community-based organizations) and other partners implementing HIV prevention, care and treatment programs with key populations. This guide is designed to assist these programs in the de...velopment of monitoring systems for frontline workers (such as peer outreach workers, staff outreach supervisors and program managers) to understand performance. It includes comprehensive tools and forms that various levels of staff can use to collect and analyze data to manage and improve a program.
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4th edition.
This report – now in its fourth edition – analyses the barriers and factors affecting access to treatment regimens for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), including new and repurposed drugs. We provide detailed pricing profiles of key DR-TB drugs, using manufacturer responses to s...tandardised questionnaires and the Global TB Drug Facility website.
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Natural disasters often increase morbidity and mortality rates. Taking appropriate measures to maintain environmental health helps to reduce or eliminate the risks of preventable disease and death. Such measures contribute not only to the health of individuals in and near disaster-stricken areas, bu...t they also contribute to decreasing the high costs of providing emergency health services in the aftermath of disaster.
This document is divided into several parts. The first section primarily addresses the effects of natural disasters on environmental health conditions and services. In the second section, environmental health measures are described that should be undertaken in each of three time frames: the predisaster, disaster, and postdisaster periods.
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In East Africa, the trend in cross-border FGM puts at risk the progress achieved in eliminating the practice. The only way we can reach zero FGM by 2030 is by concerted and immediate action to address all aspects of FGM.
This policy brief highlights the cross-border dimension of FGM (Ethiopia, Keny...a, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda) in the East Africa region. The brief describes the factors that perpetuate cross-border FGM and the work that is being done to reduce the rates.
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Recency assays use one or more biomarkers to identify whether HIV infection in a person is recent (usually within a year or less) or longstanding. Recency assays have been used to estimate incidence in representative cross-sectional surveys and in epidemiological studies to better understand the pat...terns and distributions of new and longstanding HIV infections.
This technical guidance outlines best practices regarding the appropriate use of HIV recency assays for surveillance purposes and updates 2011 technical guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on the use of HIV recency assays.
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The Strategic Tool for Assessing Risks (STAR) offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use toolkit and approach to enable national and subnational governments to rapidly conduct a strategic and evidence-based assessment of public health risks for planning and prioritization of health emergency preparedness a...nd disaster risk management activities. This guidance describes the principles and methodology of STAR to enhance its adaptation and use at the national or subnational levels.
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6 July 2021. Three new nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) classes are endorsed by WHO and included.
The latest operational handbook includes the new classes recommended by WHO. It aims at facilitating the implementation of the WHO recommendations by the Member States, technical partners, and ot...hers involved in managing patients with TB and DR-TB. The operational handbook provides practical information on existing and new tests recommended by WHO, step-by-step advice on implementing and scale-up testing to achieve local and national impact and lastly, model diagnostic algorithms, which are updated to incorporate the latest recommendations. An overview of budgetary considerations and information sheets on each of the newly recommended tests is provided.
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In 2013 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the report Protecting health from climate change:vulnerability and adaptation assessment. The aim was to provide basic and flexible guidance on conducting national or subnational assessments of current and future vulnerability (the susceptibilit...y of a population or region to harm) to the health risks of climate change, and of policies and programmes that could increase resilience, taking into account the multiple determinants of climate-sensitive health outcomes.
That guidance has been a very useful tool, applied to more than 50 countries and settings, and has helped countries to prepare their health contributions to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change national adaptation plans.
Since the launch of the guidance, WHO, technical partners such as Health Canada, and countries have learned much in terms of its applicability in different countries, at national and local levels.
At the same time, knowledge on climate change and health has increased.
WHO, the Pan American Health Organization and Health Canada have produced this updated version, which aims to better support countries in their assessments by proposing a simpler tool that incorporates
all lessons learned.
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Climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessment
In 2013 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the report Protecting health from climate change:
vulnerability and adaptation assessment. The aim was to provide basic and flexible guidance on conducting national or subnati...onal assessments of current and future vulnerability (the susceptibility of a population or region to harm) to the health risks of climate change, and of policies and programmes that could increase resilience, taking into account the multiple determinants of climate-sensitive health outcomes.
That guidance has been a very useful tool, applied to more than 50 countries and settings, and has helped countries to prepare their health contributions to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change national adaptation plans.
Since the launch of the guidance, WHO, technical partners such as Health Canada, and countries have learned much in terms of its applicability in different countries, at national and local levels.
At the same time, knowledge on climate change and health has increased.
WHO, the Pan American Health Organization and Health Canada have produced this updated version, which aims to better support countries in their assessments by proposing a simpler tool that incorporates all lessons learned.
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The toolkit provides practical guidance and tools that can support efforts, including planning and implementation activities, to create dementia-inclusive societies.
The toolkit is divided into two parts. Part I contains background information and a conceptual framework for creating dementia-incl...usive societies. Part II includes four practical modules, each featuring a series of practical steps and exercises. The four modules focus on: starting a new dementia-friendly initiative (DFI), integrating dementia into an existing initiative, monitoring and evaluation a DFI, and scaling a DFI. The modules can be used together or separately and offer guidance that can be adapted to suit local needs and settings.
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En los últimos 30 años los eventos adversos en la región de la Comunidad Andina ocasionaron la muerte de unas 227.000 personas, y pérdidas por cerca de 12.000 millones de dólares. Ecuador vivió una situación similar. El objetivo de este manual es propiciar una ade...cuada
y oportuna gestión de la asistencia internacional ante
desastres en que el Ecuador esté involucrado, sea en
condición de asistido o de asistente, o simplemente como
facilitador de asistencia, con el propósito de reducir la
pérdida de vidas humanas y daños materiales. Este Manual es como una herramienta que ayudará a fortalecer la relación entre los actores de la asistencia humanitaria.
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Bull World Health Organ 2020;98:773–780
Universal health coverage (UHC) depends on a strong primary health-care
system. To be successful, primary health care must be expanded at community and household levels as much of the world’s population still lacks access to health facilities for basic... services. Abundant evidence shows that community-based interventions are effective for improving health-care utilization and outcomes when integrated with facility-based services. Community involvement is the cornerstone of local, equitable and integrated primary health care.
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This guideline provides health policy-makers and decision-makers in health professional training institutions with advice on the rationale for health-care providers’ use of counselling skills to address sexual health concerns in a primary health care setting
Community-based approaches to Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (CB MHPSS) in emergencies are based on the understanding that communities can be drivers for their own care and change and should be meaningfully involved in all stages of MHPSS responses. Emergency-affected people are first a...nd foremost to be viewed as active participants in improving individual and collective well-being, rather than as passive recipients of services that are designed for them by others. Thus, using community-based MHPSS approaches facilitates families, groups and communities to support and care for others in ways that encourage recovery and resilience. These approaches also contribute to restoring and/or strengthening those collective structures and systems essential to daily life and well-being. An understanding of systems should inform community-based approaches to MHPSS programmes for both individuals and communities.
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This document provides information to assist countries in developing exit screening plans and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). This includes the method, tools, and sequence of screening; determining resource needs; communication messages; and the legal considerations of screening
This document provides information to assist countries in developing exit screening plans and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). This includes the method, tools, and sequence of screening; determining resource needs; communication messages; and the legal considerations of screening.
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
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Air pollution is a major environmental risk factor and contributor to chronic, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). However, most public health approaches to NCD prevention focus on behavioural and biomedical risk factors, rather than environmental risk factors such as air pollution. This article discus...ses the implications of such a focus. It then outlines the opportunities for those in public health and environmental science to work together across three key areas to address air pollution, NCDs and climate change: (a) acknowledging the shared drivers, including corporate determinants; (b) taking a ‘co-benefits’ approach to NCD prevention; and (c) expanding prevention research and evaluation methods through investing in systems thinking and intersectoral, cross-disciplinary collaborations.
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Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS) is a gynaecological disease caused by Schistosoma haematobium, a parasitic worm that is acquired by skin contact with freshwater contaminated by schistosome cerceriae. Communities in which the infection is most endemic have limited access to clean water and healt...hcare services. Up to 150 million adolescent girls and women are estimated to be at risk of FGS and about 16–56 milion womens are living with FGS, with the majority of these in sub-Saharan Africa. The variability of these estimates points to the fact that this neglected tropical disease is not well studied and frequently not prioritized by local, regional, and global health policy makers.
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