Teachers' Exercise Book for HIV Prevention
Document 6.1
This booklet contains all the participatory learning experiences that are included in the Training and Resource Manual on School Health and HIV and AIDS Prevention. It is to be given to all teachers who receive training as part of the EI/WH...O School Health and HIV Prevention Project. Other groups may wish to copy and use the materials in this document to help adults and students prevent HIV infection and related discrimination.
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Pakistan is on the verge of a public health disaster as a result of the massive monsoon rainfalls and unprecedented levels of flooding that are affecting 33 million people across the country.
The risk of disease outbreaks is extremely high and malnutrition rates are rising.
WHO requires US$ 81.5 m...illion to respond to this health crisis in flood-affected Pakistan, to ensure a coordinated delivery of essential health care services, efficient management of severe acute malnutrition, and stronger outbreak detection and control.
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Reducing the global suicide mortality rate by a third by 2030 is a target of both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the WHO Global Mental Health Action Plan. However, an impediment to meeting this goal is the fact that suicide and suicide attempts remain illegal in at least 23 countries world...wide. Decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts represents one critical step governments can take in their efforts to prevent suicide. The WHO Policy Brief on the health aspects of decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts cites data and research to make a case for decriminalizing suicide globally. It also includes case examples from countries that have recently decriminalized suicide and suicide attempts — Guyana and Pakistan, Singapore,— providing important insights to policy-makers, legislators, parliamentarians and other decision-makers.
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WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health has supported the availability of mental health services for more than 40 million more people. Learn about WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health, which seeks to increase access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions in 12 countries ...for 100 million more people. The initiative is advancing policies, advocacy and human rights, and scaling-up quality interventions and services for people with mental, neurological and substance use conditions.
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Access to safe blood and blood products is recognized as one of the key requirements for delivery of modern health care in the journey towards health for all. The foundation of safe and sustainable blood supplies depends on the collection of blood from voluntary non-remunerated and low-risk donors. ...Data from the WHO Global Database for Blood Safety (GDBS) brings out several inadequacies related to the supply and safety of blood and blood products. These inadequacies include a number of variations in safe blood practices across the world, including the quantity of blood donated (voluntary and replacement types), quality and adequate testing of the donated blood (immunohaematology [IH] and transfusion-transmitted infections [TTIs]), rational use of blood and blood components such as appropriate patient blood management protocols. These variations are very high in countries of the South-East Asian Region and most of them are either low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).
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In the WHO South-East Asia Region, epidemiological knowledge of mental health conditions remains
a relative unknown, given the sparsity of data and information on (a) the total burden associated
with each disorder; (b) the degree of met and unmet needs for treatment and interventions; and
(c) the... patterns and costs of treatment. This is a common situation in other regions of the world,
where the global descriptive epidemiology of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study is mainly
used in association with the WHO Global Health Estimates (GHE) to quantify, at the very least, the
total burden associated with mental health conditions.
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Member States of the Region have initiated processes to strengthen leadership and governance for mental health. Several countries have developed and implemented mental health plans, strategies and legislations. Direct spending on mental health needs to be increased throughout the Region through the ...health sector as well as other relevant sectors.
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Benchmarking is a strategic process often used by businesses and institutes to standardize performance in relation to the best practices of their sector. The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have developed a tool with a list of benchmarks and corresponding suggested actions that can be a...pplied to implement the International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR) and strengthen health emergency prevention, preparedness, response and resilience capacities.
The first edition of the benchmarks was published in 2019 to support countries in developing, implementing and documenting progress of national IHR or health security plans (e.g. national action plan for health security (NAPHS), national action plan for emerging infectious diseases, public health emergencies and health security and other country level plans for health emergencies). The tool has been updated to incorporate lessons from COVID-19 and other health emergencies, to align with the updated IHR monitoring & evaluation framework (IHR MEF) tools and the health systems for health security framework, and to support strengthening health emergency prevention, preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR) capacities and the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) initiative.
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The evaluation covers the period January 2020 to August 2023. The geographical scope of the evaluation has involved the three levels of WHO (global, regional and country levels) and external key partners. The programmatic evaluation scope was concerned with assessing the SP-PHC in the following area...s/evaluation criteria: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, added value, sustainability and equity, gender and human rights considerations. The evaluation did not assess the Universal Health Coverage Partnership (UHC-P) as it has its own separate governing body and reviews/evaluations, but instead considered how the SP-PHC had enhanced the value of the UHC-P and vice versa. The resilience and essential public health functions (REPHF) team and Systems’ Governance and Stewardship (SGS) were also not within the scope of this evaluation. However, these workstreams were considered in the wider conclusions and recommendations for the SP-PHC, as appropriate. Finally, the evaluation was focused on the SP-PHC; its scope did not include assessing the configuration and capacity of WHO’s departments and functions as they relate to UHC and health systems.
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The World health statistics report is the annual compilation of health and health-related indicators, which has been published by the World Health Organization since 2005. The 2024 edition reviews more than 50 health-related indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals and WHO’s Thirteenth Ge...neral Programme of Work. It also highlights the findings from the Global health estimates 2021, notably the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.
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The burden of mental health conditions in the Region is high and actions are being taken by WHO to address this issue. These include the PARO Declaration (1) by the health ministers of Member States at the Seventy-fifth Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia on universal access to... people-centred mental health care and services.
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As of May 2023, COVID-19 may no longer be classified as a public health emergency of international concern, but we must not ignore the deep structural problems it has revealed in our economy.
In 2023, the World Health Organization was responding to 72 health emergencies, including 19 grade-3 emergencies which required the highest level of activation, reaching millions of people. The annual report on WHO’s response to health emergencies in 2023 outlines the increasingly critical role of... WHO at global, regional and country levels, and across the key elements of effective emergency response, including emergency coordination and planning, operational and logistic support, and community engagement and protection. The huge scale and complexities of health emergencies in the 21st century require a strategic shift towards not only meeting the immediate needs of vulnerable communities, but also building community and health system resilience to all hazards – a challenge that both WHO and its partners must continue to meet.
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Human strongyloidiasis is a chronic parasitic disease caused by infection with Strongyloides stercoralis, a soil-transmitted helminth that is estimated to infect 300–600 million people worldwide. This neglected tropical disease (NTD) is endemic globally, predominately in the South-East Asia, Afric...an and Western Pacific regions, and in South and Central America. Strongyloidiasis has a wide range of clinical presentations, including subclinical disease, symptomatic disease (often with diarrhoea, abdominal pain and urticaria) and a rare but deadly complication of hyperinfection with disseminated disease. The feared complication of disseminated strongyloidiasis can occur in the setting of immunocompromising conditions (e.g. human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 infection and malignancies) or immunosuppressive medications (e.g. steroids) and has an estimated case-fatality rate exceeding 60%. The standard treatment for chronic S. stercoralis infection is oral medication with ivermectin.
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WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has determined that the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) under the International Health Regulations (2005...) (IHR). Dr Tedros’s declaration came on the advice of an IHR Emergency Committee of independent experts who met earlier in the day to review data presented by experts from WHO and affected countries. The Committee informed the Director-General that it considers the upsurge of mpox to be a PHEIC, with potential to spread further across countries in Africa and possibly outside the continent.
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Outbreaks of mpox in newly affected countries have mostly been identified in communities of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men who have had recent sexual contact with a new partner or partners. Communities of trans and gender diverse people linked to the same sexual networks have also... been affected.
This document (updated in March 2023) is intended for use by individuals, community leaders, influencers, health workers and others affected by or working on the mpox outbreak. It contains information to help people reduce their risk of mpox and to help slow the spread of the virus. This is the third version of this publication – it has been updated based on current public health advice.
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