A broad range of UNHCR’s key priorities overlap with MHPSS issues – for example, child protection and sexual and gender-based violence [SGBV] prevention and response.
Despite all these existent synergies, UNHCR’s current policies and guidelines do not sufficiently link with MHPSS principles.... For example, the Community Services section, which is closely aligned to the principles of MHPSS and could be well-positioned to guide the implementation of related programs, has not adopted the MHPSS language or approach.
There are opportunities for UNHCR to engage more strongly and clearly in this field. However, this requires a vision for how the organisation as a whole, and particular sectors within the organisation, will engage within the field of MHPSS activities. For a start, UNHCR can work to improve its understanding and framing of mental health and psychosocial issues, and how these issues fit within its broader mandate.
While the majority of MHPSS activities are delivered by implementing partners, UNHCR staff require familiarity with core principles in the field, such as the Intervention Pyramid contained in the IASC Guidelines, in order to support and monitor quality MHPSS activities.
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"Achieving, maintaining and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability are major challenges for health laboratories. Countries worldwide committed themselves to build national capacities for the detection of, and response to, public health events of international concern when they decided to eng...age in the International Health Regulations implementation process. Only sound management of quality in health laboratories will enable countries to produce test results that the international community will trust in cases of international emergency. This handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive reference on Laboratory Quality Management System for all stakeholders in health laboratory processes, from management, to administration, to bench-work laboratorians. This handbook covers topics that are essential for quality management of a public health or clinical laboratory. They are based on both ISO 15189 and CLSI GP26-A3 documents"--Page 7.
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PLoSONE 14(9):e0223104.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223104.
The survey centering on reasons behind community resistance was conducted in Butembo in November during a time of Ebola transmission. A researcher from Catholic University of Graben in Butembo and collaborators at the University o...f Alberta in Edmonton published their findings on Sep 26 in PLOS One.
To spark focus group discussions, the researchers used an 18-item questionnaire based on similar ones used during West Africa's outbreak in Guinea, where community resistance and episodes of violence also complicated the outbreak response.
Participants were a convenience sample of 670 adults from the region who were recruited by medical students at Catholic University of Graben. Those surveyed included clinicians, community members, and displaced persons.
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Over 1 million people, including an estimated 450,000 children, are affected by Myanmar’s decade-long conflict and are increasingly vulnerable to gender-based violence, exploitation, abuse, detention and trafficking.
Community transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is increasing in... Myanmar. COVID-19 requires a nationwide response focusing on critical urban and vulnerable populations, such as those in overcrowded camps for internally displaced persons.
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The NGO Safety and Security Training Report provides a narrative of the research findings, an updated curriculum, and guidance tools for training. It is based on extensive research and interviews with members of the NGO community. The report draws upon existing training materials, community consulta...tions, survey responses, job descriptions, as well as relevant trends in humanitarian and development practice. It captures good practice and global understanding in regard to quality and consistency of NGO security training.
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In 2016 WHO introduced the Cholera Kits. These kits replace the Interagency Diarrhoeal Disease Kit (IDDK) which had been used for many years. The Cholera Kit is designed to be flexible and adaptable for preparedness and outbreak response in different contexts. The overall Cholera Kit is made up of a...n Investigation Kit, Laboratory materials, 3 Treatment Kits (community, periphery and central) and a Hardware Kit. The Treatment and Hardware Kits are each composed of individual modules. Each of the kits and modules can be ordered independently based on field need. To support orders, a Cholera Kit Calculation Tool was developed.
The information note, packing lists and the Kit Calculation Tool are all available from the WHO website at: http://www.who.int/cholera/kit/en/
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Guidance on Disability Inclusion for GBV Partners in Lebanon: Outreach, Safe Identification and Referral of Women, Children, and Youth with Disabilities is designed to support frontline workers, community volunteers, and mobilizers and their supervisors who are working in GBV prevention and response... to foster inclusion of persons with disabilities in their community activities. It includes guidance, key actions and tools to improve accessibility of existing community processes and activities relating to GBV.
Download the complete Toolkit directly from the website link
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Ce document a été élaboré par le Programme des urgences sanitaires de l'Organisation mondiale de la santé comme ressource pour la réponse à la flambée du virus d'Ebola (Ebola) en République démocratique du Congo en mai 2018.
Ce document est destiné à guider le travail de communication d...es risques et d'engagement communautaire (CREC) qui est essentiel pour stopper la flambée et prévenir son amplification. Contrairement à d'autres domaines d'intervention, la CREC fait largement appel aux bénévoles, au personnel de première ligne et aux personnes qui n'ont pas reçu de formation préalable dans ce domaine. En tant que tel, le document fournit des informations de base, couvre les aspects socio-économiques et culturels (qui sont connus au moment de la publication), et fournit les derniers conseils et approches fondés sur des données probantes basés sur les Directives de l'OMS : Communiquer les risques dans les situations d'urgence en santé publique, 2018.
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The Child Protection handbook provides a synthesis of good practice and learning and enables better advocacy and communication on child protection risks, needs and responses. Standards addressing child protection needs cover core work areas and critical issues. Those addressing strategy relate to ca...se management, community-based child protection, child-friendly spaces and protection of excluded children. A fourth set of standards gives guidance on how workers in other sectors can ensure that their programmes are accessible and beneficial to children. DOCUMENT ALSO AVAILABLE IN: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu on http://cpwg.net/minimum_standards-topics/cpms-full-version/.
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This expansive facilitator's guide deals with psychosocial interventions concerning multiple causes of trauma such as HIV and AIDS and post-conflict situations. The guide offers technical advice to the implementor which is usefully augmented by diagrams, ideas for games and other useful intervention...s
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7 April 2020. This document and risk assessment tool provides practical guidance and recommendations to support the special role of religious leaders, faith-based organizations, and faith communities in COVID-19 education, preparedness, and response.
You can download the risk assessment tool here:...
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331772/WHO-2019-nCoV-Religious_Leaders_RAtool-2020.1-eng.xlsx
and the decision tree here:
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-2019-ncov-mg-decision-tree-religious.pdf?sfvrsn=f3433c0a_2
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1 June 2020
Countries around the world are facing the challenge of increased demand for care of people with COVID-19, compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on movement that disrupt the delivery of health care for all conditions. Maintaining essential health services: operational guidan...ce for the COVID-19 context recommends practical actions that countries can take at national, subregional and local levels to reorganize and safely maintain access to high-quality, essential health services in the pandemic context. It also outlines sample indicators for monitoring essential health services, and describes considerations on when to stop and restart services as COVID-19 transmission recedes and surges. This document expands on the content of pillar 9 of the COVID-19 strategic preparedness and response plan, supersedes the earlier Operational guidance for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak, and complements the recently-released Community-based health care, including outreach and campaigns, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels.
This is an update to COVID-19: Operational guidance for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak: Interim guidance, 25 March 2020
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In March 2020 the IASC Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support uniting 57 humanitarian organizations as member issued the Interim Briefing Note Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Aspects of COVID-19 Outbreak. This document has proven to be very useful in the response and has... till now been translated in 24 languages. It covers a set of recommended activities as well as messages for different target groups.
The current document is an annex to the Interim Briefing Note and is meant to support the MHPSS operational response within the various sectors of humanitarian work. Approaches and interventions to MHPSS are not confined to one sector, but need to be integrated within many existing sectors and clusters.This document contains a wealth of operational information and practical approaches that can be used for humanitarian programming in health, SGBV, community-based protection, nutrition, camp management and camp coordination.
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The ethical values and behaviors are not only abstract terms, but they are refined and conceptualized byreal-life experiences. The societal context where the actions of humans can be analyzed by ethicaldecision-making is entirely relevant to deliberate on what is the right thing to do and what the m...oralagent should do, since the ethical values and principles response to the actual practices of life and to theneeds of humans in the society. This elaboration takes us to the realm of social ethics.This article reviews the definition and contextual meaning of social ethics at a broader level by givingspecial emphasis to the ethical theories and principles, focusing on the societal and public setting. Ethicswill be deliberated with social and community aspects. Based on the principle of justice and public healthethics, the concept of social ethics has been investigated concisely through the relationship between man,as a moral person, and the society in exemplification of the issues of healthcare ethics. It is argued that thetension between individualism and communitarian needs can be reconciled with the perspective of socialethics by respecting the individual autonomy without disregarding the common good and social justice.By promoting the values of social responsibility, solidarity, and social utility, social ethics has beenproposed as the basis of a rational, moral, egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic society rising on the pillars ofhuman rights and human dignity.
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interim guidance, 27 May 2021
All countries should increase their level of preparedness, alert and response to identify, manage and care for new cases of COVID-19. Countries should prepare to respond to different public health scenarios, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ma...naging cases and outbreaks of COVID-19. Each country should assess its risk and rapidly implement the necessary measures at the appropriate scale to reduce both COVID-19 transmission and economic, public and social impacts.
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7 Febr. 2021
As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in countries – decimating people’s livelihoods, and leaving health systems struggling to provide healthcare and vaccines for the entire population - governments and donors should look to the Church as a partner. The essential Church networks, tr...usted and rooted in local communities, can reach the most vulnerable people and remote places where governments often struggle to reach. DR Congo is among several countries where the Catholic Church is the main provider of community health services, particularly in more remote areas.
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his course is intended for decision-makers and programme managers who want to learn more about neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its 5 modules introduce NTDs, outline the impact of COVID-19 on NTD programmes and WHO’s response to mitigate its consequences,... and finally present WHO’s recommendations on maintenance of essential health services for NTDs as well as guidance on adaptation and safe resumption of community-based NTD activities during the pandemic.
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The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the lead UN agency working to further gender equality and women’s empowerment in Sri Lanka. We are pleased to be a part of the joint effort with the Ministry of Health to develop the first ‘Standard Operating Procedures on sexual and gender-based vio...lence for first-contact-point healthcare providers’.
These operating procedures were developed alongside the ‘National guidelines on sexual and gender-based violence’, which aims to strengthen Sri Lanka’s health systems response to survivors of violence. We are grateful to the British High Commission in Colombo for their support in developing these guidelines and procedures as they mark an important milestone in creating a safer Sri Lanka for all women and girls. UNFPA is proud to be a part of this journey, and we stand ready to provide continued assistance to the Government of Sri Lanka and all key stakeholders to ensure women and girls receive essential services that support their safety, well-being and access to justice and to create a violence-free Sri Lanka.
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The objective of this course is to provide high-level information and contextual understanding of WHO Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Emergencies.
We will explore a range of topics, ranging from the Emergency Response Framework (ERF), to planning, grants and finance, procurement, risk mana...gement, rosters and deployment, and ethics.
Each module within this course is standalone. Therefore, you can take the modules in any order – with the exception of the Course Review. The Course Review is a question-based revision module that recaps the content covered in modules 1 to 10.
The target audience for this course is personnel who will be assigned by WHO to go on deployment in response to health emergencies.
The course is available in English and French
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