The African Regional Convening of the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP) stimulated the interest or engagement of almost 1500 individuals from 742 unique organizations in the fields of health, education, social welfare, women’s affairs, early childhood, water and sanitation, mental health..., violence prevention, innovative finance, climate, and many others. The convening united representatives across governments, civil society organizations, programme implementers, philanthropies, multilateral organizations, bilateral funders, private companies, universities, schools and day care centres, and hospitals around the common cause of supporting parents and caregivers.
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Myanmar continues to experience a severe - and worsening - humanitarian and human rights crisis. Conflict and violence have escalated across the country, impacting children and their families and displacing more than 1.5 million people. Access of conflict-affected populations to services and deliver...y of humanitarian assistance has been further constrained by restrictions imposed on movement of both people and goods.
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The military offensive by the Russian Federation in Ukraine which began February 2022 has triggered one of the world’s fastest-growing displacement and humanitarian crisis, with geopolitical and economic ripples felt across the globe. The ongoing war has caused large-scale disruptions to the deliv...ery of health services and a near-collapse of the health system. But the crisis also saw an extraordinary mobilization and crisis response to a health emergency by WHO and its more than 100 partners.
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The Assessment package has been developed for countries to evaluate the implementation of the WHO Standards for prosthetics and orthotics. It enables identification of areas in need of strengthening and facilitates relevant planning. The complete Assessment package consists of four components: Asses...sment guide: gives directions on how to organize and implement the assessment. Assessment tool: Excel instrument used to carry out assessments and record results.
User manual: explains how the Assessment tool should be used.
Planning document: Excel file into which the recommendations that are generated by the Assessment tool can be pasted for easy use in subsequent planning.
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This report includes analysis from informal regional consultations in the African Region, the Caribbean and North America, Latin America, South-East Asia Region, European Region, Eastern Mediterranean Region, alongside three forums in the Western Pacific Region. It analyses the overarching similarit...ies, regional nuances and priorities raised across the six WHO regions for the meaningful engagement of individuals with lived experience.
It is the second publication in the WHO Intention to action series, which aims to enhance the limited evidence base on the impact of meaningful engagement and address the lack of standardized approaches on how to operationalise meaningful engagement. The Intention to action series aims to do this by providing a platform from which individuals with lived experience, and organizational and institutional champions, can share solutions, challenges and promising practices related to this cross-cutting agenda. The Intention to action series also aims to provide powerful narratives, inspiration and evidence towards the Fourth United Nations High Level Meeting on NCDs in 2025 and achieving the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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This toolkit provides step-by-step guidance to NTD programme managers and partners on how to engage and work collaboratively with the WASH community to improve delivery of water, sanitation and hygiene services to underserved population affected by many neglected tropical diseases. The toolkit draws... on tools and practices used in the delivery of coordinated and integrated programmes for control, elimination and eradication of NTDs. This second edition include revisions and new tools based on experiences of using the toolkit in more than 20 countries.
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Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable in humanitarian settings, yet they are often not able to access the services and protection they need. While multiple factors create these barriers, a major cause is how data about children with disabilities is collected and mapped. Data collect...ion processes often exclude or underrepresent the views of children with disabilities and thier caretakers. When the experiences of children with disabilities and their caretakers are not defined and collected, they become excluded from mainstreamed protective services, which are meant to serve all children. Children with disabilities also do not get the specialised interventions they need.
This guidance note explores how to use qualitative methods to create more robust assessment processes to ensure more effective programming and services for children with disabilities. This note provides promising practices for engaging with children with disabilities and includes sample tools that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular assessment process. The note also explores the importance of thoughtful cross-sectoral responses so that children with disabilities, and their families, are carefully considered in areas like water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), education, health, and nutrition, and therefore receive the holistic support they need and deserve.
This note is intended for a broad audience of relevant child protection actors, including practitioners, coordination groups, researchers, and donors. The information is not limited to one type of humanitarian setting, geographic region, or culture. As a result, the practices and guidance should be adapted to each specific context, ideally in partnership with well-informed local actors, such as representatives from local organisations for persons with disabilities.
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Each humanitarian setting provides distinct opportunities and challenges for actors to coordinate and collaborate at strategic and operational levels. The Health and Protection Joint Operational Framework has been developed to ensure that the health and protection response during humanitarian emerge...ncies can adapt to each environment and is adequately coordinated to ensure high-quality services to meet the needs of affected individuals and at-risk groups based on their situation or vulnerabilities.
The Health and Protection JOF was conceived in 2019 as a collaboration between the Global Health Cluster (GHC), the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) and its Areas of Responsibility (AoRs), the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC MHPSS RG), and the Inter-Agency Working Group for Reproductive Health in Crisis (IAWG), in addition to key technical experts.
A Steering Group (SG) comprised of representatives from each of these entities guided the framework through a joint global analysis of good practices, gaps, and barriers to integrated and inter-sectoral response coordination. This included a mixed methods review of policy and practice, a survey of humanitarian experts, multiple case studies, structured stakeholder interviews, and field visits. This exercise produced a zero-draft which was then reviewed by field practitioners in three operational contexts to clarify and fully coordinate its operationally focused lens. Finally, the JOF was reviewed by the SG including via a series of consultations in early 2023 to consolidate the current framework.
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The purpose of this multi-year strategy is to guide the strategic direction for the collective work of the Protection against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) Programme in Ukraine. It replaces the 2017 HCT Framework on PSEA in Ukraine, incorporates the priorities set by the IASC Vision and Strat...egy on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment 2022-26 and the key outcome areas and statements contained in the UNCT Ukraine Action Plan. The Strategy was endorsed by the Humanitarian Country Team in Ukraine and will be implemented through the adoption of annual workplans for the PSEA Network in Ukraine.
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This publication is a compendium of 49 country examples highlighting efforts in improving refugees’ and migrants’ health following the adoption of the WHO Global Action Plan on Promoting the health of refugees and migrants at the seventy-second World Health Assembly, in May 2019.
This report presents a framework to link science, policy and practice for a comprehensive assessment of climate mitigation and adaptation investments and their impact on human health.The framework proposes to use weather and climate data to forecast health impacts over time, as well as biophysical a...nd economic models to quantify the outcomes of investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation for relevant sectoral indicators and health co-benefits. It provides guidance on the economic valuation of health co-benefits of climate action, for inclusion in sector-specific cost–benefit analysis (CBA), including the spatial allocation of such costs and benefits.
The framework developed and presented in this study is comprehensive, and provides various entry points for different audiences, including decision-makers in the public and private sectors, researchers and scientists, working in the health sector as well as in other thematic areas and related sectors affected by climate action.
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Rebuilding Liberia’s health system is crucial for improving the country’s overall health outcomes. This annual report highlights key achievements, challenges,and lessons learned in implementing programmes of technical cooperation with the Government of Liberia from January to December 2022. T...he key achievements are summarized under the thematic areas of Universal Health Coverage, Health Emergencies and Corporate and Enabling Support.
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A lot has happened this year. While we continued to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, we were hit by disease outbreaks and
humanitarian crises. Yet, despite these challenges, we marched on, resolute in resolving critical health systems issues to increase
access to quality healthcare services. To furth...er our vision and bring concrete actions to reality, under
the leadership of the Government of South Sudan, we developed the Health Sector Strategic Plan to define the strategic
approaches, key interventions, mapping resource needs, and the implementation framework to strengthen the health system
to deliver essential quality health services equitably for 2023 to 2027. For WHO, this Plan will usher in a new reality -- access
to lifesaving or health-promoting interventions is doable and possible, making the health sector fairer, especially for those
unable to pay
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Colombia is characterized by a fragile and prolonged humanitarian context marked by recurrent multi-hazards affecting its territories and combined with severe structural and systemic challenges within the health system. Recent shocks, including the
COVID-19 pandemic, growing violence within the Col...ombian territories and along the border with Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), and repetitive hydro-meteorological disasters over the last 12 months aggravate such chronic challenges.
In 2022, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance increased by 300 000 due to deteriorating indicators of maternal and child mortality, pregnancy in adolescent girls, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), suicides, sexually transmitted
infections (STIs), gender-based and sexual violence, and communicable diseases. increasing population trends, primarily due to mass migration movements and the persistence of armed conflicts, create access barriers to essential health services, mobility restrictions, and forced displacement, further impacting the health, lives, and well-being of populations in vulnerable situations. In many territories, geographical distance to health facilities and attacks against medical missions hinder providing appropriate healthcare.
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This document outlines PAHO’s regional priorities for the year 2023 to sustain and scale up health emergency and humanitarian assistance in the Americas, with a focus on five priority countries currently facing a prolonged humanitarian crisis and recovering from recent acute emergencies: Colombia,... El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of). These goals align with and build on the World Health Organization’s Global Health Emergency Appeal for 2023, its principles, priorities, and strategies.
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The overall objective of the framework is to support WHO and Members States in meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs, and mental health and neurological conditions to co-create and enhance related policies, programmes and services. This framework will contribute to advancing understanding..., knowledge and action on meaningful engagement and related participatory approaches from an evolving evidence base. It provides practical guidance and actions for transitioning from intention to action to operationalize meaningful engagement.
The aim of the framework is to guide people working at WHO and in Member States in ensuring meaningful engagement with individuals with lived experience. WHO will advocate for, provide technical assistance and operationalize implementation at its three levels (headquarters, regional and country offices) and will support Member States in implementation at national level through established processes and procedures.
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The availability of controlled medicines is crucial for patients requiring palliative care, pain relief and symptom management. Many individuals worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, continue to experience limited access to these essential medicines. Enhancing access to controll...ed medicines is paramount in promoting universal health coverage. This report offers a detailed situational analysis of policies and programmes aimed at improving access to affordable, high-quality controlled medicines for pain management in the WHO South-East Asia Region. The report identifies the existing barriers, challenges and possible solutions to facilitate access to such medicines across all Member States.
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At its 48th session of Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH), the Committee noted the importance of water quality and safety in food production and processing. CCFH requested the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide guidan...ce for those scenarios where the use of “clean water” (i.e. water that does not compromise the safety of the food in the context of its use) was indicated in Codex texts and on
where it is appropriate to use “clean water”. In particular, guidance was sought for the use of irrigation water and “clean” seawater and on the safe reuse of processing water.
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The Pandemic Influenza Pandemic (PIP) Framework's Partnership Contribution (PC) High-Level Implementation Plan III (HLIP III) outlines the strategy for strengthening global pandemic influenza preparedness from 2024 to 2030. HLIP III takes into consideration the lessons learned from the response to t...he COVID-19 pandemic, the gains made over time, including from previous HLIPs, and the broader programmatic and policy context in order to address gaps in pandemic influenza preparedness. Implementation of HLIP III will strengthen global, regional, and country-level pandemic influenza preparedness.
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Obesity in all age groups, including children and adolescents, is a public health challenge across all settings. Obesity is now classified as a complex multifactorial chronic disease and not just a risk factor for other noncommunicable diseases and comorbidities. Recognizing the significance of prim...ary health care for an effective and efficient response to the obesity epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed guidance on how to build capacity in the health system to deliver health services for prevention and management of obesity across the life course. This policy brief discusses the challenges and opportunities for preventing obesity in children and adolescents, and providing health services to treat and manage those already living with obesity. It outlines possible interventions through the primary health care approach.
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