Since the description of the first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei province in China, in December 2019, much knowledge has been accumulated about the dynamics of evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, contagion, disease progression, prevention and treatment.
The report identifies major global gaps in WASH services: one third of health care facilities do not have what is needed to clean hands where care is provided; one in four facilities have no water services, and 10% have no sanitation services. This means that 1.8 billion people use facilities that l...ack basic water services and 800 million use facilities with no toilets. Across the world’s 47 least-developed countries, the problem is even greater: half of health care facilities lack basic water services. Furthermore, the extent of the problem remains hidden because major gaps in data persist, especially on environmental cleaning.
This report also describes the global and national responses to the 2019 World Health Assembly resolution on WASH in health care facilities. More than 70% of countries have conducted related situation analyses, 86% have updated and are implementing standards and 60% are working to incrementally improve infrastructure and operation and maintenance of WASH services. Case studies from 30 countries demonstrate that progress is being propelled by strong national leadership and coordination, use of data to direct resources and action, and the mutual benefits of empowering health workers and communities to develop solutions together.
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This document focus on the direct consequences of the virus (morbidity and mortality) in specific populations and on the results of measures aimed at mitigating the spread of the virus, with indirect impacts on socio-economic conditions. In this complex scenario, the gender approach has not received... due attention during the pandemic. Gender is one of the structural determinants of health, but it does not appear in analyses of the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic, despite being essential in the recognition and analysis of the differential impacts on men and women and their interaction with the different determinants of health.
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Seit über einem Jahr hat die Corona-Pandemie große Veränderungen für alle Menschen in nahezu jedem Lebensbereich herbeigeführt. Geflüchtete in (Erst-) Aufnahmeeinrichtungen und Gemeinschaftsunterkünften sind in besonderem Maße von der Pandemie betroffen, da die vorgefundenen Wohnbedingungen ...einen kaum ausreichenden Schutz zulassen. Obwohl gerade die Bewohner*innen von Sammelunterkünften dem Virus stark ausgesetzt sind, hat diese Gruppe nicht ausreichend Beachtung und Schutz gefunden. Ergriffene Maßnahmen wie etwa Kollektiv- oder auch Kettenquarantänen haben die Lebensbedingungen der Bewohner*innen noch weiter erschwert, mit gravierenden Auswirkungen auf das Asylverfahren, Gesundheit, Beruf, Ausbildung und Schule und so letztendlich auch auf ihre soziale Teilhabe.
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History has shown that governments tend to deprioritize environmental commitments during times of financial and public crises as they work to mitigate immediate needs—and the age of COVID-19 has been no different. Even though human interaction with wildlife is believed to be the cause of the pande...mic, the focus on COVID’s fallout has deprioritized the importance of reversing the damage humans have done to the planet.
COVID has had a multifaceted and detrimental effect on environmental conservation. Not only has funding been diverted to deal with the pandemic, conservation-oriented organizations are operating with minimal staff or have closed entirely. People whose daily work it is to advance environmental science and protect the land and water have become ill or have been forced to stay home because of travel restrictions. Plastic use is at an all-time high.
The good news is that there is an unprecedented opportunity for philanthropy to recharge the effort to protect the planet. This Giving Smarter Guide examines the state of environmental philanthropy, and provides an overview of potential strategic starting points for philanthropy and impact capital to play a role in saving the planet. In addition to offering recommendations specific to the COVID-19 response, the Center for Strategic Philanthropy also asks the questions that philanthropists should consider at the start of their journey into the field of conservation philanthropy.
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Issues & Regulations Regarding Pharmaceutical Waste Management
ournal of Public Health in Africa 2021; volume 12:2009
South Africa has a long history of community health workers (CHWs). It has been a journey that has required balancing constrained resources and competing priorities. CHWs form a bridge between communities and healthcare service provision within health facilities and act as the cornerstone of South A...frica’s Ward-Based Primary Healthcare Outreach Teams. This study aimed to document the CHW policy implementation landscape across six provinces in South Africa and explore the reasons for local adaptation of CHW models and to identify potential barriers and facilitators to implementation of the revised framework to help guide and inform future planning.
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Global Health Science and Practice February 2022, https://doi.org/10.9745/GHSP-D-21-00237
Key Findings: Exposure to vaccination information from faith leaders and health facilities was associated with increased likelihood of vaccination uptake. The significant association between exposure to a... greater number of immunization information sources and increased likelihood of vaccination uptake reinforces the need for multiple sources to provide consistent and accurate immunization information to facilitate positive vaccination behavior.
Key Implications: Social and behavior change communication interventions may optimize the promotion of immunization services through multiple information sources such as health facilities and community-based assets including faith leaders and lay community health workers. Religion and faith play an important role in how people understand health and make health decisions. In Sierra Leone and other similar settings, interventions to improve uptake of immunization services may be enhanced by proactively engaging faith leaders.
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Lancet Planet Health 2021; 5: e93–101
Religion and Development 01/2019. Discussion Paper Series of the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development
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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BackgroundClimate change is one of the great challenges of our time. The consequences of climate change on exposed biological subjects, as well as on vulnerable societies, are a concern for the entire scientific community. Rising temperatures, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, fir...es, loss of forest, and glaciers, along with disappearance of rivers and desertification, can directly and indirectly cause human pathologies that are physical and mental.
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Inferences through Machine Learning.Background Report.
What are the major origins and drivers of different types of conflict? Sorting out the main
causes of conflict and war is difficult and often shaped by ideological believes. Even today,
historians and political scientists have discussions on... the primary causes of the First World
War. There are several types of conflict, ranging from international and civil wars to local
conflicts, riots and revolution. And there are many theories that explain these different types
of conflict, which mostly focus on economic conditions and a range of factors that can foster
grievances and greed, creating incentives to initiate or join a conflict
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Mosquito-borne diseases are expanding their range, and re-emerging in areas where they had subsided for decades. The extent to which climate change influences the transmission suitability and population at risk of mosquito-borne diseases across different altitudes and population densities has not be...en investigated. The aim of this study was to quantify the extent to which climate change will influence the length of the transmission season and estimate the population at risk of mosquito-borne diseases in the future, given different population densities across an altitudinal gradient.
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 7, e404-e414, July 01, 2021
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Environment International Volume 86, January 2016, Pages 14-23
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in weather conditions and patterns of extreme weather events. It may lead to changes in health threat to human beings, multiplying existing health problems. This review examines the scientific e...vidences on the impact of climate change on human infectious diseases. It identifies research progress and gaps on how human society may respond to, adapt to, and prepare for the related changes. Based on a survey of related publications between 1990 and 2015, the terms used for literature selection reflect three aspects — the components of infectious diseases, climate variables, and selected infectious diseases. Humans' vulnerability to the potential health impacts by climate change is evident in literature. As an active agent, human beings may control the related health effects that may be effectively controlled through adopting proactive measures, including better understanding of the climate change patterns and of the compound disease-specific health effects, and effective allocation of technologies and resources to promote healthy lifestyles and public awareness. The following adaptation measures are recommended: 1) to go beyond empirical observations of the association between climate change and infectious diseases and develop more scientific explanations, 2) to improve the prediction of spatial–temporal process of climate change and the associated shifts in infectious diseases at various spatial and temporal scales, and 3) to establish locally effective early warning systems for the health effects of predicated climate change.
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Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that occurs mainly in the tropics and subtropics but has a high potential to spread to new areas. Dengue infections are climate sensitive, so it is important to better understand how changing climate factors affect the potential for geographic spread and futu...re dengue epidemics. Vectorial capacity (VC) describes a vector's propensity to transmit dengue taking into account human, virus, and vector interactions. VC is highly temperature dependent, but most dengue models only take mean temperature values into account. Recent evidence shows that diurnal temperature range (DTR) plays an important role in influencing the behavior of the primary dengue vector Aedes aegypti. In this study, we used relative VC to estimate dengue epidemic potential (DEP) based on the temperature and DTR dependence of the parameters of A. aegypti. We found a strong temperature dependence of DEP; it peaked at a mean temperature of 29.3°C when DTR was 0°C and at 20°C when DTR was 20°C. Increasing average temperatures up to 29°C led to an increased DEP, but temperatures above 29°C reduced DEP. In tropical areas where the mean temperatures are close to 29°C, a small DTR increased DEP while a large DTR reduced it. In cold to temperate or extremely hot climates where the mean temperatures are far from 29°C, increasing DTR was associated with increasing DEP. Incorporating these findings using historical and predicted temperature and DTR over a two hundred year period (1901-2099), we found an increasing trend of global DEP in temperate regions. Small increases in DEP were observed over the last 100 years and large increases are expected by the end of this century in temperate Northern Hemisphere regions using climate change projections. These findings illustrate the importance of including DTR when mapping DEP based on VC.
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The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 6, ISSUE 4, e342-e349, April 01, 2022. Human impacts on earth-system processes are overshooting several planetary boundaries, driving a crisis of ecological breakdown. This crisis is being caused in large part by global resource extraction, which has increased dra...matically over the past half century. We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.
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Senegal is home to nearly 2 million girls and women who have experienced FGM. Overall, 25 per cent of girls and women have undergone the practice, varying from over 90 per cent in Kédougou to just under 1 per cent in Diourbel