Children in Kabwe are especially at risk because they are more likely to ingest lead dust when playing in the soil, their brains and bodies are still developing, and they absorb four to five times as much lead as adults. The consequences for children who are exposed to high levels of lead and are no...t treated include reading and learning barriers or disabilities; behavioral problems; impaired growth; anemia; brain, liver, kidney, nerve, and stomach damage; coma and convulsions; and death. After prolonged exposure, the effects are irreversible. Lead also increases the risk of miscarriage and can be transmitted through both the placenta and breastmilk.
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The main finding is that health services have been partially or completely disrupted in many countries. More than half (53%) of the countries surveyed have partially or completely disrupted services for hypertension treatment; 49% for treatment for diabetes and diabetes-related complications; 42% fo...r cancer treatment, and 31% for cardiovascular emergencies.
Rehabilitation services have been disrupted in almost two-thirds (63%) of countries, even though rehabilitation is key to a healthy recovery following severe illness from COVID-19.
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América Latina y el Caribe se ha convertido en el epicentro de la pandemia de enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19) y encabeza las estadísticas mundiales de casos. La pandemia ha devenido en una inédita crisis económica y social y, si no se toman medidas urgentes, podría transformarse en una cr...isis alimentaria, humanitaria y política. Tanto para las acciones de control de la pandemia como para las etapas de reactivación y reconstrucción, es imprescindible aumentar la inversión pública en salud hasta alcanzar los parámetros recomendados, de modo de asegurar el fortalecimiento de los sistemas de salud, ampliando y reconfigurando los servicios de salud de calidad, con un enfoque de atención primaria de salud, y abordar de manera inmediata y acelerada las necesidades de salud insatisfechas, reducir inequidades y mejorar las condiciones de acceso a servicios esenciales, incluida la protección financiera.
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5 May 2021
This Information Note is intended to assist national TB programmes and health personnel worldwide to maintain essential tuberculosis (TB) services during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the recovery phase. It is important that recent progress made in TB prevention and care is not reversed b...y COVID-19. The WHO Global TB Programme, along with WHO regional and country offices, developed this note in response to questions received from Member States and other partners since the start of the pandemic. The note includes references to other published WHO information products relevant to TB practitioners. WHO continues to monitor the situation closely for any changes that may influence this note and will issue updates should any factors change.
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In this edition, the Antimicrobial Resistance chapter discusses the growing, dangerous trend of antimicrobial resistance and the potential catastrophic consequences on global health.
Chapter 1 of Frontier 2017: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern
Lancet 2021; 398: Series: Heat and Health
Hot weather and heat extremes harm human health, with poverty, ageing, and chronic illnesses as aggravating factors. As the global community contends with even hotter weather in a changing climate, there is a pressing need to better understand the most eff...ective prevention and response measures, particularly in low-resource settings. In this two-paper series, the physiological, social, and environmental factors that contribute to individual heat vulnerability, and the megatrends affecting future heat-related morbidity and mortality at the population level, are comprehensively reviewed. Solutions to address the physiological heat strain that underlies the negative health effects of heat extremes and hot weather, which can be employed across a range of settings at individual, building, and landscape scales, are presented.
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Published: November 24, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000938
Climate change is expected to have complex effects on infectious diseases, causing some to increase, others to decrease, and many to shift their distributions. There have been several important advances in understanding the ...role of climate and climate change on wildlife and human infectious disease dynamics over the past several years. This essay examines 3 major areas of advancement, which include improvements to mechanistic disease models, investigations into the importance of climate variability to disease dynamics, and understanding the consequences of thermal mismatches between host and parasites. Applying the new information derived from these advances to climate–disease models and addressing the pressing knowledge gaps that we identify should improve the capacity to predict how climate change will affect disease risk for both wildlife and humans.
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The Faster We Go, the Health We'll Be.
The report outlines five climate solutions that research shows will deliver immediate, often localized, health and equity benefits. Our focus is on the solutions that proactively advance both health and health equity, recognizing that some of us face greater h...ealth risks than others.
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The Greater Horn of Africa is experiencing one of the worst food insecurity situations in decades. It is estimated
that more than 37 million people are in Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)1 phase 3 or above and approximately 7 million children under the age of five are acutely mal...nourished in the region. While finding food and safe water is the absolute priority, the health response is essential to avert preventable disease and death.
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The brief concludes that sustaining the continuity of EHS requires policies that ensure a whole-society and systems strengthening approach. This involves increased health care investment, community engagement, disease control regulations, and multisector approaches to improve resilience, EHS quality..., and equity.
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Exposure to household air pollution (HAP) is one of the greatest environmental risks to human health worldwide. Policies to accelerate the adoption of clean cooking, heating and lighting are essential for reducing HAP and the enormous burden of disease it causes and for lowering climate-warming emis...sions and achieving other urgent societal priorities.
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