Clinical management handbook
The report presents current information (updated to September 2015) on candidate vaccines, therapies and medical devices for Ebola and gives an overview of completed and on-going trials.
Of the 50 antibiotics in the pipeline, 32 target WHO priority pathogens but the majority have only limited benefits when compared to existing antibiotics. Two of these are active against the multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria, which are spreading rapidly and require urgent solutions.
Gr...am-negative bacteria, such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli, can cause severe and often deadly infections that pose a particular threat for people with weak or not yet fully developed immune systems, including newborns, ageing populations, people undergoing surgery and cancer treatment.
The report highlights a worrying gap in activity against the highly resistant NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1), with only three antibiotics in the pipeline. NDM-1 makes bacteria resistant to a broad range of antibiotics, including those from the carbapenem family, which today are the last line of defence against antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.
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Globally, 311,000 women die of cervical cancer every year, 85 percent of them
in resource limited regions of the world. To address this grave threat to women,
the WHO made a call to action in 2018, resulting in accelerated plans to improve
cervical cancer control under the elimination threshold w...ith respect to cervical
cancer incidence. As part of WHO’s approach to cervical cancer control, availability of high quality,
affordable medical devices for HPV screening, and treatment of precancerous
lesions in low resource settings is indispensable.
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Guide for clinical case management and infection prevention and control during ameasles outbreak. This guide has been developed to reduce the high morbidity and mortality seen in some of the current outbreaks of measles. This short guide outlines practical clinical care interventions and is derived ...from previously published WHO documents.
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This document is a guide defining requirements for quality and safety for malaria rapid diagnostic testing services to safeguard the quality of the results, the safety of the operators and patients and that of the environment for use by national malaria control programmes, regulators, implementers a...nd rapid diagnostic providers.
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Segunda edición (revisada). Este manual tiene dos objetivos: en primer lugar, promover la gestión apropiada y digna de los cadavers y, en segundo lugar, facilitar su identificación. Luego de muchos desastres, en particular los de mayor magnitud, la recuperación y la gestión inmediata de los cad...áveres es llevada a cabo por las autoridades, las organizaciones, las comunidades, los residentes y los voluntarios locales.
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An interregional meeting on leishmaniasis among neighbouring endemic
countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, African and European regions was organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern
Mediterranean in Amman, Jordan, from 23 to 25 September 2018. The meeting w...as attended by representatives from the health ministries of Albania, Georgia, Greece, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia. Representatives from Afghanistan, Algeria and Libya were unable to attend. The Secretariat comprised staff from WHO headquarters, WHO regional offices in the Eastern Mediterranean, Africa and Europe, WHO country offices in Iraq, Pakistan, Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, and WHO temporary advisors from Spain and Tunisia.
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The 2023 Country Presence Report provides an overview of what WHO does in countries to advance towards the SDGs and implement GPW13, how we do it, with whom we work, and what is needed to overcome challenges for achieving results and impact in countries.
The report aims to capture lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and to highlight the opportunity for more ambitious global action: expanding sustainable access to vaccines for all towards the Immunization Agenda 2030 and pandemic prevention, preparedness and response efforts. The report is organized i...n two sections: the first section provides WHO insights on global vaccine market dynamics, drawing from data provided by Member States, which are, in turn, analysed and displayed in the second section.
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This document is an output of a WHO cross-programme initiative aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and management of anaemia and thereby accelerate reduction in its prevalence. It comes at an important time, midway through the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, when progress in reduci...ng anaemia has stagnated. This framework is based on the core principles of primary health care: meeting people’s health needs through comprehensive promotive, protective, curative, and rehabilitative care along the life course; systematically addressing the broader determinants of health; and empowering individuals, families, and communities to optimize their health
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Safe drinking-water management must consider drinking-water quality, acceptability and quantity in the context of public health protection. In this manual, the term “safety” encompasses these three elements. Although the principles in this manual can be broadly applied to all types of drinking-w...ater supplies, the guidance is primarily intended for piped water supplies that are professionally managed (by a water supplier or equivalent management entity).The guidance may be applied to existing drinking-water supplies, or adapted for water supplies that are in the planning stage before construction.
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This report compiles data for the first time on the far-reaching consequences of uncontrolled hypertension, including heart attacks, strokes and premature death, along with substantial economic losses for communities and countries. It also contains information on the global, regional and country-lev...el burden of hypertension and progress of control efforts.
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Building on the 2021 Interim guidance, this second version and update, incorporates the lessons and feedback from the hepatitis pilots that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of measuring hepatitis B and C impact targets to demonstrate elimination, whilst highlighting challenges caused by hig...h disease burden in some countries, as well as delays in reaching mortality targets due to the long natural history of disease progression to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
The path to elimination provides a framework with 3 levels of achievements for which WHO certification is available. Each stepwise progression from bronze to silver to gold tiers will promote an iterative expansion of prevention, diagnosis and treatment services for viral hepatitis services and strengthen measurement systems to support attainment of the 2030 elimination goals.
This updated version also includes changes, clarifications and new guidance on alternative measurement approaches for country validation of elimination. Through the validation process, WHO and partners continue to provide country support for strengthening health system capacity and patient-centred services that respect and protect the human rights of people living with viral hepatitis and ensures meaningful engagement of communities in the national, regional and global viral hepatitis response.
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A sanitary inspection is a simple, on-site evaluation (traditionally using a checklist) to help identify and support the management of priority risk factors that may lead to contamination of a drinking-water supply. Sanitary inspections are a well-established and widely-applied practice. They can su...pport water safety planning, and in some contexts, may be a simplified alternative to water safety plans.
This publication presents the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) sanitary inspection packages. These packages update the sanitary inspection forms in WHO’s 1997 Guidelines for drinking-water quality. Volume 3: surveillance and control of community supplies. With more than 25 years of practical experience with the application of sanitary inspections, these packages have been developed from a comprehensive evidence review and established good practices.
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Diphtheria is caused by Corynebacterium species, mostly by toxin-producing Corynebacterium diphtheriae and rarely by toxin-producing strains of C. ulcerans and C. pseudotuberculosis. The most common type of diphtheria is classic respiratory diphtheria, whereby the exotoxin produced characteristicall...y causes the formation of a pseudomembrane in the upper respiratory tract and damages other organs, usually the myocardium and peripheral nerves. Acute respiratory obstruction, acute systemic toxicity, myocarditis and neurologic complications are the usual causes of death. The infection can also affect the skin (cutaneous diphtheria). More rarely, it can affect mucous membranes at other non-respiratory sites, such as genitalia and conjunctiva.
C. diphtheriae is transmitted from person to person by intimate respiratory and direct contact; in contrast, C. ulcerans and C. pseudotuberculosis are zoonotic infections, not transmitted person-to-person. The incubation period of C. diphtheriae is two to five days (range 1– 10 days). A person is infectious as long as virulent bacteria are present in respiratory secretions, usually two weeks without antibiotics, and seldom more than six weeks. In rare cases, chronic carriers may shed organisms for six months or more. Skin lesions are often chronic and infectious for longer periods. Effective antibiotic therapy (penicillin or erythromycin) promptly terminates shedding in about one or two days.
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Mpox continues to affect people around the world. A new framework released today by WHO will guide health authorities, communities and other stakeholders in preventing and controlling mpox outbreaks, eliminating human-to-human transmission of the disease, and reducing spillover of the virus from ani...mals to humans.
Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV). It can cause a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever. Most people fully recover, but some get very sick. The virus transmits from person to person through close, including sexual, contact. It also has animal reservoirs in east, central and west Africa, where spillovers from animals to humans can occasionally occur, sparking further outbreaks.
There are two different clades of the virus: clade I and clade II. Clade I outbreaks are deadlier than clade II outbreaks.
A major emergence of mpox linked to clade II began in 2017, and since 2022, has spread to all regions of the world. Between July 2022 and May 2023, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. While that outbreak has largely subsided, cases and deaths continue to be reported today, illustrating that low-level transmission continues around the world.
Currently, there is also a major outbreak of clade I virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where cases have been on the rise for decades. Since the beginning of the year, over 6500 cases and 345 deaths have been reported in the DRC. Almost half of these are among children under the age of 15 years.
The Strategic framework for enhancing prevention and control of mpox (2024–2027) provides a roadmap for health authorities, communities, and stakeholders worldwide to control mpox outbreaks in every context, advance mpox research and access to countermeasures, and to minimize zoonotic transmission.
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Toolkit regarding Zika Virus