Here you can download the latest Situation Reports
Weekly updates on the current situation in Ukraine and refugee-receiving countries, priority public health concerns and WHO’s actions to rapidly respond to the health emergency triggered by the conflict and to minimize disruptions to the delivery... of critical health services.
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Working towards better COVID-19 outcomes in the WHO European Region.From the first COVID-19 cases in Europe reported on
24 January 2020, the pandemic reached 1 million cases
within 3 months, 10 million cases within 8 months, and
100 million cases in Europe alone within 2 years. Over
the course o...f its two years, COVID-19 has claimed over
1.6 million lives across Europe and Central Asia. The
World Health Organization (WHO) European Region has
accounted for close to a third of the cumulative global
COVID-19 cases and deaths.
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Bioethics 519 (online) doi:10.1111/bioe.12145 Volume 29 Number 8 2015 pp. 488–596;
Pandemic plans recommend phases of response to an emergent infectious disease (EID) outbreak, and are primarily aimed at preventing and mitigating human-to-human transmission. These plans carry presumptive weight ...and are increasingly being operationalized at the national, regional and international level with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO). The conventional focus of pandemic preparedness for EIDs of zoonotic origin has been on public health and human welfare. However, thisfocus on human populations has resulted in strategically important disciplinary silos. As the risks of zoonotic diseases have implications that reach across many domains outside traditional public health, including anthropological, environmental, and veterinary fora, a more inclusive ecological perspective is paramount for an effective response to future outbreaks.
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Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) has immense benefits for individual users, as well as society at large, through improvements to physical health, air quality, the environment, climate change, personal finance, accessibility, mobility and the empowerment of vulnerable groups.
The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report – Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 - 2020 – presents estimates on household access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services over the past five years, and assesses progress toward achieving the s...ixth sustainable development goal (SDG) to ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030’.
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Children’s mental health is top concern for Ukrainian parents, new World Vision report finds; Studies show 22 per cent of people in conflict zones suffer mental disorders; Prevention programs must be urgently prioritised
his first edition describes the standard operating procedures for health products for NTDs amenable to preventive chemotherapy and the medicines donated to treat them. These include albendazole for lymphatic filariasis and soil-transmitted helminthiases; azithromycin for trachoma and yaws; diethylca...rbamazine citrate for lymphatic filariasis; ivermectin for onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis; mebendazole for soil-transmitted helminthiases; praziquantel for schistosomiasis; and triclabendazole for foodborne trematodiases. Standard operating procedures for diseases amenable to case management will be covered in subsequent editions, including the application process for requesting medicines (Chapter 1). In the meantime, the procedures described in the rest of the document apply for both case management and preventive chemotherapy NTD health products.
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Saving lives is the priority of WHO’s response in Ukraine. WHO works to ensure time-critical, lifesaving multisectoral assistance, non-discriminatory access to emergency and essential health services and priority prevention programmes, and laying the foundation for longer-term health systems recov...ery and strengthening.
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Given that the emergency has exceeded the worst-case scenario, this revised supplementary appeal for the Ukraine situation outlines UNHCR’s additional requirements of $1.246 billion for March to December 2022.
Communicable diseases are a major cause of suffering, disability and death in the world. The World Health
Organization’s Programme on Communicable Diseases provides technical guidance and support to national governments to organize and implement programmes aimed at setting up or strengthening ong...oing control of common diseases, reducing transmission, mortality, morbidity and human suffering, and gradually eliminating these diseases so that they cease to be a public health problem. In some cases, the aim may also be to eradicate selected communicable diseases
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The Return Counselling Toolkit is a capacity-building instrument aimed at providing a harmonized and coherent approach to return counselling, based on key migrant-centred principles while protecting migrants’ rights. Mindful of the specific needs and rights pertaining to children, this additional ...module on counselling children and families further complements the first five modules of the Return Counselling Toolkit. It provides specialized guidance on how to prepare and deliver return counselling to accompanied, unaccompanied and separated children while upholding child rights and safeguards.
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Conflicts and disasters, including pandemics, affect women and men in all their diversity differently, and women and girls often suffer the most. Crisis-related hardships combine and compound pre-existing disadvantages, for example, they often cause women’s working conditions to worsen while incre...asing their overall workload and care responsibilities. At the same time, crises can give rise to changes that enable women to take up roles that were previously available only to men, and crises can open opportunities to address existing gender-based discrimination and violations of rights.
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Since 24 February 2022, the war in Ukraine has caused widespread suffering to its people and serious damage
to the country’s infrastructure. Attacks on the country’s health system and its power network threaten people, compromise the provision of health care, and complicate the distribution of ...essential medicines and equipment.
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The Operational guide: use of referral laboratories for the analysis of foodborne hazards in the Pacific aims to strengthen the food analysis capacity of Pacific Island countries and areas by identifying national and reference laboratories capable of testing for priority foodborne hazards. The Pacif...ic Island countries and areas are often vulnerable to food safety incidents and emergencies due to their geographical distribution and dependence on food imports. The guide outlines key considerations for selecting referral laboratories and submitting samples to them, enabling continuous improvement of food safety systems and providing safe food for all. The target audiences are health and food safety authorities.
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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 Strategic Plan of Action and Budget 2016-2025 for the elimination of onchocerciasisin countries was prepared based on the above dlrective for the consideration of IAF 18.The vision of the plan of action is to eliminate onchocerciasis in 80 percent of Africancountries. Implementation of the plan ...will also help strengthen health systems at community level while implementing CDI wlll help scale-up interventions agalnst other NTDs to the benefit of the wider national health systems.
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The guidance in this publication consists of generic definitions and methodologies for the characterization of extreme weather and climate events. This publication contribute to ensuring consistent exchange of information that underpins the WMO State of the Climate Reports, Climate Watches, climate ...change studies and other emerging applications.
The purpose of the present guidelines is not to change the practice at the national level. Instead, it provides guidance for generic definitions, which are useful in contributing to WMO State of the Climate reports, climate watches, climate change studies and other emerging applications, including the recently adopted methodology for cataloguing hazardous events (WMO-CHE). These applications require regional and/or international exchange of information on extreme events.
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This publication is part of WHO 75th anniversary and aims to capture key successes in public health globally and in Namibia. It includes contributory messages from the Head of State, Prime Minister and the Minister of Health and Social Services.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Biosafety and Biosecurity Initiative was launched by the Africa CDC in April 2019 with the aim of strengthening the African Union (AU) Member States’ biosafety and biosecurity systems and enabling them to comply with national and i...nternational requirements for biosafety and biosecurity including the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005), the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1540 and the multi-country Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA). The World Health Organization (WHO) Joint External Evaluation (JEE) and the Global Health Security Index report confirmed the known capacity gaps in biosafety and biosecurity among Africa Union Member (AU).
The regional consultations by Africa CDC conducted between 2019-2021 highlighted the deficiency or limited availability of standardized and regionally recognized training programs in the continent, limiting biosafety and biosecurity capacity building efforts in the region. In response, Africa CDC working with AU Member States developed a home grown, implementable and accessible professional training and certification program that is both recognized and endorsed by AU Member States. The Regional Training and Certification Program for Biosafety and Biosecurity Professionals, for African Biosafety and Biosecurity Professionals (RTCP-BBP) has four (4) areas of specialization, namely
Selection, Installation, Maintenance and Certification of Biological Safety Cabinets
Biorisk Management
Design and Maintenance of Facilities Handling High Risk Pathogens (Biocontainment Engineering)
Biological Waste management
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