An essential component of the return process is counselling, which aims to support counselling beneficiaries to make an informed decision on their future migration pathways. Counselling provides the space for migrants to exert their agency, supports them to prepare for return and positively contr...ibutes to their reintegration in countries of origin. The question of how to prepare and provide return counselling is of significant concern for all actors involved in the return process itself, but until
now very little has been done to offer a standardized approach to return counselling. The Return Counselling Toolkit intends to address this question and proposes a rights-based and migrant-centred approach to return counselling, which builds upon
IOM standards and the Organization’s long-standing experience in providing return and reintegration counselling to thousands of migrants every year, in a multiplicity of countries and contexts.
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The second ECDC/EFSA/EMA joint report on the integrated analysis of antimicrobial consumption (AMC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria from humans and food-producing animals addressed data obtained by the Agencies’ EU-wide surveillance networks for 2013–2015. AMC in both sectors, exp...ressed in mg/kg of estimated biomass, were compared at country and European level. Substantial variations between countries were observed in both sectors. Estimated data on AMC for pigs and poultry were used for the first time. Univariate and multivariate analyses were applied to study associations between AMC and AMR. In 2014, the average AMC was higher in animals (152 mg/kg) than in humans (124 mg/kg), but the opposite applied to the median AMC (67 and 118 mg/kg, respectively). In 18 of 28 countries, AMC was lower in animals than in humans. Univariate analysis showed statistically-significant (p < 0.05) associations between AMC and AMR for fluoroquinolones and Escherichia coli in both sectors, for 3rd- and 4th-generation cephalosporins and E. coli in humans, and tetracyclines and polymyxins and E. coli in animals. In humans, there was a statistically-significant association between AMC and AMR for carbapenems and polymyxins in Klebsiella pneumoniae. Consumption of macrolides in animals was significantly associated with macrolide resistance in Campylobacter coli in animals and humans. Multivariate analyses provided a unique approach to assess the contributions of AMC in humans and animals and AMR in bacteria from animals to AMR in bacteria from humans. Multivariate analyses demonstrated that 3rd- and 4th-generation cephalosporin and fluoroquinolone resistance in E. coli from humans was associated with corresponding AMC in humans, whereas resistance to fluoroquinolones in Salmonella spp. and Campylobacter spp. from humans was related to consumption of fluoroquinolones in animals. These results suggest that from a ‘One-health’ perspective, there is potential in both sectors to further develop prudent use of antimicrobials and thereby reduce AMR.
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nt. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, 11(12), 13097-13116; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph111213097
Climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and create risks that will impact health care facilities. Health care facilities will need to assess climate chang...e risks and adopt adaptive management strategies to be resilient, but guidance tools are lacking. In this study, a toolkit was developed for health care facility officials to assess the resiliency of their facility to climate change impacts. A mixed methods approach was used to develop climate change resiliency indicators to inform the development of the toolkit. The toolkit consists of a checklist for officials who work in areas of emergency management, facilities management and health care services and supply chain management, a facilitator’s guide for administering the checklist, and a resource guidebook to inform adaptation. Six health care facilities representing three provinces in Canada piloted the checklist. Senior level officials with expertise in the aforementioned areas were invited to review the checklist, provide feedback during qualitative interviews and review the final toolkit at a stakeholder workshop. The toolkit helps health care facility officials identify gaps in climate change preparedness, direct allocation of adaptation resources and inform strategic planning to increase resiliency to climate change.
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The QualityRights training and orientation modules have been developed to enhance the knowledge, skills and understanding of key stakeholders on how to promote the rights of people with psychosocial, intellectual or cognitive disabilities, improve the quality of services and support provided in the ...field of mental health and related areas, in line with international human rights standards, in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the recovery approach.
mental health and related fields, in accordance with international human rights standards, in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the recovery approach.
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April 2022 Volume 35 Issue 2 e00152-21
Population movements have turned Chagas disease (CD) into a global public health problem. Despite the successful implementation of subregional initiatives to control vectorial and transfusional Trypanosoma cruzi transmission in Latin American settings where t...he disease is endemic, congenital CD (cCD) remains a significant challenge. In countries where the disease is not endemic, vertical transmission plays a key role in CD expansion and is the main focus of its control. Although several health organizations provide general protocols for cCD control, its management in each geopolitical region depends on local authorities, which has resulted in a multitude of approaches. The aims of this review are to (i) describe the current global situation in CD management, with emphasis on congenital infection, and (ii) summarize the spectrum of available strategies, both official and unofficial, for cCD prevention and control in countries of endemicity and nonendemicity. From an economic point of view, the early detection and treatment of cCD are cost-effective. However, in countries where the disease is not endemic, national health policies for cCD control are nonexistent, and official regional protocols are scarce and restricted to Europe. Countries of endemicity have more protocols in place, but the implementation of diagnostic methods is hampered by economic constraints. Moreover, most protocols in both countries where the disease is endemic and those where it is not endemic have yet to incorporate recently developed technologies. The wide methodological diversity in cCD diagnostic algorithms reflects the lack of a consensus. This review may represent a first step toward the development of a common strategy, which will require the collaboration of health organizations, governments, and experts in the field.
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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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UNFPA has been implementing programming for women and girls through Women Friendly Health Spaces (WFHSs), which provide access to critical services, information and support. The WFHS is providing: psychosocial counseling services; awareness raising sessions on PSS in the community; and life skills &... vocational training opportunities. The WFHS also facilitates referral to other services including Psychosocial Counseling Centers (PSCCs).
The aim of this guidance note is to provide an overview of approaches on how to successfully integrate adolescent and youth (A&Y) programming into the WFHSs. UNFPA activities for women’s and girl’s protection in health facilities aim to protect women and girls including child marriage. Given that vulnerable women and girls in Afghanistan continue to access health facilities, particularly for reproductive health and maternal health services, it is crucial to provide support for survivors in the same location to improve access to essential psychosocial and protection support for women and girls. To support the integration of A&Y in the WFHS programming each WFHS will be supported by two full time Youth Educators. A female Youth Educator who will be working within the WFHS and a male Youth Educator who will be working in the community. The role of the Youth educators is to increase A&Y awareness and knowledge on living healthy lifestyles and ensuring a referral system to services in existing facilities.
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Cognizant of the need for standardization of the response for COVID-19, the Federal Ministry of Health prepared this national guideline in an effort to contain the epidemic before it overwhelms the health care facilities. This national guideline is expected to guide policy makers and h...ealth professionals at all level. A standardized approaches to will assist effective and efficient utilization of the limited resource of the country, minimizes dilemma and confusion on case management. To this effect, the FMOH has established National COVID-19 advisory committee. The committee members are from different specialties with very good experiences in disaster management and prevention and treatment of infectious disease epidemics. The input from the committee is used to make decisions at the national level about theepidemics in the weeks and months to come. The FMOH would like to acknowledge the members of the national advisory committee for their commitment and unreserved effort in finalizing the task in a very short period of time and advising the Ministry on various issues related to the epidemics at this critical time.
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Since the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978, community health volunteers (CHVs) have been at the forefront, providing health services, especially to underserved communities, in low-income countries. However, consolidation of CHVs position within formal health systems has proved to be complex and continue...s to challenge countries, as they devise strategies to strengthen primary healthcare. Malawi’s community health strategy, launched in 2017, is a novel attempt to harmonise the multiple health
service structures at the community level and strengthen service delivery through a team-based approach. The core community health team (CHT) consists of health surveillance assistants (HSAs), clinicians, environmental health officers and CHVs. This paper reviews Malawi’s strategy, with particular focus on the interface between HSAs, volunteers in community-based programmes and
the community health team. Our analysis identified key challenges that may impede the strategy’s implementation:
(1) inadequate training, imbalance of skill sets within CHTs and unclear job descriptions for CHVs; (2) proposed community-level interventions require expansion of pre-existing roles for most CHT members; and (3) district authorities may face challenges meeting financial obligations and filling community-level positions. For effective implementation, attention and further deliberation is needed on the appropriate forms of CHV support, CHT composition with possibilities of co-opting trained CHVs
from existing volunteer programmes into CHTs, review of CHT competencies and workload, strengthening coordination and communication across all community actors, and financing mechanisms. Policy support through the development of an addendum to the strategy, outlining opportunities for task-shifting between CHT members, CHVs’ expected duties and interactions with paid CHT personnel is recommended.
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An ALNAP Guide. Pilot Version.
This pilot guide is intended to help evaluation managers to commission and oversee, and team leaders to conduct, RTEs of humanitarian operational responses. Drawing on a synthesis of existing good practices, it sets out a flexible approach that can be adapted to a var...iety of contexts. While it concentrates on the particular problems posed by RTEs undertaken within a few months of the start of an emergency response, it addresses how such RTEs can also feed into on-going operations. While the guide focuses on RTEs, some of the advice applies to all evaluations.
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DHS Methodological Report No. 20
This study used Service Provision Assessment (SPA) and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from Haiti, Malawi, and Tanzania to compare traditionally used additive methods with a data reduction method—principal component analysis (PCA).
We scored ...the quality of health facilities with three approaches (simple additive, weighted additive, and PCA) for two constructs: quality of services, with only facilities-level data, and quality of care, which incorporates observation and client data. We ranked facilities as high, medium, or low quality based on their scores. Our results indicated that the rankings change with the scoring methodology. There was more consistency in the rankings of facilities by the simple additive and PCA methods than the weighted additive and PCA-based rankings. This may be due to the low factor loadings and little variance explained by the first component in the PCA. We aggregated facility scores to their respective DHS clusters (Haiti, Malawi) or regions (Tanzania) and geographically linked them to women interviewed in DHS surveys to test associations between the use of family planning services and the quality environment, as measured with each index.
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Tackling COVID-19 misinformation. Ensuring communities have access to lifesaving public health information from trusted sources and are not misled by misinformation is essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to empower doctors and nurses – some of the most effective and trusted... messengers of public health information – to actively address COVID-19 misinformation and build vaccine confidence globally, the WHO welcomes this social media toolkit for healthcare practitioners, developed by the Government of the United Kingdom.
This toolkit aims to provide healthcare workers with the tools, skills and content needed to effectively share authentic and reliable information online. Centered around three core vaccine confidence messages, Vaccine Safety, Vaccine Development and Vaccine Reducing Risk of Sickness; this toolkit sets out three approaches: creating your own posts, posting the images and videos provided in the toolkit, or resharing vaccine information from trusted sources.
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Brucellosis is widespread in both humans and livestock in many developing countries. The authors have performed a series of epidemiological studies on brucellosis in agro-pastoral areas in Tanzania since 2015, with the aim of the disease control. Previously, the potential of a community-based brucel...losis control initiative, which mainly consisted of the sale of cattle with experience of abortion and vaccinating calves, was assessed as being effective and acceptable based on a quantitative approach. This study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of community-based brucellosis control program using participatory rural appraisals (PRAs) and key-informant interviews. Four PRAs were performed together with livestock farmers and livestock and medical officers in 2017. In the PRAs, qualitative information related to risky behaviors for human infection, human brucellosis symptoms, willingness to sell cattle with experience of abortion, and willingness to pay for calf vaccination were collected, and a holistic approach for a community-based disease control project was planned. All of the communities were willing to implement disease control measures. To avoid human infection, education, especially for children, was proposed to change risky behaviors. The findings of this study showed that community-based disease control measures are promising.
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The document discusses physical inactivity as a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which contribute to two-thirds of global deaths, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. It emphasizes the global prevalence of physical inactivity and its health risks, such as increased m...ortality and chronic diseases. The text advocates for simple, sustainable interventions to promote physical activity, such as public initiatives like car-free days, to prevent and manage NCDs. It highlights the importance of exercise in improving physical and mental health and calls for collaborative, comprehensive approaches to increase activity levels.
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n light of the potential risk posed by SARS-CoV-2 variants, in January 2021 WHO organized an ad hoc consultation to discuss the development of an R&D agenda in response to existing and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.
The key objectives were to identify the critical research questions related to var...iants and agree on a research approach to address them. Six breakout groups covered a range of specific issues related to COVID-19 variants: Epidemiology and mathematical modelling; evolutionary biology; animal models; assays and diagnostics; clinical management and therapeutics; and vaccines.
This report is a summary of presentations and panel discussions.
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UNFPA implements programmes addressing gender-based violence (GBV) in 153 countries and territories, many of which face humanitarian emergencies. Leading resources used by GBV practitioners include the Inter-Agency Minimum Standards for Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies Programming (the GBViE Min...imum Standards) released in 2019 and the Essential Services Package for Women and Girls Subject to Violence released in 2015. Experiences across UNFPA have shown that GBV practitioners have faced challenges in determining when and how to use these tools and how to adapt different approaches to diverse contexts.
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How should humanitarian organisations prepare and respond to COVID-19 in humanitarian settings in low- and middle-income countries?
This Rapid Learning Review outlines 14 actions, insights and ideas for humanitarian actors to consider in their COVID-19 responses. It summarises and synthesises the... best available knowledge and guidance for developing a health response to COVID-19 in low- and middle-income settings as at April 2020
The paper, supported by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock, will be updated throughout 2020 to reflect emerging knowledge and evidence on the most effective approaches to respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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his sequel to the Groundswell report includes projections and analysis of internal climate migration for three new regions: East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Qualitative analyses of climate-related mobility in countries of the Mashreq and in Small Island D...eveloping States (SIDS) are also provided. This new report builds on the scenario-based modeling approach of the previous Groundswell report from 2018, which covered Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. The two reports’ combined findings provide, for the first time, a global picture of the potential scale of internal climate migration across the six regions, allowing for a better understanding of how slow-onset climate change impacts, population dynamics, and development contexts shape mobility trends.
Available in English, French, Arabic, Spanish
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A practical handbook. This Health Cluster Guide (2nd edition, 2020) provides practical advice on how WHO, Health Cluster Coordinators and partners can work together during a humanitarian crisis to achieve the aims of reducing avoidable mortality, morbidity and disability, and restoring the delivery ...of and equitable access to preventive and curative health care.
It highlights key principles of humanitarian health action and how coordination and joint efforts among health and other sector actors can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of health interventions and promote better health outcomes. It draws on Inter-Agency Standing Committee and other expert guidance and includes lessons from field experience in acute and protracted crises.
The coordination principles and practice presented in Health Cluster Guide are equally valid for coordinators and members of health sector groups that seek to achieve effective health action in countries where the cluster approach has not been formally adopted.
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Developmental disabilities are common. Yet, children with developmental disabilities have been neglected in health systems planning and policy provisions for health and continue to experience stigmatization, institutionalization, barriers to access health care and inequalities in health and educatio...n outcomes.
Using findings from research and practice and guided by the tenets of international human rights conventions, this WHO-UNICEF Global Report on children with developmental disabilities provides principles and approaches to intentionally include the needs and aspirations of children and young people with developmental disabilities in policy, programming and public health monitoring. It makes the case for greater accountability and proposes 10 priority actions to accelerate changes towards inclusive environments and responsive multisectoral care systems for children with developmental disabilities.
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