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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The World Food Programme (WFP) has taken important steps to progress disability inclusion across its programming and operations. In late 2022, WFP commissioned the Nossal Institute, University of Melbourne in partnership with the Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia to identify ...pathways for increasing disability inclusion in WFP’s emergency preparedness and response (EPR) programming.
The study explored WFP’s programming in Indonesia and the Philippines, including WFP’s advisory, technical assistance and service provision roles to government and partners and informed the development of this guide (see appendix 2). As general guidance on disability inclusion is increasingly available, the purpose of this guide is to contextualize disability inclusion in WFP’s emergency preparedness and response programming. The guide builds on core reference materials, such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, 2019. While of wider relevance, this guide is directed at WFP’s EPR programming in Asia and the Pacific.
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The sixteenth meeting of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (STAG-NTD) was held as a hybrid meeting, 27–28 September 2022.
Dr Ren Minghui, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage/Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases, welcomed participan...ts to the meeting. He said the World Health Organization’s Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (WHO/NTD) was in a state of transition. Following the death of the late esteemed Director Dr Mwelecele Ntuli Malecela earlier in the year, Dr Gautam Biswas had taken over as Acting Director but would soon retire; the appointment of a new Director was under way. Owing to rotation of STAG-NTD members, this would be the last meeting for some and the first meeting for several new participants. The work however would continue with the same commitment. Discussions over the next two days would focus on critical issues regarding recovery of NTD services following the disruptions caused by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which had impacted many health services worldwide. He looked forward to receiving the advice and guidance of STAG-N
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The key question addressed in this article is social inclusion, as an opposite concept of social exclusion. The author provides a historical of social inclusion/exclusion terminology. Further, some of the principles of social inclusion are presented. In the end, the article focuses on the role of ed...ucation as a very important and useful tool for ensuring social inclusion.Social inclusion through education, in particular through vocational education, considered by the author as the only way towards sustainable development of Albanian society.
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While the full effects of COVID-19 remain unknown, the pandemic continues to profoundly impact regional migration and mobility dynamics, with deep health, social and economic consequences for the most vulnerable, including migrants, displaced populations and their host communities, and returnees.
This guidance document is meant to support practitioners working in disaster prone contexts to develop and implement more effective integrated resilience programming. It promotes programming that cuts across different fields of work like rights awareness, food security, emergency preparedness, livel...ihoods, education, health etc. whilst at the same time encouraging us to work simultaneously at the individual, household, community and national level. It includes specific recommendations for developing resilience programming for communities prone to floods, cyclone, drought and earthquakes. It also includes recommendations to develop safe school programming to help reduce the impact of disasters on school infrastructure, ensure education continuity and build the resilience of students, teachers and their families.
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July 2021. This publication brings together important clinical and programmatic updates produced by WHO since 2016 and provides comprehensive, evidence-informed recommendations and good practice statements within a public health, rights-based and person-centred approach.
These guidelines bring in... the most recent guidance on HIV testing strategies - the entry point for HIV prevention and treatment - and include comprehensive guidance on infant diagnosis. Key recommendations are presented on rapid antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation and the use of dolutegravir. Updated recommendations are included on the timing of ART for people with TB, and the use of point-of-care technologies for treatment monitoring.
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Guidelines for Prevention and Reponse
Vaccines are powerful weapons in the fight against pandemic viruses as shown by responses to both the 2009 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics. However, planning for accessing, allocating and deploying vaccines in a pandemic situation is a complex endeavour, beset with multiple challenges at a...ll levels – local, regional and global. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have prepared this revised guidance document to assist countries update their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) by leveraging global learnings from past pandemic responses, including the recent COVID-19 vaccination effort. The development and testing of a NDVP would not only advance pandemic preparedness efforts but would also have benefits in terms of increasing national capabilities to manage other health emergencies which require emergency vaccination campaigns.
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In recognition of the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), its increasing threat to human, animal and plant health, and the need for a One Health approach to address this issue, the 39th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) agreed it was important for the food safety comm...unity to play its part and re-established the ad hoc Codex Intergovernmental Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance (TFAMR) ). The objectives of the Task Force were
to revise the current Codex Code of Practice to Minimise and Contain Antimicrobial Resistance and to develop new guidance on surveillance programmes relevant to foodborne AMR.
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Replacement of Annex 2 of WHO Technical Report Series, No. 964... morbidity. These preparations are included in the WHO List of Essential Medicines and should be part of any primary health care package where snakebites occur. Currently, there is an urgent need to ensure availability of safe, effective and affordable antivenoms, particularly to those in developing countries and to improve the regulatory control over the manufacture, import and sale of antivenoms.>
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This UNAIDS 2024 report brings together new data and case studies which demonstrate that the decisions and policy choices taken by world leaders this year will decide the fate of millions of lives and whether the world’s deadliest pandemic is overcome.
Despite improvements in recent years, the prevalence of undernutrition among women and children in Myanmar remains unacceptably high. One in three children are stunted and about 8% are acutely malnourished. Micronutrient deficiencies are common among infants, young children and pregnant women. In fa...ct, more than 80% of children 6 to 23 months of age and 70% of pregnant women are anemic. To better understand the determinants of undernutrition and the linkages between food security, livelihoods and nutrition in Myanmar as a whole as well as in specific geographic areas where programs supported by the Livelihoods, Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) are being implemented, the LEARN project has reviewed food and nutrition security data from the past five years and synthesized relevant findings into this report.
Following the Introduction, Section 2 presents national level data on the food and nutrition security situation in Myanmar in the past five years. Sections 3, 4 and 5 present data on food and nutrition security from the various agro-ecological zones that are of interest to LIFT, namely the Coastal/Delta, Dry, and Uplands.
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Evaluation report
December 2014
These guidelines provide updated evidence-based recommendations on the priority HCV-related topics from the 2018 WHO Guidelines for the care and treatment of persons diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C infection and the 2017 WHO Guidelines on hepatitis B and C testing. These priority areas are:
... direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment of adolescents and children ages ≥3 years of age
simplified HCV service delivery (decentralization, integration and task sharing)
HCV diagnostics – use of point-of-care (POC) HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) assays and reflex HCV RNA testing.
These guidelines also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as the inclusion of new manufacturers’ protocols on the use of dried blood spot (DBS) for HCV RNA testing and new data to inform the limit of detection for HCV RNA assays as a test of cure, in addition to their use for diagnosis.
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Disabled people in developing countries are the poorest of the poor: if we are serious about tackling extreme poverty, our development work has to target them. The post-2015 development framework offers hope that disabled people will finally get the prominence they deserve on the global development ...agenda. But this will only be possible with sustained political pressure, and the UK’s position will only be credible if it leads by example in its own development work. Disabled people experience some of the most extreme poverty in the world, but there are also realistic opportunities for donors to turn the situation around.
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NEPAL CHILDREN’S EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY CONSULTATION - To better understand the consequences of the Nepal Earthquake for children, four child-centred agencies, in coordination with the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) and the Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB), conducted a C...hildren’s Earthquake Recovery Consultation using Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with more than 1,800 girls and boys from the 14 most severely-affected districts. The objectives of the consultation were to hear directly from children the challenges they are facing in the aftermath of the earthquakes; to assess the impact of the crisis on their roles, responsibilities and future opportunities; and to seek their views on and recommendations for recovery.
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