The COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures around the world, affecting almost 1.6 billion students. The effects of even short disruptions in a child’s schooling on their learning and well-being have been shown to be acute and long lasting. The capacities of education systems to respond to the cr...isis by delivering remote learning and support to children and families have been diverse yet uneven.
This report reviews the emerging evidence on remote learning throughout the global school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic to help guide decision-makers to build more effective, sustainable, and resilient education systems for current and future crises.
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Apresentação do PLANO NACIONAL DE EXPANSÃO DA TESTAGEM PARA COVID-19 e orientações acerca dos dois
Food environments are usually defined as the settings with all the different types of
food made available and accessible to people as they go about their daily lives.
That is, the range of food in supermarkets, small retail outlets, wet markets, street
food stalls, coffee shops, tea houses, s...chool canteens, restaurants, and all the other
venues where people buy and eat food. These environments differ enormously depending on the context. They can be extensive and diverse, with a seemingly endless array of options and price ranges, or they can be sparse, with very few options on offer. Because they determine what food consumers can access at a given moment in time, at what price, and with what degree of convenience, food environments both constrain and prompt the consumer’s choice.Food environments are influenced by the food systems which supply them, and vice versa. Food systems encompass the entire range of activities, people and institutions involved in the production, processing,
marketing, consumption and disposal of food (FAO, 2013). They include but are not limited to food supply chains. Making food systems nutrition-sensitive can contribute to addressing all forms of malnutrition, as food systems determine whether the food needed for good nutrition are available, affordable, acceptable and of adequate
quantity and quality. How closely food systems and food environments are interrelated and interdependent, and the degree to which external factors affect nutrition outcomes, varies from setting to setting.Many of today’s food systems
and food environments are challenged in supporting consumer choices that are
consistent with healthy diets and good nutrition. Consumers are not making choices based on nutrition and health, and poor diet is now the number one risk factor for death and disability worldwide (GBD, 2015). Food systems that do not enable healthy diets are increasingly recognized as an underlying cause of malnutrition (GLOPAN, 2016), and malnutrition, irrespective of form, has a huge cost. Economic costs associated with undernutrition are estimated at $1-2 trillion per year, about 2-3% of global GDP (FAO, 2013); the global economic cost of obesity and associated diet-related non-communicable diseases is estimated at $2 trillion per year, about 2.8% of global GDP (McKinsey, 2014). Influencing food environments for promoting healthy diets is an emerging strategy to address today’s nutrition challenges.
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21 January 2022
The overall threat posed by Omicron largely depends on four key questions: (i) how transmissible the variant is; (ii) how well vaccines and prior infection protect against infection, transmission, clinical disease and death; (iii) how virulent the variant is compared to other varian...ts; and (iv) how populations understand these dynamics, perceive risk and follow control measures, including public health and social measures (PHSM).
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The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in an evolving epidemiological context where some countries are experiencing a progressive decrease in HIV positivity in their testing programme as they are moving closer to the first 95 target. Distinguishing changes in HIV testing services due to the COVID-19 pandemic... from those resulting from evolving HIV testing strategies is crucial for adapting services and helping countries define their strategic mix of testing options moving forward. There is a need to focus, prioritize and plan for strategic efforts to prevent going further off the track toward achieving global targets and goals.
To support these efforts, WHO in partnership with ministries of health conducted an in-depth analysis of HIV testing services and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation prior to and during reported COVID-19 disruptions. Additional publicly available Global Fund and PEPFAR data was also reviewed and analysed. This analysis, and coordination with ministries of health, identified key service delivery adaptations utilized during COVID-19-related disruptions and formed the basis of this strategic guide.
This document focuses on current country needs, as well as plans for prioritization and potential surge support needs in the event of future disruptions. Although the data and implications are specific to sub-Saharan Africa, key principles and lessons can be applied elsewhere.
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Global and Regional Data 1 December 2021; The 90–90–90 targets were missed, but not by much. At the end of 2020, 84% of people living with HIV knew their HIV status, 87% of people living with HIV who knew their HIV status were accessing antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of people on treatment were... virally suppressed.
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The report identifies major global gaps in WASH services: one third of health care facilities do not have what is needed to clean hands where care is provided; one in four facilities have no water services, and 10% have no sanitation services. This means that 1.8 billion people use facilities that l...ack basic water services and 800 million use facilities with no toilets. Across the world’s 47 least-developed countries, the problem is even greater: half of health care facilities lack basic water services. Furthermore, the extent of the problem remains hidden because major gaps in data persist, especially on environmental cleaning.
This report also describes the global and national responses to the 2019 World Health Assembly resolution on WASH in health care facilities. More than 70% of countries have conducted related situation analyses, 86% have updated and are implementing standards and 60% are working to incrementally improve infrastructure and operation and maintenance of WASH services. Case studies from 30 countries demonstrate that progress is being propelled by strong national leadership and coordination, use of data to direct resources and action, and the mutual benefits of empowering health workers and communities to develop solutions together.
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24 Nov. 2021
Action against gender-based violence being pushed to the outlying margins of the global COVID-19 response
A new Oxfam report shows an undeniable increase in gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world to which too many governments and donors are not doi...ng enough to tackle.
The report, The Ignored Pandemic: The Dual Crisis of Gender-Based Violence and COVID-19, showed the number of calls made by survivors to domestic violence hotlines in ten countries during the first months of lockdown. The data reveals a 25 – 111 percentage surge; in Argentina (25%), Colombia (79%), Tunisia (43%), China (50%), Somalia (50%), South Africa (69%), UK (25%), Cyprus (39%), Italy (73%) and the largest increase in Malaysia where calls surged by over 111%.
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11 august 2022, updated version
This guideline covers identifying, assessing and managing the long-term effects of COVID-19, often described as ‘long COVID’. It makes recommendations about care in all healthcare settings for adults, children and young people who have new or ongoing symptoms 4 weeks or more after the start of a...cute COVID-19. It also includes advice on organising services for long COVID.
Updated 11 November 2021
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The WHO End TB Strategy aims to end the global TB epidemic by 2030, in alignment with Goal 3 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN committed to ending the TB epidemic through adoption of WHO’s End TB Strateg...y and the UN SDGs in 2014 and 2015, respectivel
Almost half of the deaths worldwide caused by TB in 2019 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region, home to around a quarter of the global population. Maintaining robust progress in this Region is therefore essential if the global goal of ending the TB epidemic is to be realized. Despite substantial gains made in the Region, the threat to
health worldwide posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse these gains and eclipse the focus on the global TB emergency.
While continuing to tackle COVID-19-related challenges, countries will need to rapidly and urgently deploy supplementary measures to address the large numbers of missed cases, poor treatment outcomes and, potentially, a higher TB burden.
The Regional Strategic Plan towards Ending TB in the Region 2021–2025 clearly articulates priority interventions, analyses the challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities, and focuses on implementation considerations in the Region.
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