This Global Plan builds on the previous edition, which laid out priority actions for 2018-2022, informed by global commitments member states endorsed at the 2018 United Nations High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB. The resource needs estimates from this Global Plan include resources needed for implement...ing TB care and prevention and R&D into new tools. This Global Plan has already informed the Global Fund Investment Case and the 2022 G20 deliberations on TB. It will serve as a key document for inspiring and aligning global advocacy efforts, such as for the upcoming UNHLM on TB in 2023.
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The Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH) is a virtual network of individuals and organisations that aim to improve services for people living with mental health problems and psychosocial disabilities worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where effective services are of...ten scarce.
Two principles are fundamental to the Movement: scientific evidence and human rights.
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The Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Service Package for Men and Adolescent Boys has been developed to support providers of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to increase the range and quality of services to meet the specific and diverse needs of men and adolescent boys. This package... focuses specifically on the provision of such services integrated
within clinical and non-clinical contexts and follows a gender-transformative approach. It covers men and adolescent boys in all their diversity and takes a positive approach to SRH, seeing this not just as the absence of disease, but the positive expression of one’s gender, sex and sexuality. In doing so, this service package contributes to efforts to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as prioritized in the Sustainable Development Goals. This package is in no way intended to detract from the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and adolescent girls, nor to divert resources, funding or attention from much-needed SRH services and programmes for women and adolescent girls.
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Having completed this course, learners will be able to: Describe and analyze the opportunities, challenges and limits of Global Health Diplomacy. Examine the diplomatic, financial, and geopolitical context that underlies global health decision-making. Explain the role of the many players in the spac...e, including governments, philanthropists, and multilateral institutions . Course Objective The field of global health is often thought of purely in medical or public health terms, but there are important geopolitical and policy dimensions of global health that underlie programmatic responses to global health challenges. By completing this course, learners will be able to explain the specific institutions and initiatives that are fundamental to current global health diplomacy activities and functions, and how these influence global health outcomes. Learners will further be able to summarize real-world examples where global health diplomacy either helped or limited global health outcomes, and explain the reasons for those outcomes.
Accessed July 27th, 2019
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WHO and UNICEF have established recommendations for breastfeeding practices. Although every mother decides how to feed her child, this decision is strongly influenced by economic, environmental, social and political factors. The Global Breastfeeding Scorecard analyzes indicators on how countries pro...tect, promote and support breastfeeding through funding or policies.
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Mental disorders impose an enormous burden on society, accounting for almost one in three years lived with disability globally. •In addition to their health impact, mental disorders cause a significant economic burden due to lost economic output and the link between mental disorders and costly, po...tentially fatal conditions including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV, and obesity.•80% of the people likely to experience an episode of a mental disorder in their lifetime come from low- and middle-income countries.• Two of the most common forms of mental disorders, anxiety and depression, are prevalent, disabling, and respond to a range of treatments that are safe and effective. Yet, owing to stigma and inadequate funding, these disorders are not being treated in most primary care and community settings.
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This policy brief has been developed in response to the contemporary challenge of antibiotic resistance (ABR). ABR poses a formidable threat to global health and sustainable development. It is now increasingly recognized that the systematic neglect of cultural factors is one of the biggest obs...tacles to achieving better health outcomes and better standards of living worldwide. Using a cultural contexts of health approach, the policy brief explores the centrality of culture to the challenge of ABR. The brief examines how the prescription and use of antibacterial medicines, the transmission of resistance, and the regulation and funding of research are influenced by cultural, social and commercial, as well as biological and technological factors. The brief moves beyond the ready equation of culture with individual behaviours and demonstrates how culture serve as an enabler of health and provide new possibilities for change.
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Every country has been affected by COVID-19, with nearly a quarter
of a billion cases and almost 5 million deaths reported globally as of
end of September 2021. Despite the stunning speed with which highly
effective and safe vaccines have been developed, new waves of disease
are still pushin...g health systems to the breaking point, increasingly
transmissible variants are emerging, some survivors are suffering
serious long-term sequelae, and the International Monetary Fund
estimates that global economic losses could exceed US$5.3 trillion
by 2026, if COVID-19 becomes endemic.
Although over 6 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine have already been
administered, and global production is now reaching 1.5 billion doses
per month, the world is not positioned to end the pandemic. In areas of
high vaccine coverage, there have been massive reductions in serious
disease, hospitalization and death but, globally, vaccine access is highly
inequitable with coverage ranging from 1% to over 70%, depending
largely on a country’s wealth. Consequently, SARS CoV-2 variants
continue to emerge, causing surges of disease and slowing or even
reversing the reopening of societies and economies.
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Environmental Research Letters
Microplastic debris floating at the ocean surface can harm marine life. Understanding the severity of this harm requires knowledge of plastic abundance and distributions. Dozens of expeditions measuring microplastics have been carried out since the 1970s, but they ha...ve primarily focused on the North Atlantic and North Pacific accumulation zones, with much sparser coverage elsewhere. Here, we use the largest dataset of microplastic measurements assembled to date to assess the confidence we can have in global estimates of microplastic abundance and mass. We use a rigorous statistical framework to standardize a global dataset of plastic marine debris measured using surface-trawling plankton nets and coupled this with three different ocean circulation models to spatially interpolate the observations. Our estimates show that the accumulated number of microplastic particles in 2014 ranges from 15 to 51 trillion particles, weighing between 93 and 236 thousand metric tons, which is only approximately 1% of global plastic waste estimated to enter the ocean in the year 2010. These estimates are larger than previous global estimates, but vary widely because the scarcity of data in most of the world ocean, differences in model formulations, and fundamental knowledge gaps in the sources, transformations and fates of microplastics in the ocean.
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Interactive maps; country profiles and Studies
The Dashboard is designed to consolidate and present up-to-date data on food crisis severity, track global food security financing, and make available global and country-level research and analysis to improve coordination of the policy and financial re...sponse to the crisis.
It will bring together disparate and vast information on food security into one place, to help reduce transaction costs, improve transparency, and strengthen analysis. It can also help speed up financing by highlighting funding needs and gaps. The goal is to inform a coordinated global food crisis response while also helping to advance medium to long-term food security interventions.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) and the global community of countries, partners, donors, technical experts, scientists and field implementation teams continue to work towards the ultimate goal of a world free of the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This work is described in the NTD ...road map 2021–2030, WHO’s blueprint to drive global efforts in the fight against NTDs in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These goals encompass a vision of a world population for whom equality of opportunity and of health are fundamental.
Within this context, and during the two years since the launch of the road map (2021–2022), progress has been made. Nevertheless, hindrances towards achieving the targets for 2030 have arisen and work to overcome these obstacles continues. These endeavours have also revealed the scale of the task still facing the global NTD community.
Disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to afflict longstanding and new programmes alike, while other entrenched issues have re-emerged in new and challenging ways. The global NTD community is also confronted with a changing, multi-dimensional funding landscape as donors reassess priorities and adapt to new ways of working, as well as a challenging and unpredictable international context. As a result, progress in controlling, eliminating or eradicating NTDs has not been as far-reaching as expected.
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Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are targeted for global control or elimination. Recognising that the populations most in need of medicines to target NTDs are those least able to support and sustain them financially, the pharmaceutical industry created mechanisms for donating medicines and experti...se to affected countries through partnerships with the WHO, development agencies, non-governmental organisations and philanthropic donors. In the last 30 y, companies have established programmes to donate 17 different medicines to overcome the burden of NTDs. Billions of tablets, capsules, intravenous and oral solutions have been donated, along with the manufacturing, supply chains and research necessary to support these efforts. Industry engagement has stimulated other donors to support NTDs with funds and oversight so that the ‘heath benefit’ return on investment in these programmes is truly a ‘best value in public health’. Many current donations are ‘open-ended’, promising support as long as necessary to achieve defined health targets. Extraordinary global health advances have been made in filariasis, onchocerciasis, trachoma, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, intestinal parasites and others; and these advances are taking place in the context of strengthening health systems and meeting the global development goals espoused by the WHO. The pharmaceutical manufacturers, already strong collaborators in initiating or supporting these disease-targeted programmes, have committed to continuing their partnership roles in striving to meet the targets of the WHO’s new NTD roadmap to 2030.
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Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, c...orruption is rarely openly discussed. In this Lecture, I outline the magnitude of the problem of corruption, how it started, and what is happening now. I also outline people's fears around the topic, what is needed to address corruption, and the responsibilities of the academic and research communities in all countries, irrespective of their level of economic development. Policy makers, researchers, and funders need to think about corruption as an important area of research in the same way we think about diseases. If we are really aiming to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure healthy lives for all, corruption in global health must no longer be an open secret.
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An adequate amount of prepaid resources for health is important to ensure access to health services and for the pursuit of universal health coverage. Previous studies on global health financing have described the relationship between economic development and health financing. In this study, we furth...er explore global health financing trends and examine how the sources of funds used, types of services purchased, and development assistance for health disbursed change with economic development. We also identify countries that deviate from the trends.
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Financing Global Health 2013: Transition in an Age of Austerity, IHME’s fifth annual report on global health expenditure, depicts financing trends that underline the resilience of development assistance for health. This year’s updated estimates show that despite lackluster economic growth and fi...scal cutbacks in many developed countries, total assistance remained steady, reaching an all-time high of $31.3 billion in 2013. While annual increases have leveled off since 2010, continued international funding is a sign of the international development community’s enduring support for global health.
The report also shows shifts in sources of financing. As funding from many bilateral donors and development banks has declined, growth in funding from the GAVI Alliance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, non-governmental organizations, and the UK government is counteracting these cuts. Development assistance for different health issues is tracked up to 2011, revealing that the greatest increase in funding was for maternal, newborn, and child health.
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Previous advocacy efforts have achieved tangible goals in terms garnering political commitments
to increase financing for TB—as seen at the 2018 UN High-Level Meeting on TB. The challenge
now is to ensure that these commitments are actually met within a global biomedical research
ecosystem that... is designed and incentivized to prioritize the health needs of wealthy populations
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In this quality improvement study, data from the Creditor Reporting System were used to estimate flows of total DAAH and per-adolescent DAAH and to assess its distribution by donors, regions, and countries and the leading causes of burden of disease (ie,
disability-adjusted life-years) in 132 devel...oping countries between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2015. Through use of a key word search and various funding allocation methods, 2 sets of estimates were produced: adolescent-targeted DAAH that included disbursements to projects with a primary adolescent health target and adolescent-inclusive DAAH that included disbursements to
projects with either a primary or partial adolescent health target, as well as projects that could benefit adolescent health but did not include age-related key words.
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This report provides an analysis of donor government funding to address the HIV response in low- and
middle-income countries in 2022, the latest year available, as well as trends over time. It includes both
bilateral funding from donors and their contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tub...erculosis and
Malaria (Global Fund), UNITAID, and UNAIDS. Overall, the analysis shows that while donor government
funding for HIV increased between 2021 and 2022, this was primarily due to the timing of payments from
the U.S. government and not actual increases in commitments.
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The Global Leprosy Strategy 2021–2030 “Towards zero leprosy” was developed through a broad consultative process with all major stakeholders during 2019 and 2020. Valuable inputs were provided by national leprosy programme managers, technical agencies, public health and leprosy experts, funding... agencies and persons or members of communities directly affected by leprosy.
The Strategy aims to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It is structured along four pillars:
(i) implement integrated, country-owned zero leprosy road maps in all endemic countries;
(ii) scale up leprosy prevention alongside integrated active case detection;
(iii) manage leprosy and its complications and prevent new disability; and
(iv) combat stigma and ensure human rights are respected. Interruption of transmission and elimination of disease are at the core of the Strategy.
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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established its Financial Mechanism to facilitate the provision and transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. The Global Environment Facility became the first operating entity of the Financial Mechanism after the ...Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, and the GEF Council agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 1996. This agreement placed the GEF under the guidance of the COP, as Article 11 of the Convention states that the Financial Mechanism “shall function under the guidance of and be accountable to the Conference of the Parties, which shall decide on its policies, program priorities and eligibility criteria related to this Convention.”
The yearly COPs have provided an opportunity for Parties to update and renew their guidance to the GEF. To date, there have been 145 UNFCCC COP decisions and 526 paragraphs that offer guidance to the GEF (see Table 1). In addition, the Conferences of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) have issued 40 decisions and 115 paragraphs as guidance to the GEF (see Table 2). Key areas of Convention guidance have included: the GEF’s role as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism, including the Paris Agreement; the GEF’s institutional and procedural reform; transparency and access to GEF funds; country engagement and empowerment; reporting on greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories; support for technology transfer; and ongoing programming in mitigation and adaptation.
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