When setting national drinking-water quality regulations and standards, many countries consider the WHO Guidelines for drinking-water quality (GDWQ). To better understand the extent to which the GDWQ are used and reflected in these standards, this global review summarizes information from 104... countries and territories on values specified in national drinking-water quality standards for aesthetic, chemical, microbiological and radiological parameters.
The information provided will support regulatory agencies and other key stakeholders to access and compare data when setting or revising national drinking-water quality regulations and standards.
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Guidelines for national programmes and other stakeholders
Annexes for webposting and CD-Rom distribution with the policy guidelines
Health Evidence Network synthesis report 53
This publication provides information for identifying, classifying, marking, labelling, packaging, documenting and refrigerating infectious substances for transportation and ensuring their safe delivery.
The document provides practical guidance to facilitate compliance with applicable international... regulations for the transport of infectious substances by all modes of transport, both nationally and internationally, and include the changes
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Mission report: June 11-20, 2017
The Strategic Framework for Emergency Preparedness is a unifying framework which identifies the principles and elements of effective country health emergency preparedness. It adopts the major lessons of previous initiatives and lays out the planning and implementation process by which countries can ...determine their priorities and develop or strengthen their operational capacities. The framework capitalizes on the strengths of current initiatives and pushes for more integrated action at a time when there is both increased political will and increased funding available to support preparedness efforts.
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The purpose of this Emergency Response Framework (ERF) is to clarify WHO’s roles and responsibilities in this regard and to provide a common approach for its work in emergencies. Ultimately, the ERF requires WHO to act with urgency and predictability to best serve and be accountable to populations... affected by emergencies.
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The training is targeted at all professionals involved in the management of drinking-water safety. The handbook is divided into three parts:
• Part 1 – Overview of the training approach, training structure and mode of training assessment
• Part 2 – Module learning material, which i...ncludes module objectives, delivery information, key points and exercises
• Part 3 – How the material can be adapted to different utility contexts
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This update of the Guidelines for poison control, entitled Guidelines for establishing a poison centre, reflects the development of the role of poison centres in public health and the sound management of chemicals, described in section 1, and the opportunities provided by new technology. Assessments... carried out under the IHR show
continuing gaps in capacity for managing chemicals (2). In particular, many countries still lack access to poison
centre services (3). There is therefore demand for updated guidance.
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national programmes for occupational health and safety for health workers: lessons learned from countries: summary report of the WHO online workshop, 15 July 2020
WHO issued an updated appeal (May 2022) detailing its resource needs for Ukraine and refugee-receiving and hosting countries for March-August for Ukraine and March-December 2022 for other countries.
The needs are an estimated US$ 147.5 million: US$ 80 million for health response in Ukraine and ano...ther US$ 67.5 million is needed to address the health needs of Ukrainian people affected by the conflict in refugee-receiving and hosting countries.
With the funds sought, WHO aims to ensure, until August, that up to 6 million people can access essential health services including trauma care in Ukraine.
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Laboratory Biossafety Manual
A global call to action to protect the mental health of health and care workers
Pathogen genomic surveillance has become a priority for public health systems in recent years. Genomic sequencing is increasingly being used to characterize pathogens and monitor important public health priorities (e.g. poliovirus, influenza virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Vibrio cholerae, ant...imicrobial resistance (AMR)). The decrease in cost and time of sequencing and the exponential development of bioinformatic pipelines have played a critical role in integrating pathogen genomics into routine public health surveillance. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the role that sequencing plays in the surveillance of infectious diseases. Sequencing facilitates earlier detection, more accurate investigation of outbreaks, closer real-time monitoring of pathogen evolution and tailored development and evaluation of interventions to inform local to global public health decision-making and action. However, there remains a need to coordinate efforts, leverage and link existing surveillance and laboratory networks and capabilities, and systematically integrate genetic sequence data (GSD) with clinical and epidemiological data to strengthen its utility.
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This checklist is an operational tool to help national authorities develop or revise national respiratory pathogen (inclusive of influenza and coronaviruses) pandemic preparedness plans.