The occurrence of a case of wild polio in a previously polio free area as presently in Syria, whether through importation, laboratory accident, or mutation of vaccine virus (VDPV), should be considered a public health emergency, that requires a rapid and high quality response as utmost priority
The checklist tool described in this handbook is intended for EU/EEA public health authorities who need to assess the capacity for communicable disease prevention and control at migrant reception/detention centres hosting migrants for weeks/months (medium-term) in order to identify gaps and set prio...rities for development.
Using this tool, the aim is to monitor and support capacity development to prevent the onset and improve the management of communicable disease outbreaks at medium-term migration reception/detention centres, both on a day-to-day basis and in the event of a sudden influx of migrants.
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A practioner's guide, based on lessons from Ebola.
This guide is a compilation of best practices and key lessons learned through Oxfam’s experience of community engagement during the 2014–15 Ebola response in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It aims to inform public health practitioners and programme ...teams about the design and implementation of community-centred approaches
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A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NAMIBIA
Drugs and medical supplies are dispensed at the cutting edge level of the interface between the public health system and the people. Availability or lack of it brings either credit or discredit to the public health system. The primary reason for holding stocks of medicines and medical supplies in a ...proper scientific manner is to ensure continuous and uninterrupted availability to prevent stock-outs, especially of critical items of supply while at the same time ensuring that stocks of medicines do not get expired. An efficient inventory management is a pre-requisite for optimal stock management. It enables the management of health facilities to know the current pattern of consumption of drug trends over a period of time and also variances. The environmental control of the drugs and other medical supplies play an important role to keep the products' efficacy intact. Some medicines and vaccines need special storage temperature, otherwise, there may be wastage. The quality of the medicines can be adversely affected by poor storage, transportation and distribution. Thus, maintaining proper storage condition for health commodities is vital for ensuring their quality. So, by this training, CDMU wants to educate different people dealing with medicines and equip them for the roles they have to perform efficiently so that the wastage does not take place or can be minimized.
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Purpose of these Guidelines
These guidelines are designed to help members of the public to provide first aid to someone who is at risk of suicide. The role of the first aider is to assist the person until appropriate professional help is received or the crisis resolves.
Development of these Guidel...ines
The following guidelines are based on the expert opinions of a panel of mental health professionals from Japan about how to help someone who may be at risk of suicide.
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Policy Brief, Updated in March 2017
Key messages
• Meaningful involvement of sex workers in the HIV response through peer-based education and outreach and consultation in policy making and programme planning is vital to reduce their vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted inf...ections (STIs) and ensure that the challenges they face are addressed adequately.
• Sex workers (female, transgender and male) have the right to protect their health through accessing comprehensive and evidence-informed HIV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions.
• Innovative HIV prevention strategies and creative use of combination interventions are needed to reach mobile and ”hard to reach” sex workers.
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Surveys are needed to guide trachoma control efforts in Mozambique, with WHO guidelines for intervention based on the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation–follicular (TF) in children aged 1–9 years and the prevalence of trichiasis in adults aged 15 years and above. We conducted surveys to com...plete the map of trachoma prevalence in Mozambique, concluding that it still represents a significant public health problem in many areas of Mozambique.
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On January 14-16, 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a communications roundtable in Atlanta, Georgia, to explore hospitals' challenges in communicating with internal and external audiences in communitywide emergencies involving radioactive materials. The roundtable, Hosp...ital Communications in a Mass Casualty Radiological Incident, is part of CDC's effort to help prepare the nation's public health community for threats of terrorism.
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This third edition of the National Gender Statistics Report provides the updated sex-disaggregated data in twelve fields: Population and Youth; Education; Health and Nutrition; Economic Activity and time use; Poverty & Social Protection; Justice & Human rights; Environment and Natural Resources; Dec...isionmaking and Public life; Infrastructure, ICT and Media; Trade and Business and Industry; Agriculture, Livestock and Forestry, and lastly the Income and Access to Finance. It should be noted that this report takes into account almost all quantitative indicators of the United Nations Minimum Set of Gender Indicators (UNMSGI) as developed by the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) and some of the approved quantitative SDGs gender related indicators.
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Social distancing is an action taken to minimise contact with other individuals; social distancing measures comprise one category of non-pharmaceutical countermeasures (NPCs)1 aimed at reducing disease transmission and thereby also reducing pressure on health services.
This document builds upon exi...sting ECDC documents, including guidelines for the use of non-pharmaceutical measures to delay and mitigate the impact of 2019-nCoV, a rapid risk assessment: outbreak of novel coronavirus disease – 5th update, a technical report on the use of evidence in decision-making during public health emergencies, and a guidance document on community engagement for public health events caused by communicable disease threats in the EU/EEA.
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Interim Guidcance March 2020
People affected by humanitarian crises, particularly those displaced and/or living in camps and camp-like settings, are often faced with specific challenges and vulnerabilities that must be taken into consideration when planning for readiness and response operations for... the COVID-19 outbreak. They are frequently neglected, stigmatized, and may face difficulties in accessing health services that are otherwise available to the general population. In the context of this Interim Guidance, the people in humanitarian situations affected by this guidance may include internally displaced persons (IDPs), host communities, asylum seekers, refugees and returnees, and migrants when in similar situations. While further adaptations might be needed for some population groups, including those living in slums this interim guidance is issued to assist field staff to immediately respond to urgent needs.
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9 April 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is presenting States in Europe with an extraordinary and unprecedented public health emergency. In response, States are taking necessary and legitimate measures to prevent the spread of the virus and to protect their populations. Some of these measures have been... taken within the framework of a declared state of emergency, based on specific national provisions governing emergency situations.
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This Interim Guidance is intended for field coordinators, site managers and public health personnel, as well as national and local governments and the wider humanitarian community working in humanitarian situations at food distribution sites, who are involved in the decision making and implementatio...n of multi-sectorial COVID-19 outbreak readiness and response activities – the Guidance is therefore relevant for all Humanitarian Clusters and their partners.
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It is too early to know the full impact of COVID-19 on Africa. To date the experience has been varied. There are causes for concern, but also reasons for hope. Early estimates were pessimistic regarding the pandemic’s impact on the continent. But the relatively low numbers of COVID-19 cases report...ed thus far have raised hopes that African countries may be spared the worst of the pandemic. While the virus is present in all African countries, most countries have recorded fewer than 1,000 cases. The African Union acted swiftly, endorsing a joint continental strategy in February, and complementing efforts by Member States and Regional Economic Communities by providing a public health platform.
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Strategic communication is used to raise awareness of issues among specific target populations. It aims to provide timely, evidence-based, authoritative information and guidance needed for public health action. Proper implementation of strategic communication leads t...o sustained behaviour change and is essential in overcoming barriers to access to services or generating demand for such services.
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The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Union together have called for a New Public Health Order which will safeguard the health and economic security of the continent as it strives to meet the aspirations of the Agenda 2063. A key pillar of this mandate seeks to expan...d the local manufacture of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Presently, less than one percent of vaccines administered on the continent are manufactured locally. This places a great burden on the health systems of African countries and reduces their ability to respond to pandemics and other health crises.
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Most neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) occur in remote areas of low- and middle-income countries, where health systems are often poorly developed. Therefore, these neglected patients generally lack access to quality preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic care [1]. The difficulty to access NTD-ende...mic areas, challenging logistics, and the lack of skilled human resources in these areas are also major obstacles to conduct clinical research. We had to face these when conducting a good clinical practice/good clinical laboratory practice (GCP/GCLP)-compliant clinical study in eastern Sudan, a well-known endemic area for visceral leishmaniasis and other NTDs. We share here the challenges related to study preparation and implementation of this GCP/GCLP study that investigated the causes of persistent fever in a rural hospital located in Gedaref State in eastern Sudan. We think this type of paper may be of interest for researchers planning to conduct a clinical trial in a resource-limited setting as well as for funders of such research.
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The Malawian government recently introduced cost-covering consultation fees for self-referral patients in tertiary public hospitals. Previously, patients received medicines free of charge in government-owned health facilities, but must pay elsewhere. Before the government implements a payment policy... in other areas of health care, it is important to investigate the prices, affordability and availability of essential medicines in Malawi.
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Mpox is an emerging zoonotic disease caused by the mpox virus, a member of the Orthopoxvirus genus closely related to the variola virus that causes smallpox. Mpox was first discovered in 1958 when outbreaks of a pox-like disease occurred in monkeys kept for research. The first human case was recorde...d in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a period of intensified effort to eliminate smallpox and since then the infection has been reported in a number of African countries. Mpox can spread in humans through close contact, usually skin-to-skin contact, including sexual contact, with an infected person or animal, as well as with materials contaminated with the virus such as clothing, beddings and towels, and respiratory droplets in prolonged face to face contact. People remain infectious from the onset of symptoms until all the lesions have scabbed and healed. The virus may spread from infected animals through handling infected meat or through bites or scratches. Diagnosis is confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of material from a lesion for the virus’s DNA. Two separate clades of the mpox virus are currently circulating in Africa: Clade I, which includes subclades Ia and Ib, and Clade II, comprising subclades IIa and IIb. Clade Ia and Clade Ib have been associated with ongoing human-to-human transmission and are presently responsible for outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while Clade Ib is also contributing to outbreaks in Burundi and other countries.
In 2022‒2023 mpox caused a global outbreak in over 110 countries, most of which had no previous history of the disease, primarily driven by human-to-human transmission of clade II through sexual contact. In just over a year, over 90,000 cases and 150 deaths were reported to the WHO. For the second time since 2022, mpox has been declared a global health emergency as the virus spreads rapidly across the African continent. On 13 Aug 2024, Africa CDC declared the ongoing mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS), marking the first such declaration by the agency since its inception in 2017.7 This declaration empowered the Africa CDC to lead and coordinate responses to the mpox outbreak across affected African countries. On August 14, 2024, the WHO declared the resurgence of mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) emphasizing the need for coordinated international response.
As of August 2024, Mpox has expanded beyond its traditional endemic regions, with new cases reported in countries including Sweden, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan. Sweden has confirmed its first case of Clade 1 variant, which has been rapidly spreading in Africa, particularly in DRC. The emergence of this new variant raises concerns about its potential for higher lethality and transmission rates outside Africa.
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