WHO working group on HIV incidence assays meeting report
10–11 December 2015
Glion, Switzerland
UNAIDS/WHO working group on global HIV/AIDS and STI surveillance
WHO/HIV/2017.03
Overview.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis facing the world, but unless humans release their grip on nature, it won’t be the last, according to a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which includes a new experimental index on human progress that takes into acco...unt countries’ carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint.
The report lays out a stark choice for world leaders - take bold steps to reduce the immense pressure that is being exerted on the environment and the natural world, or humanity’s progress will stall.
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At its 48th session of Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH), the Committee noted the importance of water quality and safety in food production and processing. CCFH requested the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide guidan...ce for those scenarios where the use of “clean water” (i.e. water that does not compromise the safety of the food in the context of its use) was indicated in Codex texts and on
where it is appropriate to use “clean water”. In particular, guidance was sought for the use of irrigation water and “clean” seawater and on the safe reuse of processing water.
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MICROBIAL DRUG RESISTANCEVolume 24, Number 5, 2018ªMary Ann Liebert, Inc.DOI: 10.1089/mdr.2017.0383
Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a worldwide publichealth concern, with serious health, economic, and so-cietal repercussions. Its emergence is attributed to the se-lective pressure exerted by antib...iotic use in the community, hospitals, veterinary health, agriculture, aquaculture, and the environment. Additionally aggravating the situation is the fact that very few new antibiotics have recently been produced by pharmaceutical companies. It is widely acknowledged that food animals are key reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and that antibiotic usage in this population favors the emergence, selection, and spread of resistance among animals and humans, both through zoonoses (infectious diseases trans-mitted between animals and humans) and the food chain.
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Infection preventions
Hygiene
Care for persons with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a major health priority for most countries worldwide, particularly for low-middle income countries where the problem seems to be worsening. Globally,... research demonstrates that the vast majority of people with NCDs receive suboptimal care. Many people living with chronic conditions remain undiagnosed and unaware of their condition, while many others remain untreated or with inadequate control. Meanwhile the premature mortality caused by NCDs remains high in many countries. In response to the global epidemic of NCDs, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases in 2012, which establishes 9 voluntary global targets and indicators to be considered by Member States when formu- lating national plans to combat NCDs.
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To implement the set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children
With the growing obesity crisis among children, WHO and other public health advocates and consumer groups have called for restrictions on advertising of ‘unhealthy foods’ high in salt, ...sugar and fat to children. Each day, children in the South East Asia Region are exposed to large volume of marketing of unhealthy foods that may influence children’s food preferences and consumption patterns and is associated with childhood overweight and obesity.
The definition of ‘unhealthy’ is debatable, and therefore, an objective method of describing foods as healthy or unhealthy is needed. A nutrient profile model does just that and therefore, a nutrition profile model for South East Asia was developed. The model is consistent with international guidance for preventing chronic disease and is a simple system with clear cut-offs for defining which foods are not suitable for advertising to children.
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Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide in 2018, with 570,000 new cases and 311,000 deaths occurring annually.T he highest incidence rates are in Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, SubSaharan Africa, Western Africa, Melanesia, and Middle Africa . It also ranks as the leadin...g cause of cancer-related death in most African countries. More than 85% of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries . In addition, women living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are six times as likely to have cervical cancer
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A tutorial for healthcare professionals
This toolkit is a "how to" guide for developing, implementing and evaluating a multisectoral action plan for prevention and control of NCDs. It is targeted at policy-makers, planners and programme managers, and is intended to help countries, provinces and cities meet the requirements for achieving g...lobal and national NCD targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. The toolkit takes the user through a series of actions related to the development of a multisectoral action plan ("MSAP development actions"), and provides forms and a template framework for users to complete as they undertake these actions. Developing a multisectoral action plan involves establishing health needs and engaging relevant stakeholders before determining the actions to take, identifying and prioritizing interventions, deciding on ways to address NCDs while establishing support and resources for prevention and control, and evaluating progress in implementing the plan.
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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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The role of environmental contamination in transmission of COVID-19 virus is currently not clear. This protocol has been designed to determine (viable) virus presence and persistence on fomites in various locations where a patient infected with COVID-19 is currently receiving care or being isolated,... and to understand how this may relate to COVID-19 transmission events in these settings. It is therefore important that it is done as part of a comprehensive outbreak investigation and that information obtained by environmental studies is combined with the results of epidemiological, laboratory and sequence data from COVID-19 patient investigations.
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Rapid review and case studies from Member States
This paper provides case studies of several food product improvement policies from across the WHO European Region. The aim is to share country experience, assess the various merits of the different approaches, discuss lessons learned, and provide guidance for best practice that may be more widely ap...plicable across the European Region.
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The current document is anupdate of the guidelines developed by the EUCAST subcommittee on detection of resistance mechanisms. The EUCAST Steering Committee has carried out the current update. The document has been developed mainly for routine use in clinical laboratories and doesnot cover technical... procedures for identification of resistance mechanisms at a molecular level by reference or expert laboratories. However, much of the content is also applicable tonational reference laboratories. Furthermore, it is important to note that the document does not cover screening for asymptomatic carriage (colonization) of multidrug-resistant microorganismsor direct detectionof resistancein clinical samples.
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In the context of health, stigma is the negative association between a person or group of people who share certain characteristics and a specific disease. In an outbreak, this may mean people are labeled, stereotyped, discriminated against, treated separately, and/or experience loss of status becaus...e of a perceived link with a disease.
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This toolkit is a "how to" guide for developing, implementing and evaluating a multisectoral action plan for prevention and control of NCDs. It is targeted at policy-makers, planners and programme managers, and is intended to help countries, provinces and cities meet the requirements for achieving g...lobal and national NCD targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. The toolkit takes the user through a series of actions related to the development of a multisectoral action plan ("MSAP development actions"), and provides forms and a template framework for users to complete as they undertake these actions. Developing a multisectoral action plan involves establishing health needs and engaging relevant stakeholders before determining the actions to take, identifying and prioritizing interventions, deciding on ways to address NCDs while establishing support and resources for prevention and control, and evaluating progress in implementing the plan.
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