The Zambia Population Based HIV impact assessment of 2016, reported the prevalence of viral hepatitis in Zambia as ranging between 5.6% among adults aged 15 to 59% in the general population, and 7.1% among HIV infected individuals. It is estimated that the majority of persons with chronic hepatitis ...B and/ or hepatitis C are unware of their infection and do not benefit from promotive, preventive and curative services designed to reduce onward transmission. Zambia introduced hepatitis B virus vaccine to the routine Under 5 vaccination schedule in 2005. Preliminary results from the ZAMPHIA indicate that hundreds of infections have been abated in children since then. However, its also clear that we continue to miss key opportunities to prevent transmission, diagnose and treat infections, prevent serious disease, and in many cases cure people. In addition, high risk groups inter alia health care workers still have limited access to the vaccine.
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PLoS Neglected Tropical diseases August 16, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009697
Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a neglected tropical disease transmitted by triatomine insects, first identified in 1909. Chagas disease affects approximately 6–7 million peop...le globally and is highly prevalent in Latin America where most cases are reported. However, there is increasing evidence that Chagas disease is now an important public health issue outside the “classical” endemic countries due to population migration. Our understanding of Chagas disease, including its pathologies and factors relating to progression, remains to date limited, and is also challenged by lack of diagnosis and highly effective treatment. This systematic review aims to describe studies with Chagas patients receiving antiparasitic treatment. Databases were searched for relevant studies published after 1997, and the results of these searches were screened.
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The Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Guidelines aim to support healthcare workers improve quality and safety health care. The Guidelines further aim to promote and facilitate the overall goal of IPC by providing evidence-based recommendations on the critical aspects of IPC, focusing on the fun...damental principles and priority action areas. All health service organizations should consider the risk of healthcare-associated infection(s) (HAI) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) transmission to implement these recommendations. The IPC Guidelines also set national standards for the prevention and control of HAIs and to ensure compliance to the National Quality Standards.
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27 May 2021
All countries should increase their level of preparedness, alert and response to identify, manage and care for new cases of COVID-19. Countries should prepare to respond to different public health scenarios, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing cases and o...utbreaks of COVID-19. Each country should assess its risk and rapidly implement the necessary measures at the appropriate scale to reduce both COVID-19 transmission and economic, public and social impacts.
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Journal of Biosocial Science / Volume 34 / Issue 04 / October 2002, pp 525 - 539
DOI: DOI:10.1017/S0021932002005254, Published online: 24 September 2002
This paper examines determinants of one aspect of sexual behaviour – coital frequency – among 2188 married women in the Central African Re...public using a secondary analysis of data from the Demographic and Health Survey of 1994–95. Female genital cutting (or circumcision) is practised in the Central African Republic and self-reported circumcision status was included in the questionnaire enabling it to be examined as a possible determinant of coital frequency. Multiple logistic regression was used to find a subset of factors independently associated with coital frequency.
Decreased coital frequency was found in those who had longer duration of marriage, those who were not the most recent wife in a polygamous marriage and those who had more surviving children. Coital frequency was higher in more educated women and those not contracepting because they wanted to get pregnant. After adjusting for confounders no association between
female genital cutting and coital frequency was found. The extent to which women can control coital frequency in this culture is not known and fertility desires may override any negative effects of circumcision on sexual pleasure.
It was therefore not possible to draw conclusions about how female genital cutting affects a woman’s desire for sexual intercourse and consequently there is a need to develop research methods further to investigate this question.
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The main objective of this mission was to assess the level of preparedness of Guinea-Bissau in respect of the WHO consolidated checklist. The checklist helps countries to assess and test their level of readiness it is being used to identify concrete action to be taken and where countries will requir...e support from partners. It lists 10 key components and tasks for both countries and the international community that should be completed within 30, 60 and 90 days from the date of issue of the list, with minimal requirements for equipment, material and human resources.
The components include: overall coordination; rapid response teams; public awareness and community engagement; infection prevention and control; epidemiological and laboratory surveillance; contact tracing; points of entry; laboratory; social mobilization and risk communication; budget.
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The scope of this PPC document is to serve as a guide to address the unmet public health need for a PPE system that protects the HW-F in tropical climate
s while caring for patients and providing heavy duty essential health services.
The characteristics described in this guidance are targeted fo...r PPE used in
health clinics, hospitals and communities in low resource settings where there is lack of advanced environmental controls and equipment. The purpose is to ensure harmonization in PPE design and its use to avoid confusion and exacerbating the risk of infections in HW-F. The principles of this PPC document can also be considered in risk reduction strategies
in other healthcare settings.
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Children malnutrition eradication in developing countries is a real challenge, especially among
vulnerable population. There are so many effort towards women (who are the main care providers)
socio-economic situation in order to improve their children nutrition. This article aims to identify the
...impact of mothers’ activities on child nutrition and care. Interviews were used to collect data from
mothers of children less than 5 years old. Pearson correlation test and regression models were
performed to highlight relation and to identify the main factors that affect child nutrition and care. The
nutritional statuses of children show a high prevalence of underweight (38.46%), emaciation (25.17%)
and stunting (23.77%). Statistic results show that a child whose mother has food processing as main
activity has 2,322 more times to not suffer from emaciation malnutrition compared to a child whose
mother has trade as main activity. A child whose mother has high revenue has 1.463 more times to
not be suffering from stunting malnutrition compared to a child whose mother has lower revenue. A
child whose father has fishing as main activity has 8,4 more chance to not be suffering from stunting
malnutrition compared to a child whose father has another activity as main activity. A child whose
father is present in the household has 8.11 more chance to not suffer from stunting malnutrition
compared to a child whose father is absent. A child from mother who has food processing as main
activity is 2,464 more times preserved from fever compared to a child from mother whose main activity
is trade. Moreover child position, child feeding with porridge, child nursing are correlated with mother
activity. This situation is justified by the fact that mother need money to improve child nutrition and
health but they are also confronted to the fact that those activity that provide significant money are
sometime time consuming and not permit to take care of children in term of feeding practices, hygiene
control etc. Therefore it is important that intervention towards women take in consideration those
factors (money and time) but also the family in the whole.
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a new Framework for Environmental and Social Management (FESM) to ensure that both people and the environment are protected from any potential impacts of FAO programmes and projects.
“This Framework ensures that our proj...ects do both “no harm” and support the transformation to more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems by upholding the highest international standards for risk management,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu explained during a virtual event.
The Framework, which includes key elements of a people-centered approach and establishes environmental and social performance requirements for FAO programming, is also intended to ensure that all stakeholders, including local and indigenous communities, have ample opportunities to actively participate in projects’ activities and to voice their concerns about them.
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The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated preexisting structural economic inequalities, and had a disproportionate impact on informal workers, especially on women and young people, who lost jobs and income. The situation was even more difficult for single-parent households led by women,... who also had to endure more housework and care tasks. As shown by various research studies, the asymmetric distribution of care tasks, taken up by women, is an inequality factor.
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The report showed commitments made three decades ago to protect the rights of children remain unfulfilled for millions. Violence still affects countless children. Discrimination based on age, gender, disability, sexual orientation and religion harms children worldwide.
Key factors include a lack ...of investment in critically important services. Most countries fall well short of spending the 5-6% of GDP needed to ensure universal coverage of essential health care. And foreign aid, which many lower income countries rely on, is falling short in areas such as health, education, protection and child care.
Another factor, the report said, is the lack of quality data. Governments tend to rely on data that reflects national averages, making it difficult to identify the needs of specific children and to monitor progress. Comprehensive data collection and disaggregation of data by gender, age, disability and locality, are increasingly important as rights violations disproportionately affect disadvantaged children.
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Small drinking-water supplies commonly experience operational, managerial, technical and resourcing challenges that impact their ability to deliver safe and reliable services. The needs and opportunities associated with these supplies therefore warrant explicit consideration in policies and regulati...ons.
These Guidelines, specifically tailored to small water supplies, build on over 60 years of guidance by the World Health Organization (WHO) on drinking-water quality and safety. They focus on establishing drinking-water quality regulations and standards that are health based and context appropriate; on proactively managing risks through water safety planning and sanitary inspections; and on carrying out independent surveillance. The guidance is intended primarily for decision-makers at national and subnational levels with responsibility for developing regulatory frameworks and support programmes related to these activities. Other stakeholders involved in water service provision will also benefit from the guidance in this document.
Designed to be practical and accessible, these Guidelines offer clear guidance that is rooted in the principle of progressive improvement. State-of-the-art recommendations and implementation guidance are provided, drawn from a comprehensive evidence review and established good practices. Additionally, case examples are provided from countries and areas around the world to demonstrate how the guidance in this publication has been implemented in practice in a wide variety of contexts.
Together with WHO’s 2024 Sanitary inspection packages – a supporting tool for the Guidelines for drinking-water quality: small water supplies, these Guidelines update and supersede WHO’s 1997 Guidelines for drinking-water quality. Volume 3: surveillance and control of community supplies. Key changes to this updated publication include a greater focus on preventive risk management and a broader range of small water supplies covered, including those managed by households, communities and professional entities.
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Today there are Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in a large number of countries. In many countries, the CBR approach is a part of the national rehabilitation services. However, there is a lack of reliable data about persons with disabilities who benefit from CBR and the kind of benefi...ts they receive. This article reviews the disability data collection systems and presents some case studies to understand the influence of operational factors on data collection in the CBR programmes. The review shows that most CBR programmes use a variable number of broad functional categories to collect information about persons with disabilities, combined occasionally with more specific diagnostic categories. This categorisation is influenced by local contexts and operational factors, including the limitations of human and material resources available for its implementation, making it difficult to have comparable CBR data. Therefore, any strategies to strengthen the data collection in CBR programmes must take these operational factors into account.
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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 importance of robust mortality surveillance systems cannot be overstated in an era marked by increasing global health challenges where health threats loom large and population dynamics continue to evolve. Accurate and timely mortality data is essential for identifying trends and detecting emergi...ng health threats, evaluating the impact of interventions, and guiding evidence-based policy decisions.
This framework outlines a holistic approach to strengthening routine mortality surveillance systems, considering the unique contextual factors and challenges faced by African countries. It emphasizes the importance of establishing efficient data collection mechanisms, enhancing data quality and completeness, and promoting data sharing and collaboration among stakeholders.
Moreover, the framework recognizes the pivotal role of technology in the integration of data from fragmented mortality data sources. It highlights the potential of innovative data capture methods, advanced analytics, and real-time reporting systems to enhance mortality data’s accuracy, efficiency, and timeliness.
The continental framework for mortality surveillance aligns with Africa CDC’s mission and strategic goal by serving as a fundamental component in strengthening public health systems, enhancing disease surveillance capacities and capabilities, informing evidence-based policies and interventions, and promoting collaboration and coordination among African countries to address health challenges and improve health outcomes on the continent.
The successful implementation of this framework requires collective commitment and concerted efforts from governments, health institutions, and the international community. We hope this document will serve as a catalyst for transformative change, enabling countries to build resilient mortality surveillance systems that protect public health, save lives, and contribute to evidence-based decision-making.
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This brief summarises key considerations about the social, political and economic context of Goma in relation to the outbreak of Ebola in the DRC as of March 2019. Goma is the administrative capital of North Kivu province and a major urban centre in the Great Lakes Region. The city is home to an est...imated 1.5 million people and serves as an important economic and transportation hub that links eastern Congo to the broader East African sub-region. The arrival of Ebola in Goma would substantially increase the at-risk population and heighten the potential for cross-border transmission to neighbouring countries, particularly Rwanda. This brief therefore focuses on local social and political structures that can be leveraged to promote preparedness and readiness actions.
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The Infection prevention and control in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a living guideline consolidates technical guidance developed and published during the COVID-19 pandemic into evidence-informed recommendations for infection prevention and control (IPC). This living guideline... is available both online and PDF.
**This version of the living guideline (version 5.0) **includes the following seven revised statements for the prevention, identification and management of SARS-CoV-2 infections among health and care workers:
a good practice statement on national and subnational testing strategies;
a good practice statement on passive syndromic surveillance of health and care workers;
a good practice statement on prioritizing health and care workers for SARS-CoV-2 testing;
a good practice statement on protocols for reporting and managing health and care worker exposures;
a good practice statement to limit in-person work of health and care workers with active SARS-CoV-2 infections;
a statement on high-risk exposures and quarantine; and,
a conditional recommendation on the duration of isolation for health and care workers.
Understanding the updated section
Prevention of infections in the health care setting includes a multi-pronged and multi-factorial approach that includes IPC and occupational health and safety measures and adherence to Public Health and Social Measures in the community by the health workforce. The underlying infection prevention and control strategy of this section is the notion that early identification of symptomatic cases, testing and quarantining/isolating health and care workers decreases the risk of nosocomial infection to patients and to other health and care workers.
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This book is aimed at policymakers in ministries of agriculture and national agricultural research institutes, as well as multilateral development banks and the private sector and provides guidance on various technology strategies and which to pursue as competition grows for land, water, and energy ...across productive sectors and even increasingly across borders. Climate change, population, and income growth will drive food demand in the coming decades. Food prices are also expected to significantly increase between 2005 and 2050 and the number of people at risk of hunger in the developing world would grow from 881 million in 2005 to more than a billion people by 2050. This book endeavors to respond to the challenge of growing food sustainably without degrading our natural resource bas
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Global actions to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR) include optimising the use of antimicrobial medicines in human and animal health. In countries with weak healthcare regulation, this requires a greater understanding of the drivers of antibiotic use from the perspective of providers and consume...rs. In Bangladesh, there is limited research on household decision-making and healthcare seeking in relation to antibiotic use and consumption for humans and livestock. Knowledge is similarly lacking on factors influencing the supply and demand for antibiotics among qualified and unqualified healthcare providers. The aim of this study is to conduct integrated research on household decision-making for healthcare and antibiotic use, as well as the awareness, behaviours and priorities of healthcare providers and sellers of antibiotics to translate into policy development and implementation
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The provision of safe and efficacious blood and blood components for transfusion or manufacturing use involves a number of processes, from the selection of blood donors and the collection, processing and testing of blood donations to the testing of patient samples, the issue of compatible blood and ...its administration to the patient. There is a risk of error in each process in this “transfusion chain” and a failure at any of these stages can have serious implications for the recipients of blood and blood products. Thus, while blood transfusion can be life-saving, there are associated risks, particularly the transmission of bloodborne infections.
Screening for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) to exclude blood donations at risk of transmitting infection from donors to recipients is a critical part of the process of ensuring that transfusion is as safe as possible. Effective screening for evidence of the presence of the most common and dangerous TTIs can reduce the risk of transmission to very low levels.
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