The Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (SDG3 GAP) is a set of commitments by 13 multilateral agencies to strengthen their collaboration. For this purpose several accelerators were created and an invitation for public comment was started. This document focuses on Accelerator ...Discussion Paper 1: Sustainable Financing.
more
In 2017, $37.4 billion of development assistance was provided to low- and middleincome countries to maintain or improve health. This amount is down slightly compared to 2016, and since 2010, development assistance for health (DAH) has grown at an annualized rate of 1.0%. While global development ass...istance for health has seemingly leveled off, global health spending continues to climb, outpacing economic growth in many countries. Total health spending for 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, was estimated to be $9.7 trillion (95% uncertainty interval: 9.7–9.8)*, up 4.7% (3.9–5.6) from the prior year, and accounted for 10% of the world’s total economy. With some sources of health spending growing and other types remaining steady, and with major variations in spending from country to country, it is more important than ever to understand where resources for health come from, where they go, and how they align with health needs. This information is critical for planning and is a necessary catalyst for change as we aim to close the gap on the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and move forward toward universal health coverage (UHC) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) era.
more
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown that public financial management (PFM) should be an integral part of the response. Effectiveness in financing the health response depends not only on the level of funding but also on the way public funds are allocated and spent, this is determined by the PFM r...ules, and how money flows to health service providers. So far, early assessments have shown that PFM systems ranged from being a fundamental enabler to acting as a roadblock in the COVID-19 health response. While service delivery mechanisms have been extensively documented throughout the pandemic, the underlying PFM mechanisms of the response also merit attention. To highlight the importance of PFM in health emergency contexts, this rapid review analyses various country PFM experiences and identifies early lessons emerging from the financing of the health response to COVID-19. The assessment is done by stages of the budget cycle: budget allocation, budget execution, and budget oversight. Identifying lessons from the varying PFM modalities used to finance the response to COVID-19 is fundamental both for health policy-makers and for finance authorities to prepare for future health emergencies.
more
The Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP) project has conducted a multi-year, multi-country study that provides stark insights on the under-reported depth of the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis across Africa and lays out urgent policy recommendations to addr...ess the emergency.
MAAP reviewed 819,584 AMR records from 2016-2019, from 205 laboratories across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. MAAP also reviewed data from 327 hospital and community pharmacies and 16 national-level AMC datasets.
more
The Director-General has the honour to transmit to the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly the report of the seventh meeting of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing, which met in a hybrid format, from 25 to 27 April 2022.
Six months after its launch on 24 April, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator has already delivered concrete results in speeding up the development of new therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines. Now mid-way through the scale-up phase, the tools we need to fundamentally change the course o...f this pandemic are within reach. But to deliver the full impact of the ACT-Accelerator – and ultimately an exit to this global crisis – these tools need to be available everywhere. On behalf of the ACT-Accelerator Pillar lead agencies – CEPI, Gavi, the Global Fund, FIND, Unitaid, Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – I am pleased to share this document setting out the near-term priorities, deliverables and financing requirements of the ACT-Accelerator Pillars and Health Systems Connector. Urgent action to address these financing requirements will boost the impact of the ACTAccelerator achievements to date, fast-track the development and deployment of additional game-changing tools, and mitigate the risk of a widening gap in access to COVID-19 tools between low- and high-income countries. Delivering on this promise requires strong political leadership, financial investment, and incountry capacity building. COVID-19 cannot be beaten by any one country acting alone. We must ACT now, and ACT together to end the COVID-19 crisis.
more
The development of this draft Proposed programme budget 2022–2023 comes at a unique moment for WHO. The world is in the grip of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and faces health, social and economic consequences on an unprecedented scale. Although it is not known when the COVID-19 pande...mic will end, recent encouraging vaccine results, in addition to the examples of countries that have achieved good results through public health measures, hold out the prospect of better days ahead. The full impact of the pandemic cannot yet be determined. But whatever its implications, the Secretariat will rise to the challenge and is ready to adapt so that it is fully equipped to support Member States for any eventuality in the future – to make sure that the world will never again have to face this kind of crisis.
more
As a global community of +750 representatives of the world’s civil society, the C20 official Engagement Group of the G20 is submitting a list of policy priorities for the upcoming G20 Finance Ministers & Central Bank Governors meeting on July 18th and the G20 Extraordinary Sherpa Meeting on July 2...4th. The proposed recommendations take into account complimentary policy areas at the intersection of health and finance policymaking; including funding gaps, systemic, fiscal and financial priorities to put global finances at the service of global health.
more
Over the 20 years that followed, this unique partnership has invested more than US$53 billion, saving 44 million lives and reducing the combined death rate from the three diseases by more than half in the countries in which the Global Fund invests.
Since the last situation report on the multi-country outbreak of cholera was published on 6 July 2023 (covering data reported until 15 of June), and as of 15 July 2023, one new outbreak of cholera was reported from India on 15 May 2023. In total, 25 countries have reported cases since the beginning ...of 2023. The WHO African Region remains the most affected region with 14 countries reporting cholera cases since the beginning of the year. The overall capacity to respond to the multiple and simultaneous outbreaks continues to be strained due to the global lack of resources, including shortages of the Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV) and cholera supplies, as well as overstretched public health and medical personnel, who are dealing with multiple parallel disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. Based on the large number of outbreaks and their geographic expansion, as well as a lack of vaccines and other resources, WHO continues to assess the risk at global level as very high.
more
Ebola disease and Marburg disease outbreaks continue to occur in Africa, with increased frequency. In addition to resulting in high mortality and morbidity, the outbreaks generate fear and mistrust about the response activities within the communities affected.
Infection prevention and control (IP...C) is a key pillar in the outbreak response; adherence to IPC practices can prevent and control transmission of infections to health and care workers, patients and their family members.
During the 2014-2016 West African Ebola disease outbreak, there was an urgent need for rapid IPC guidance to help support ministries of health, health-care providers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In response, WHO produced several documents related to the outbreak based on expert opinion, including IPC-specific documents and documents on clinical management that also referenced key IPC principles and practices. Since that time, many practices in the field have become institutionalized.
more
To better adapt current case management practices and address excess mortality in otherwise treatable
cases will require better knowledge of the demographic characteristics of the patients and comorbidities
which can make severe dehydration harder to tolerate physiologically. With this in mind, a ...scoping review
was undertaken, to explore the literature and summarise the existing evidence on cholera mortality and
reported risk factors.
more
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.
more
While there has been real progress in addressing the burden of disease in the WHO African region, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the link between health, economics and security, as the region saw decades of progress threatened, including positive trends in decreasing inequality. In the Africa...n Region the momentum towards achieving the 2030 SDG disease burden reduction targets (SDG targets 3.3, 3.4 and 3B) has stalled.
The COVID-19 pandemic was also a major threat to gains made, such as the eradication of polio in the region, declared in 2020; reduced numbers of new HIV infections in 2021 compared to 2010; and passing the 2020 milestone of the End TB Strategy, with a 22% reduction in new cases compared with 2015. However, the pandemic also disrupted essential health services in 92% of countries globally, 22.7 million children missed basic immunization, there was an increase in malaria and TB, and global deaths from TB rose for the first time since 2015.
more
This document presents the World Health Organization Operational framework for building climate resilient and low carbon health systems*. ***The framework's goal is to increase the climate resilience of health systems to protect and improve the health of communities in an unstable and changing clima...te, while optimizing the use of resources and implementing strategies to reduce GHG emissions. It aims to contribute to the design of transformative health systems that can provide safe and quality care in a changing climate.
Implementation of the framework's ten components would help health organizations, authorities, and programmes to be better able to anticipate, prevent, prepare for, and manage climate-related health risks and therefore decrease the burden of associated climate-sensitive health outcomes. Implementing low carbon health practices would contribute to climate change mitigation while also improving health outcomes. Achieving these aims is an important contribution to universal health coverage (UHC), global health security, and specific targets within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The document is a useful resource for decision-makers in health systems, including public health agencies, and other specialized institutions, and for decision-makers in health-determining sectors.
more
The Disaster Recovery Framework (DRF) Guide for the Health Sector provides guidance on how to implement a comprehensive, integrated, and structured approach to disaster recovery. Its overarching goal is to minimize the impact of the disaster on communities and help countries to recover quickly and e...ffectively from disasters, in coordination with key stakeholders.
The DRF Guide for the Health Sector is adapted from the generic DRF Guide, and draws on the Implementation Guide For Health Systems Recovery in Emergencies, the Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework as well as the Disaster Recovery Guidance Series. The guide also makes links with multi-sectoral, government-led recovery planning processes such as the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), and it supports the implementation of the HDPN.
more
Cholera is an acute gastrointestinal infection caused by the bacterium Vibrio Cholerae serogroup O1 or O139, and is often linked to unsafe drinking water, lack of proper sanitation and personal hygiene. It adversely affects mostly the poor and vulnerable populations in countries, which are already d...eprived of proper health facilities and conducive environmental conditions. The disease spreads through oro-fecal transmission by the ingestion of contaminated food or water or by person-to-person contact. It has a short incubation period of 2 hours to 5 days and the number of affected cases can rapidly increase across large regions. Cholera is a significant threat to global public health leading to an estimated 3-5 million cases per year worldwide, with an annual toll of 100,000 deaths. The disease was first reported in 1817 from the Ganges Delta of India and since then the ongoing 7th pandemic has emerged from Indonesia, reached Africa in 1970 and Somalia happens to be one of the early affected countries. Over the past few decades,
Somalia has witnessed the occurrence of repeated AWD/Cholera disease outbreaks that have caused high morbidity and mortality across the country.
more
In 2024, we need US$1.5 billion to provide live-saving health care to millions of people in emergencies. An alarming combination of conflict, climate-related threats and increasing economic hardship mean an estimated 166 million people require health assistance.
Humanitarian crises exacerbate nutritional risks and often lead to an increase in acute malnutrition. Emergencies include both manmade (conflict) and natural disasters (floods, drought, cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Complex emergencies are combinations of both manmade a...nd natural disasters, often of a protracted nature. Millions of people are affected by humanitarian crises every year. The increasing frequency and scale of emergencies requires nutrition to be addressed in all phases of a response.
Crisis situations, whether acute or protracted, impact on a range of factors that can increase the risk of undernutrition, morbidity, and mortality. They may involve: the large-scale destruction of property and infrastructure; the erosion of livelihood strategies and purchasing power; a breakdown of and reduced access to essential services, including health services, water supply, and sanitation; and the displacement of large numbers of people. Emergencies can also disrupt social systems and the quality of care/feeding practices. Household access to food may be negatively affected and people may find themselves in overcrowded settlements with their families divided. As a result, at the individual level, there is often an increased risk of deteriorating health and nutritional status, resulting in a greater likelihood of death.
more
The ERF provides WHO staff with essential guidance on how the Organization manages the assessment, grading and response to public health events and emergencies with health consequences, in support of Member States and affected communities. The ERF adopts an all-hazards approach and it is therefore a...pplicable in all acute public health events and emergencies.
This version (2024) of the WHO ERF has been developed following extensive consultation across the three levels of the Organization and response experiences over the last five years of emergency response. Key areas have been updated to improve the accountability, predictability, timeliness and effectiveness of WHO’s response to emergencies.
more