The Atlas of health and climate is a product of this unique collaboration between the meteorological and public health communities. It provides sound scientific information on the connections between weather and climate and major health challenges. These range from diseases of poverty to emergencies... arising from extreme weather events and disease outbreaks. They also include environmental degradation, the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases and the universal trend of demographic ageing.
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Guidelines on care, treatment and support for women living with HIV/AIDS and their children in resource-constrained settings
WHO QualityRights is an initiative which aims to improve the quality of care in mental health and related services and to promote the human rights of people with psychosocial, intellectual and cognitive disabilities, throughout the world.
The guideline uses state-of-the-art evidence to identify effective policy options to strengthen community health worker (CHW) programme performance through their proper integration in health systems and communities.
Successful delivery of services through CHWs requires evidence-based models for edu...cation, deployment and management of these health workers. The guideline is intended as a tool for national policy makers and planners and their international partners to use in the design, implementation, performance and evaluation of effective community health worker programmes. It contains pragmatic recommendations on selection, training and certification; management and supervision: and integration into health systems and community engagement.
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English and French version available
Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women worldwide and causes a significant number of deaths in the South-East Asia Region. Nearly 200 000 new cases of cervical cancer occurred in SEA Region Member States in 2008, giving an incidence of almost 25 per 100... 000 and a mortality rate of almost 14 per 100 000. Cervical cancer can be prevented by early screening and vaccination. However, due to poor access to screening and treatment services, the vast majority of these deaths occur in women from nine Member States of the South-East Asia Region which account for more than one third of the global burden of cervical cancer.
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The report is based on comprehensive information collected at representative sample health facilities all over the country by well-organized and trained teams during May and August 2015. This is a continuation of 2014 Assessment activities and findings also reflect comparison between two consecutive... years.
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Assessment of the quality of institutional care for adults with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities in the WHO European Region.
The specific objectives of the project were to address gaps in knowledge about the number and characteristics of such long-term institutions and to identify deficie...ncies in current care standards through the lens of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This publication examines and rates the quality of care and protection of human rights in selected institutions in over 20 countries in the Region using the WHO QualityRights toolkit. It identifies steps to take to continue progress toward deinstitutionalization and to ensure respect for the rights of people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.
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The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, known more commonly as ICF, provides a standard language and framework for the description of health and health-related states. Like the first version published by the World Health Organization for trial purposes in 1980, ICF is... a multipurpose classification intended for a wide range of uses in different sectors. It is a classification of health and health-related domains -- domains that help us to describe changes in body function and structure, what a person with a health condition can do in a standard environment (their level of capacity), as well as what they actually do in their usual environment (their level of performance).
These domains are classified from body, individual and societal perspectives by means of two lists: a list of body functions and structure, and a list of domains of activity and participation. In ICF, the term functioning refers to all body functions, activities and participation, while disability is similarly an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions. ICF also lists environmental factors that interact with all these components.
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A cross-sectional descriptive study design covering all states and regions was undertaken to:
1) To assess availability, utilization and supply chain management system for RH commodities at different levels of health facilities,
2) To assess quality of RH services with emphasis on family ...planning in terms of training, supervision, use of guidelines and ICT, and
3) To determine clients’ accessibility to RH services provided at different level of facilities.
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The primary audience for the guideline is policy makers and health programme managers of MNCH and immunization programmes in ministries of health where decisions are made and policies created on the use and implementation of homebased records.
The guideline is also aimed at health providers who use... home-based records as a tool for recording information and providing health education or communicating key information. Development and international agencies and non-governmental organizations that support the implementation of home-based records will also find this guideline of use.
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This document is intended for a wide audience including national and local policymakers, implementers and managers of national and local maternal and child health programmes, non-governmental and other organizations and professional societies involved in the planning and management of maternal and c...hild health services, health professionals including obstetricians, midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners, academic staff involved in training health professionals, managers of maternal and child health programmes and public health policymakers in all settings.
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Inequality of access to palliative care and symptom relief is one of the greatest disparities in global health care (1). Currently, there is avoidable suffering on a massive scale due to lack of access to palliative care and symptom relief in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (1). Yet basic p...alliative care that can prevent or relieve most suffering due to serious or life-threatening health conditions can be taught easily to generalist clinicians, can be provided in the community and requires only simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment. For these reasons, the World Health Assembly (WHA) resolved that palliative care is "an ethical responsibility of health systems"(2). Further, most patients who need palliative care are at home and prefer to remain there. Thus, it is imperative that palliative care be provided in the community as part of primary care. This document was written to assist ministries of health and health care planners, implementers and managers to integrate palliative care and symptom control into primary health care (PHC).
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The standards of care cover the routine care and management of complications occurring for women and their babies during labour, childbirth and the early postnatal period, including those of small babies during the first week of life. They define priorities for improving the quality of maternal and ...newborn care for use by planners, managers and health care providers
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The primary audience for the guideline is health programme managers, including governmental and non-governmental organizations, and policy makers who are responsible for designing maternal, newborn and child health programmes, primarily in low-income settings. The guideline is also aimed at health p...roviders and teaching institutions, to increase knowledge of interventions. Development programmes and organizations supporting women’s empowerment and rights will also find this guideline of use.
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Guidelines on post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV and the use of co-trimoxazole prophylaxis for HIV-related infections among adults, adolescents, and children: recommendations for a public health approach : December 2014 supplement to the 2013 Consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs... for treating and preventing HIV infection.
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22 April 2022, This document provides updated interim recommendations on the use of masks by health workers providing care to patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. This update is prompted by new evidence around mask use and COVID-19 transmission, as well as the emergence of variants of conc...ern including Omicron. Masks continue to be a critical tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These interim guidelines supersede the recommendations provided in the WHO recommendations on mask use by health workers, in light of the Omicron variant of concern published on 22 December 2022.
WHO continually evaluates the emerging evidence and will review these interim recommendations within two months and issue new guidance as needed.
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Ensuring mental health and well-being has become a worldwide imperative and an important target
of the Sustainable Development Goals.
But in all countries around the world, our response has been woefully insufficient, and we have made
little progress to advance mental health as a fundamental huma...n right.
One in ten people are affected by a mental health condition, up to 200 million people have an
intellectual disability and an estimated 50 million people have dementia. Many persons with mental
health conditions, or psychosocial, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities lack access to quality mental
health services that respond to their needs and respect their rights and dignity.
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There is growing international consensus that food systems transformation is important to address the challenges of malnutrition in all its forms, the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), environmental sustainability, increasing inequality and ensuring the welfare of workers and animals. In li...ght of the urgency of these challenges, there are questions about the role of red and processed meat in healthy and sustainable food systems. Globally, production and consumption of all types of meat has increased substantially in the last 50 years, and – although red meat consumption is now plateauing in high-income countries (HICs) – is predicted to increase by a further 50% by 2050. Meat consumption remains highly unequal both between and within countries, and animal-source food intakes, including red meat, are lowest among those at most risk of undernutrition
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Diets are changing everywhere, and the burden of disease associated with unhealthy diets is a worldwide concern. Measurement and monitoring of diets across countries and population groups is critical. However, there are no harmonized metrics for tracking how the healthfulness of diets around the wor...ld is evolving.
This report assesses the validity, usefulness and fitness for purpose of existing healthy diet metrics as global and national monitoring indicators, presents a comparative assessment of selected healthy diet metrics and discusses priorities and opportunities to improve diet monitoring. This report is an important first step of the Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative to respond to the need for developing healthy diets metrics for assessing and monitoring diets at national and global level.
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