The World Health Organization was requested by Member States to develop a global priority pathogens list (global PPL) of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to help in prioritizing the research and development (R&D) of new and effective antibiotic treatments. To date, the selection of pathogens for R&D ac...tivities has been largely guided by small and large pharmaceutical companies according to a variety of parameters, such as perceived/unmet medical need, pressure of investors, market size, scientific discovery potential, and availability of specific technologies. Previous PPLs, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Humanitarian emergencies and crises (Humanitarian emergencies and crises) are large-scale events that may result in the breakdown of health care systems and society, forced displacement, death, and physical, psychological, social and spiritual suffering on a massive scale. Current responses to Human...itarian emergencies and crises rightfully focus on saving lives, but for both ethical and medical reasons, the prevention and relief of pain, as well as other physical and psychological symptoms, social and spiritual distress, also are imperative. Therefore, palliative care, should be integrated into responses to Humanitarian emergencies and crises. The principles of humanitarianism and impartiality require that all patients receive care and should never be abandoned for any reason, even if they are dying. Thus, there is significant overlap in the principles and mission of palliative care and humanitarianism: relief of suffering; respect for the dignity of all people; support for basic needs; and accompaniment during the most difficult of times
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Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Over 2 million children die from pneumonia each year, accounting for almost 1 in 5 under five deaths worldwide. Yet, little attention is paid to this disease. This joint UNICEF/WHO report examines ...the epidemiological evidence on the burden and distribution of pneumonia and assesses current levels of treatment and prevention. It is a call to action to reduce pneumonia mortality, a key step towards the achievement of the millennium development goal on child mortality.
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The product of all this work is the Standard Treatment Guideline and Essential Medicines List of Common Medical Conditions in the Kingdom of Swaziland. These systematically developed statements are designed to assist practitioners in making decisions about appropriate treatment for specific clinical... conditions. They are meant to reflect expert consensus based on a review of current and published scientific evidence of acceptable approaches to diagnosis, man-agement, or prevention of specific conditions.It is enlightening to note that section A of the document contains the STG, and effort has been made to have the conditions commonly encountered in Swaziland classified according to systems. Written in simple, clear language, each section consists of a short definition followed by common symptoms and signs of the disease or condition and then management (pharmacological and nonpharmacological)
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ON LIFE SUPPORT3The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak has been contained, but confl ict and under-development leave over three million children at risk from measles and other killer diseases. The country’s medical services – ill-equipped and under-resourced – are on life support ...and in no condition to protect children unless urgent measures are taken.
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Only 8,730 asylum applications were registered in the EU+ in April, the lowest since at least 2008, and a massive 87% decrease from pre-COVID-19 levels in January and February.
The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) has released a special report which shows that the COVID-19 related travel restr...ictions and national health measures which were imposed during the past few months led to a dramatic cut in asylum applications in Europe.
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o support and guide countries and partners to strengthen a health systems response to address violence against women, WHO has produced several tools, including:
• clinical and policy guidelines;
• implementation handbooks and manuals;
• training curriculum;
• evidence-based polic...y, prevention and intervention strategy packages.
The resource package consolidates these documents to support countries to develop or update their national or subnational guidelines, protocols, standard operating procedures, health provider training materials, and multisectoral action plans to prevent and respond to violence against women.
The resource package is also intended to be used for training and sensitization of policy-makers, advocates, health care providers and managers of services and programmes to address violence against women.
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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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UNICEF's 2021 World AIDS Day report provides global and regional statistical updates on children, adolescents and pregnant women. It further provides a brief history of the HIV epidemic and response for children together with a series of human interest stories that shine light on inequalities faced ...by children and adolescents, especially in HIV treatment and prevention services.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified mental health as an integral component of the COVID-19 response. Its rapid assessment of service delivery for mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, on which this report is based, is the first attempt to... measure the impact of the pandemic on such services at a global level. The data were collected through a web-based survey completed by mental health focal points at ministries of health between June and August 2020. The questionnaire covered the existence and funding of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) plans, the presence and composition of MHPSS coordination platforms, the degree of continuation and causes of disruption of different MNS services, the approaches used to overcome these disruptions, and surveillance mechanisms and research on MNS data.
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Addressing gaps and improving health system performance is simply not enough to prepare a health system to tackle the effects of the climate crisis. Climate change’s impact on the health and well-being of people globally is reaching catastrophic levels. As the earth continues to warm, tens of mill...ions of people are at increased risk from rapid and unpredictable spread of infectious diseases, heatwaves, water and food insecurity and scarcity, air pollution, poverty and homelessness. Health services are often regarded as a first line defense in preventing adverse health outcomes, especially from those caused by climate impacts
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One of the principles underpinning the delivery of all essential services and coordination of those services is the “survivor-centered approach”, which places the human rights, needs, and wishes of women and girl survivors at the centre of service delivery.
A key challenge faced by many entit...ies working to end violence against women is ensuring that survivors’ voices and inputs are incorporated into policies, practices, and procedures on response. Survivors have diverse needs and face different risks. Not all women and girls experience violence in the same way. An effective intervention takes into account the realities of their unique circumstances, addresses individual needs, and reduces the risk for further harm and suffering.
UN Women, together with Global Rights for Women, have developed “Safe consultations with survivors of violence against women and girls”, which is designed to provide practical steps, safety measures, and actions that government agencies, civil society and survivor organizations, and United Nations’ entities can take to incorporate survivors' voices into systemic reform efforts, through safe and meaningful consultations.
This guidance is intended to help policymakers develop survivor-centered programming on ending violence against women and girls that meets the needs of diverse groups of women and girls, including those who are at higher risk of experiencing violence and discrimination. It is applicable to programming across the health, justice and policing, and social services sectors, as well as coordination of these sectors, and will help improve the standard and delivery of essential services for women and girls who have experienced violence.
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Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) has been an alarming global public health issue. The disease affects mainly poor and marginalized people in low-resource settings and is caused by two subspecies of haemoflagellate parasite, Trypanosoma brucei and transmitted by tsetse flies. Progress made in HAT ...control during the past decade has prompted increasing global dialogue on its elimination and eradication. The disease is targeted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for elimination as a public health problem by 2020 and to terminate its transmission globally by 2030, along-side other Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). Several methods have been used to control tsetse flies and the disease transmitted by them. Old and new tools to control the disease are available with constraints.
Currently, there are no vaccines available. Efforts towards intervention to control the disease over the past decade have seen considerable progress and remarkable success with incidence dropping progressively, reversing the upward trend of reported cases. This gives credence in a real progress in its elimination. This study reviews various control measures, progress and a highlight of control issues, vector and parasite barriers that may have been hindering progress towards its elimination.
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Background: Comparable estimates of health spending are crucial for the assessment of health systems and to optimally deploy health resources. The methods used to track health spending continue to evolve, but little is known about the distribution of spending across diseases. We developed improved e...stimates of health spending by source, including development assistance for health, and, for the first time, estimated HIV/AIDS spending on prevention and treatment and by source of funding, for 188 countries.
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In sum, the goal is to understand the need to increase fiscal space for health as a prerequisite, but within the framework of efforts to transform the health system. These changes should foster equitable and efficient expenditures and create or strengthen comprehensive integrated health systems with... a first level of care capable of solving health problems and coordinating networks, based on a primary health care approach that offers not only curative care but also health promotion and disease prevention services.
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There has been no systematic comparison of how the policy response to past infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics was funded. This study aims to collate and analyse funding for the Ebola epidemic and Zika outbreak between 2014 and 2019 in order to understand the shortcomings in funding reporting... and suggest improvements. Methods: Data were collected via a literature review and analysis of financial reporting databases, including both amounts donated and received. Funding information from three financial databases was analysed: Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Development Assistance for Health database, the Georgetown Infectious Disease Atlas and the United Nations Financial Tracking Service. A systematic literature search strategy was devised and applied to seven databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, HMIC, Global Health, Scopus, Web of Science and EconLit. Funding information was extracted from articles meeting the eligibility criteria and measures were taken to avoid double counting. Funding was collated, then amounts and purposes were compared within, and between, data sources.
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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.
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The thirty-seventh meeting of the Programme, Budget and Administration Committee was held in Geneva from 25 to 27 January 2023 and chaired by Ms Aishath Rishmee (Maldives). The Committee adopted its agenda and agreed its programme of work. In his opening remarks, the Director-General emphasized the ...crucial work on the financial future of the Organization, most significantly implementation of the Programme budget 2022−2023 and development of the Proposed programme budget 2024−2025, which would be the first to benefit from the agreed increase in assessed contributions. He welcomed the work of the Agile Member States Task Group on Strengthening WHO’s Budgetary, Programmatic and Financing Governance with its recommendations for long-term improvements in reform, prevention of and response to sexual abuse and harassment, new web-based information portals and a new replenishment process for consideration by Member States. Efforts were also under way to improve impact at country level, and he would continue to report to Member States on progress. He was heading an agile, proactive and fast-responding WHO, committed to implementing plans approved by Member States.
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The waves of yellow fever transmission in the Region of the Americas in 2016–2018 involved the largest number of human and epizootic cases to be reported in several decades. Yellow fever is a serious viral hemorrhagic disease that poses a challenge for health professionals. It requires early recog...nition of signs and symptoms, which are often nonspecific, and it can mimic other acute febrile syndromes. Early detection of suspected or confirmed cases, monitoring of vital signs, life support measures, and treatment of acute kidney failure continue to be the recommended strategies for case management. This report is the result of discussions among experienced specialists in the Americas on the clinical management of yellow fever patients, especially during outbreaks and epidemics, in the context of current medical and scientific evidence and taking into account the technical guidelines already available in the countries of the Region. It includes flowcharts for initially addressing patients with clinical suspicion of yellow fever and proposes a minimum package of laboratory tests that may be useful in contexts where resources are limited. In addition, it considers aspects of health system organization for dealing with yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
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Anaemia is a serious global public health problem that particularly affects young children, menstruating adolescent girls and women, and pregnant and postpartum women. It is a condition in which the number of red blood cells or the haemoglobin concentration within them is lower than normal, affectin...g the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues.
To reliably monitor the prevalence of anaemia at a population level, it is vital to measure the haemoglobin concentration in an accurate and precise way. In large-scale surveys, however, haemoglobin is most commonly measured using single-drop capillary blood specimens in point-of-care devices. Emerging evidence suggests that the use of single-drop capillary blood can introduce random and/or systematic errors, which may lead to inaccurate estimates, complicating effective anaemia programming.
This technical brief describes the current best practices for haemoglobin measurement, providing guidance to help plan or implement field surveys to assess anaemia at a population level. Continuing work to review emerging evidence is led by members of the WHO-UNICEF Technical Expert Advisory group on nutrition Monitoring (TEAM).
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