English version - This handbook sets out a the new paradigm for pharmacy practice. Its aim is to guide pharmacy educators in pharmacy practice, to educate pharmacy students and to guide pharmacists in practice to update their skills. The handbook, which brings together practical tools and knowledge,... has been written in response to a need to define, develop and generate global understanding of pharmaceutical care at all levels.
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• provide scientific information on the safety, efficacy, and quality control/ quality assurance of widely used medicinal plants, in order to facilitate their appropriate use in Member States;
• provide models to assist Member States in developing their own mono- graphs or formularies for these... or other herbal medicines; and
• facilitate information exchange among Member States.
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Patient Safety tutorial 325
An all-hazards tool for hospital administrators and emergency managers.
The World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe has developed the Hospital emergency response checklist to assist hospital administrators and emergency managers in responding effectively to the most likely disaster sce...narios. This tool comprises current hospital-based emergency management principles and best practices and integrates priority action required for rapid, effective response to a critical event based on an all-hazards approach
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This guideline covers identifying, assessing and managing the long-term effects of COVID-19, often described as ‘long COVID’. It makes recommendations about care in all healthcare settings for adults, children and young people who have new or ongoing symptoms 4 weeks or more after the start of a...cute COVID-19. It also includes advice on organising services for long COVID.
Updated 11 November 2021
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A rapid evidence briefing. Vaccinated people are less likely to develop long COVID, even if they get infected, a rapid review of 15 studies by the UK Health Security Agency shows.
scientific brief, 2 March 2022
We need to be concerned about mental health in the context of climate change
This document aims to provide interim guidance for microbiology and virology experts, other laboratory professionals, laboratory managers, infectious disease programme managers, public health professionals and other stakeholders that provide primary, confirmatory or advanced testing for SARS-CoV-2, ...including genomic sequencing, or are involved in making decisions on establishing or scaling up capability and capacity to detect and characterize circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants.
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The WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) was launched in 2015 to foster AMR surveillance and inform strategies to contain AMR. The system started with surveillance of AMR in bacteria causing common human infections and has expanded its scope to include surveillance... of antimicrobial consumption (AMC), invasive fungal infections, and a One Health surveillance model relevant to human health. To meet future challenges, it is in continuous evolution to enhance the quality and representativeness of data to inform the AMR burden accurately. As of the end of 2022, 127 countries, territories and areas participate in GLASS.
The fifth GLASS report, produced in collaboration with Member States, summarizes 2020 data on AMR rates in common bacteria from countries, territories, and areas. The report brings new features, including analyses of population testing coverage or AMR trends. For the first time, the report presents 2020 data on AMC at the national level. A new interactive dashboard allow users to explore AMR and AMC global data, country profiles and download the data.
This report marks the end of the early implementation phase of GLASS. In addition to presenting data collected through the latest data call, this report provides a summary of five years of national AMR surveillance data contributed to GLASS from its initiation, presents AMR findings in the context of progress of country participation in GLASS and in global AMR surveillance coverage and laboratory quality assurance systems at (sub)national level.
Patterns of antimicrobial consumption are presented by country with a particular focus on antibacterials. The report also presents the antimicrobial consumption according to the WHO AWaRe antibiotic classification, for penicillins and cephalosporines. From a One Health perspective, the report presents antimicrobial consumption data in the human sector expressed in tons to allow a comparison with antimicrobial consumption from other sectors (not included in this report).
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Although Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) have been isolated from a variety of food production animals, they are most commonly associated with ruminants from which we derive meat and milk. Because of the widespread and diverse nature of ruminant-derived food production, coupled with the... near ubiquity of STEC worldwide, there is no single definitive solution for controlling STEC that will work alone or in all situations. Instead, the introduction of multiple interventions applied in sequence, as a “multiple-hurdle scheme” at several points throughout the food chain (including processing, transport and handling) will be most effective.
This report summarizes the review and evaluation of interventions applied for the control of STEC in cattle, raw beef and raw milk and raw milk cheese manufactured from cows’ milk, and also evaluates available evidence for other small ruminants, swine and other animals. The information is presented from primary production, to the end of processing, providing the reader with information on the currently available interventions based on the latest scientific evidence.
This work was undertaken to support the development of guidelines for the control of STEC in beef, raw milk and cheese produced from raw milk by the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH).
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Food security, human health and wellbeing largely depend on biodiversity. Biodiversity supports agriculture through ecosystem services such as pollination and water purification, and provides access to natural medicines,
which are the primary source of health care for 4 billion people worldwide
Mycetoma is a chronic infectious disease of the subcutaneous tissue with a high morbidity. This disease has been reported from countries between 30°N and 15°S since 1840 but the exact burden of disease is not known. It is currently unknown what the incidence, prevalence and the number of reported ...cases per year per country is. In order to estimate what the global burden of mycetoma is, a meta-analysis was performed. In total 50 studies were included, which resulted in a total of 8763 mycetoma cases. Most cases were found in men between 11 and 40 years of age. The foot was most commonly affected.
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A group of enzootic and zoonotic protozoan infections, the leishmaniases constitute among the most severely neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and are found in all continents except Oceania. Representing the most common infectious diseases, NTDs comprise an open-ended list of some 20 parasitic, bact...erial, viral, protozoan and helminthic infections. Called “diseases of the poor,” because of their characteristic prevalence in poor populations regardless of a country's income status, they infect over one billion people in over 140 countries, with about 90% of the global burden in Africa. While NTDs do not contribute significantly to global deaths, they are debilitating and remain the most common infections among the poor worldwide, preventing them from escaping poverty by impacting livelihoods such as agriculture and livestock, and affecting cognitive, developmental and education outcomes.
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The knowledge guide is the second publication in the Self-care competency framework to support health and care workers.
This describes how health and care workers can apply each of the 10 competency standards in their work, detailing the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes that underpin the... required behaviours.
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This review examines high-quality research evidence that synthesises the efects of extreme heat on human health in tropical
Africa. Web of Science (WoS) was used to identify research articles on the efects extreme heat, humidity, Wet-bulb Globe
Temperature (WBGT), apparent temperature, wind, Heat ...Index, Humidex, Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), heatwave, high temperature and hot climate on human health, human comfort, heat stress, heat rashes, and heat-related morbidity
and mortality
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The pharmacological management of asthma has changed considerably in recent decades, as it has come to be understood that it is a complex, heterogeneous disease with different phenotypes and endotypes. It is now clear that the goal of asthma treatment should be to achieve and maintain control of the... disease, as well as to minimize the risks (of exacerbations, disease instability, accelerated loss of lung function, and adverse treatment effects). That requires an approach that is personalized in terms of the pharmacological treatment, patient education, written action plan, training in correct inhaler use, and review of the inhaler technique at each office visit. A panel of 22 pulmonologists was invited to perform a critical review of recent evidence of pharmacological treatment of asthma and to prepare this set of recommendations, a treatment guide tailored to use in Brazil. The topics or questions related to the most significant changes in concepts, and consequently in the management of asthma in clinical practice, were chosen by a panel of experts. To formulate these recommendations, we asked each expert to perform a critical review of a topic or to respond to a question, on the basis of evidence in the literature. In a second phase, three experts discussed and structured all texts submitted by the others. That was followed by a third phase, in which all of the experts reviewed and discussed each recommendation. These recommendations, which are intended for physicians involved in the treatment of asthma, apply to asthma patients of all ages.
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The pharmacological management of asthma has changed considerably in recent decades, as it has come to be understood that it is a complex, heterogeneous disease with different phenotypes and endotypes. It is now clear that the goal of asthma treatment should be to achieve and maintain control of the... disease, as well as to minimize the risks (of exacerbations, disease instability, accelerated loss of lung function, and adverse treatment effects). That requires an approach that is personalized in terms of the pharmacological treatment, patient education, written action plan, training in correct inhaler use, and review of the inhaler technique at each office visit. A panel of 22 pulmonologists was invited to perform a critical review of recent evidence of pharmacological treatment of asthma and to prepare this set of recommendations, a treatment guide tailored to use in Brazil. The topics or questions related to the most significant changes in concepts, and consequently in the management of asthma in clinical practice, were chosen by a panel of experts. To formulate these recommendations, we asked each expert to perform a critical review of a topic or to respond to a question, on the basis of evidence in the literature. In a second phase, three experts discussed and structured all texts submitted by the others. That was followed by a third phase, in which all of the experts reviewed and discussed each recommendation. These recommendations, which are intended for physicians involved in the treatment of asthma, apply to asthma patients of all ages.
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