The 2021 Report examines country health spending patterns and trends over the past 20 years, before the COVID-19 pandemic, with greater focus on public spending on health. The report also presents spending on primary health care, preliminary health expenditure in 2020 for a small set of countries (i...ncluding their health spending on COVID-19) and an analysis of high-income countries spending patterns, in particular during the global financial crisis. The report also points out the need for more public investment in health to get progress towards UHC back on track and strong health security.
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The 2018 global health financing report presents health spending data for all WHO Member States between 2000 and 2016 based on the SHA 2011 methodology. It shows a transformation trajectory for the global spending on health, with increasing domestic public funding and declining external financing. T...his report also presents, for the first time, spending on primary health care and specific diseases and looks closely at the relationship between spending and service coverage
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Poster for Cholera prevention
The environment in which young people live, learn and play significantly affects their decisions about whether to consume alcohol. Environmental factors are the main risk factors driving alcohol consumption and related harm among young people. Environments that normalize alcohol consumption – term...ed alcogenic environments – include contexts with unregulated advertising and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher alcohol outlet density, products designed to facilitate affordability and low prices of alcoholic beverages. A recent body of research evidence has emerged related to the measurement, functional significance and consequences of living in alcogenic environments. This includes findings on the complex and bidirectional interactions among alcohol acceptability, availability and affordability and how they create and perpetuate alcogenic environments. Comprehensive and enforced alcohol control policies are effective at delaying the age of onset and lowering alcohol prevalence and frequency among young people. Evidence consistently confirms the effectiveness of designing and implementing alcohol control policies that regulate upstream the drivers of alcogenic environment, including alcohol availability, acceptability and affordability. These policies need to be multipronged and address the complex interactions between these drivers and the local alcohol culture
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Reducing the global suicide mortality rate by a third by 2030 is a target of both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the WHO Global Mental Health Action Plan. However, an impediment to meeting this goal is the fact that suicide and suicide attempts remain illegal in at least 23 countries world...wide. Decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts represents one critical step governments can take in their efforts to prevent suicide. The WHO Policy Brief on the health aspects of decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts cites data and research to make a case for decriminalizing suicide globally. It also includes case examples from countries that have recently decriminalized suicide and suicide attempts — Guyana and Pakistan, Singapore,— providing important insights to policy-makers, legislators, parliamentarians and other decision-makers.
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WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health has supported the availability of mental health services for more than 40 million more people. Learn about WHOs Special Initiative for Mental Health, which seeks to increase access to quality and affordable care for mental health conditions in 12 countries ...for 100 million more people. The initiative is advancing policies, advocacy and human rights, and scaling-up quality interventions and services for people with mental, neurological and substance use conditions.
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The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG target 3.8) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has i...ncreased.
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Ethiopia faces unprecedented public health risks with over 17.4 million people in need of health assistance due to a compounded security, epidemiological, environmental and socio-economic hardships throughout the country. Specifically, the prolonged drought and localized conflicts have negatively im...pacted public health systems, whose access has become severely hindered because of physical constraints, infrastructure, equipment damages, lack of available healthcare workforce and negative coping mechanisms resulting from livelihoods deterioration. Whereas the World Health Organization (WHO) assistance has been critical to coordinate humanitarian efforts in affected areas, additional efforts are required in the coming months to address ongoing epidemic outbreaks and support the recovery process in conflict-affected areas (Afar, Amhara, Tigray and Gambelia) that are now accessible.
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Access to safe blood and blood products is recognized as one of the key requirements for delivery of modern health care in the journey towards health for all. The foundation of safe and sustainable blood supplies depends on the collection of blood from voluntary non-remunerated and low-risk donors. ...Data from the WHO Global Database for Blood Safety (GDBS) brings out several inadequacies related to the supply and safety of blood and blood products. These inadequacies include a number of variations in safe blood practices across the world, including the quantity of blood donated (voluntary and replacement types), quality and adequate testing of the donated blood (immunohaematology [IH] and transfusion-transmitted infections [TTIs]), rational use of blood and blood components such as appropriate patient blood management protocols. These variations are very high in countries of the South-East Asian Region and most of them are either low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).
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Internationally harmonized modules on key issues for paediatricians and paediatric nurses, family and public health professionals.
This report describes the “Building health workers capacity on air pollution and health” pilot workshop held in Ghana in 2022 which aimed at testing the training material of the first WHO Air Pollution and Health Training toolkit (APHT) targeting health professionals. APHT aims at strengthening ...the knowledge of health workers on air pollution and health and to enable them to effectively communicate with patients and communities on how to reduce their risk, to advocate for population level interventions as well as to train other peers and colleagues using a train-the-trainer approach. This workshop report serves as a tool and example of a training that can be replicated and adapted to other contexts and settings based on country and regional priorities and needs.
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Member States of the Region have initiated processes to strengthen leadership and governance for mental health. Several countries have developed and implemented mental health plans, strategies and legislations. Direct spending on mental health needs to be increased throughout the Region through the ...health sector as well as other relevant sectors.
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This is the fifth report of the Global Evidence Review on Health and Migration (GEHM) series. The publication focuses on the mental health needs of refugees and migrants by providing an overview of the available evidence on patterns of risk and protective factors and of facilitators and barriers to ...care at all levels (individual, family, community and national government). It identifies five high-level themes, each of which has implications for research and policy and is relevant across refugee and migrant groups, contexts and stages of the migration process: self-identity and community support; basic needs and security; cultural concepts of mental health as well as stigma; exposure to adversity and potentially traumatic events; navigating mental health and other systems and services.
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This document outlines the concept and content of the WHO people-centred approach to addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the human health sector. The proposed approach recognizes and aims to address the challenges and health system barriers people face when accessing health services to prev...ent, diagnose and treat (drug-resistant) infections. It puts people and their needs at the centre of the AMR response and guides policy-makers in taking programmatic and comprehensive actions to mitigate AMR in line with a proposed package of core interventions. These interventions are based on a review of four pillars and two foundational steps that are critical to overcome barriers faced by people and health systems in addressing AMR.
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This publication describes the reasons for the resurgence of malaria in Kyrgyzstan and presents an analysis of evidence-based elimination strategies and policies that were applied to contain the epidemic and outbreaks of the disease, achieve its elimination, and maintain the country malaria-free. Th...e strong political commitment and the mobilization of human resources that were crucial in achieving elimination are emphasized. It is hoped that the experiences of Kyrgyzstan's national malaria control programme can assist other countries aiming to eliminate malaria. The publication is intended for health managers and personnel, researchers, teachers, students and post-graduates at medical schools.
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Social inequalities are perpetuating unhealthy living and working conditions and behaviours. These causes are commonly called ‘the social determinants of health’. Achieving greater equity in health will demand that the health sector assumes a greater leadership role in addressing social inequali...ties. This requires equipping health and care workers to better understand how the social determinants of health impact patients and communities. Education of the health workforce is thus a key step to advancing action. Integration of the social determinants of health into education and training will prepare the workforce to adjust clinical practice, define appropriate public health programmes and leverage cross-sector policies and mechanisms.
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This guidance describes a catalogue of indicators for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (MNCAH) that can be monitored through health management information system data. It is a module of the WHO Toolkit for Routine Health Information Systems (RHIS) Data and links to relevant indicators ...from other programmatic modules of the WHO toolkit. The document provides guidance on possible analysis and visualization of the indicators, including considerations for interpreting and using the data for decision-making. An annex on data quality considerations for MNCAH managers provides suggestions for reviewing and interpreting routine health facility data through a quality lens.
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This Community Conversation Kit (CCK) is designed to help people who have a leadership role speak with people in their community about how to protect themselves and those they care about from becoming ill with an infectious disease. This kit will help lead conversations that get people talking with ...each other and thinking differently about their health so they can take action. Using some simple tips and suggestions, the information in this kit will allow communities to exchange practical information that will help them know how to confidently protect their health.
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The health of humans, animals and environment is vitally interlinked. A majority of emerging and endemic
human diseases have their origins in animals, be they transmitted directly, through food or the environment.
The World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH,... founded as OIE) and
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations are the main international organizations
responsible for proposing references and guidance for the public health, agriculture and animal health sectors
respectively. WHO, FAO, WOAH has been an active promoter and implementer of an intersectoral collaborative
approach between institutions and systems to prevent, detect, and control diseases among animals and
humans.
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The evaluation covers the period January 2020 to August 2023. The geographical scope of the evaluation has involved the three levels of WHO (global, regional and country levels) and external key partners. The programmatic evaluation scope was concerned with assessing the SP-PHC in the following area...s/evaluation criteria: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, added value, sustainability and equity, gender and human rights considerations. The evaluation did not assess the Universal Health Coverage Partnership (UHC-P) as it has its own separate governing body and reviews/evaluations, but instead considered how the SP-PHC had enhanced the value of the UHC-P and vice versa. The resilience and essential public health functions (REPHF) team and Systems’ Governance and Stewardship (SGS) were also not within the scope of this evaluation. However, these workstreams were considered in the wider conclusions and recommendations for the SP-PHC, as appropriate. Finally, the evaluation was focused on the SP-PHC; its scope did not include assessing the configuration and capacity of WHO’s departments and functions as they relate to UHC and health systems.
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