A practical guide for hospital administrators, health disaster coordinators, health facility designers, engineers and maintenance staff to achieve Smart Health Facilities by conserving resources, cutting costs, increasing efficiency in operations and reducing carbon emissions
Alcohol use is deeply embedded in the social landscape of many societies, and some 2300 million people drink alcoholic beverages in most parts of the world. At the same time, more than half of the global population aged 15 years and older reported having abstained from drinking alcohol during the pr...evious 12 months. Several major factors have an impact on levels and patterns of alcohol consumption in populations – such as historical trends in alcohol consumption, the availability of alcohol, culture, economic status and implemented alcohol control measures. At the individual level the patterns and levels of alcohol consumption are determined by multiple factors that include gender, age and individual biological and socioeconomic vulnerability factors as well as the policy environment. Prevailing social norms that support drinking behaviour and mixed messages about the harms and benefits of drinking may encourage alcohol consumption, delay appropriate health-seeking behaviour and weaken community action.
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Strengthening surveillance for Variant of Concern (VOC) Omicron (B.1.1.529): technical brief and priority actions for member states World Health Organization Headquarters, 28 November 2021
UN, international agencies and experts released a groundbreaking report demanding immediate, coordinated and ambitious action to avert a potentially disastrous drug-resistance crisis.
If no action is taken - warns the UN Ad hoc Interagency Coordinating Group on Antimicrobial Resistance who release...d the report – drug-resistant diseases could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050 and damage to the economy as catastrophic as the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. By 2030, antimicrobial resistance could force up to 24 million people into extreme poverty.
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Guidelines for good practice. 3rd edition
The Guidelines for Good Practice are intended to help organizations define their own needs in relation to stress management and develop their own staff care system. The process will be different for each organization. National and international agencies, bi...g and small organizations, will have to find the process and policies that work for them.
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This report provides an overview of the operations and activities of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine in 2023. Despite the acute health impacts of the war in Ukraine, the Country Office continued its work according to its core mandate. WHO supported the Government of Ukraine in managing the health ...emergency and pursued existing priorities set out in WHO’s Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019–2023, the European Programme of Work 2020–2025, and the Biennial Collaborative Agreement 2022–2023 signed with the Government of Ukraine. The report presents the achievements of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine in 2023 in the context of the war’s impact on the lives, health, and well-being of Ukrainians.
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The Committee discussed the implications for preparedness for smallpox-like events reflected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Committee noted how quickly diagnostics and vaccines could be developed and deployed when resources and political will were abundant. This rapidity was also due to the f...act that the genetic sequence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) had been shared worldwide. It was noted that in one country SARS-CoV-2 had been reconstructed in a laboratory from the viral genome sequence before the first case of COVID-19 had been reported, highlighting the benefits of synthetic biology technologies for accelerated development of diagnostics as well as the oft-described potential risks. Lessons learned about clinical care during the COVID-19 pandemic were also discussed.
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This working paper was conceived to offer practical tips and suggestions on how to establish and sustain the multisectoral coordination needed to develop and implement National Action Plans on AMR (NAPs). It is intended for anyone with responsibility for addressing AMR at country level. Drawing on b...oth the published literature and the operational experience of four ‘focal countries’ (Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippines and Thailand), it summarizes lessons learned and the latest thinking on multisectoral working to achieve effective AMR action.
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An approach to emergency situations. Relief workers face rapidly changing and complex environments, new disease patterns, enormous humanitarian needs and relatively limited resources. The authors of this book use their experience in the area to produce an operational manual of the issues involved in... refugee health programs. This book is aimed at professionals involved in public health assistance to refugees and displaced persons. It deals with a variety of specific refugee health issues at the decisional level, and discusses the priorities of intervention during the different phases of a refugee crisis, from emergency to repatriation.
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The key areas covered are diagnosis, imaging, pathology, surgery, rehabilitation, palliative care and survivorship. It emphasizes a multi-disciplinary team approach which is paramount for quality cancer care. The specific cancers covered are breast, central nervous system, gastroint...estinal, gynecological, head and neck, hematological, Kaposi’s sarcoma, lung, prostate and pediatric cancers. They also complement the National Guidelines for Cancer Management in Kenya released in 2013.
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Guidelines for diagnosis, acute care and post-COVID-19 follow-up for children and adolescents
This bulletin focuses on the situation in Ukraine and several key refugee-receiving countries (Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia), with the understanding that other countries in the European Region are also receiving Ukrainian refugees and WHO is pr...oviding technical support to them.
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The WHO Regional Office for Europe has established the Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative in more than half the countries in the Region for routine monitoring of the policy response to the emerging obesity epidemic. The aim of the Initiative is to measure trends in overweight and obesity in c...hildren aged 6.0–9.9 years to get a clear understanding of the epidemic and to allow inter-country comparisons. This document outlines the common protocol agreed for use in the Initiative.
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The threat climate change poses to health, equity, and development has been rigorously documented. However, in an era marked by economic crisis, regional conflicts, natural disasters and growing disparities between rich and poor, the joint global actions required to address climate change have been ...vigorously debated – and critical decisions postponed.
This document, part of WHO’s Health in the Green Economy series, describes how many climate change measures can be “win-wins” for people and the planet.
These policies yield large, immediate public health benefits while reducing the upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these policies can improve the health and equity of people in poor countries and assist developing countries in adapting to climate change that is already occurring, as evidenced by more extreme storms, flooding, drought and heatwaves.
WHO’s Department of Public Health and Environment launched the Health in the Green Economy initiative in 2010 to review potential health and equity “co-benefits” of proposed climate change measures – as well as relevant risks.
This review examines mitigation strategies discussed in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which constitutes the most broad-based global review of mitigation options by scientific experts.
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This working paper was conceived to offer practical tips and suggestions on how to establish and sustain the multisectoral coordination needed to develop and implement National Action Plans on AMR (NAPs). It is intended for anyone with responsibility for addressing AMR at country level. Drawing on b...oth the published literature and the operational experience of four ‘focal countries’ (Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippines and Thailand), it summarizes lessons learned and the latest thinking on multisectoral working to achieve effective AMR action. The experience in focal countries points to a number of tools and tactics that can be used to help establish and enhance sustainable multisectoral collaboration for AMR action. These can be grouped into four categories: political commitment, resources, governance mechanisms, and practical management.
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is described as a situation when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites
change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder or impossible to treat,
and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.1 AMR in recent years has... become
a global priority in public health due to its widespread consequences and increasing occurrence from
time to time. AMR has a formidable impact where the existing antibiotics and other antimicrobial
medicines become ineffective, and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.
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The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of Buruli ulcer (Mycobacterium ulcerans infection) for the medical and scientific communities and the general public alike.
This document adopts a health determinants framework for examining the evidence related to women’s poor mental health. From this perspective, public policy including economic policy, socio-cultural and environmental factors, community and social support, stressors and life events, personal behavio...ur and skills, and availability and access to health services, are all seen to exercise a role in determining women’s mental health status. Similarly, when considering the differences between women and men, a gender approach has been used. While this does not exclude biological or sex differences, it considers the critical roles that social and cultural factors and unequal power relations between men and women play in promoting or impeding mental health. Such inequalities create, maintain and exacerbate exposure to risk factors that endanger women’s mental health, and are most graphically illustrated in the significantly different rates of depression between men and women, poverty and its impact, and the phenomenal prevalence of violence against women.
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Exciting new treatment approaches make the management of hepatitic C one of the most rapidly developing areas of medicine. The Flying Publisher short Guide to Hepatitis C is an up-to-date source of information for physicians, residents and advanced medical students.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the challenges countries face for maintaining their COVID-19 response while addressing competing public health challenges, conflicts, climate change and economic crises.
It remains critical for national programmes to continue to offer testing for COVI...D-19 in line with three main objectives: reduce morbidity and mortality through linkage to prompt care and treatment, reduce onward transmission and track the evolution of the epidemic and the virus
itself.
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