In response to a call by the United Nations Secretary-General and the Governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, an international team conducted an Ebola Recovery Assessment.The aim was to contribute towards laying the foundation for short-, medium- and long-term recovery while the medical eme...rgency response continues to tackle the epidemic.
This summary report is based on a full report as well as three detailed reports submitted to each of the three governments as contributions to their national recovery planning processes.
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Integration of mental health (MH) and HIV programs has the potential to significantly improve health outcomes for people living with HIV (PLHIV). This training package, which is comprised of a training-of-trainers manual, an accompanying presentation, and a standard operating procedure, was develope...d to support a pilot project for MH and HIV integration at the community level such that
health facilities, community-based organizations (CBOs), and traditional medical practitioners (TMPs) can collaborate to support MH screening and service provision for PLHIV in Zimbabwe
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Second interim report to the SMAC program, DFID Freetown
This report provides further output from an anthropological study of 25 villages affected by Ebola Virus Disease in eastern and central Sierra Leone, undertaken as part of the DFID-funded social mobilization initiative for Ebola prevention in... Sierra Leone. Eight focus group transcripts for 3 villages in Kenema District are presented, covering local responses to health issues, and Ebola in particular. Supporting material from a matching questionnaire-based study of health behavior and perceived causes of Ebola is also provided. Of particular relevance are two summary tables aggregating the questions villagers asked survey teams about Ebola and quarantine-related issues in villages where the epidemic has in effect ceased to be active
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The recommendations in these guidelines promote the use of simple, non-invasive diagnostic tests to assess the stage of liver disease and eligibility for treatment; prioritize treatment for those with most advanced liver disease and at greatest risk of mortality; and recommend the preferred use of n...ucleos(t)ide analogues with a high barrier to drug resistance (tenofovir and entecavir, and entecavir in children aged 2–11 years) for first- and second-line treatment. Recommendations for the treatment of HBV/HIV-coinfected persons are based on the WHO 2013 Consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection, which will be updated in 2015.
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Depuis plus de trois décennies, le Bénin a souscrit à l’approche des soins de santé primaires
telle que définie à la conférence d’Alma-Ata (1978) et renforcée par l’Initiative de Bamako
(1987). Le pays a mis en oeuvre diverses expériences de soins de santé au niveau
communautaire ...avec l’appui des Partenaires Techniques et Financiers (PTF) et la
participation des Organisations Non Gouvernementales (ONG) et les Organisations
Communautaires de Base (OCB). Celles-ci ont contribué à l’amélioration de l’offre des
services de santé, malgré l’absence d’une politique coordonnée devant servir de cadre
institutionnel à la santé communautaire.
A l’étape actuelle du processus de mise en oeuvre de diverses expériences pilotes d’actions
communautaires, le Ministère de la Santé s’est engagé dans une réflexion visant l’élaboration
d’une politique nationale de santé communautaire. Celle-ci devra servir à encadrer la mise à
l’échelle des interventions communautaires qui ont démontré leur efficacité et leur impact
sur les populations cibles. Cette réflexion a entraîné la tenue du forum national sur la santé
communautaire en Novembre 2013 à Cotonou.
Le document de Politique de Santé Communautaire s’arrime au Plan National de
Développement Sanitaire à travers lequel le Bénin ambitionne de « disposer en 2025 d’un
système de santé performant basé sur des initiatives publiques et privées, individuelles et
collectives, pour l’offre et la disponibilité permanente de soins de qualité, équitable et
accessible aux populations de toutes catégories, fondées sur les valeurs de solidarité et de
partage du risque pour répondre à l’ensemble des besoins de santé du peuple béninois » Dans
le présent document, il est défini une vision, des priorités et des stratégies pour les dix
prochaines années en santé communautaire. La principale innovation réside dans la
conception et la mise en place au niveau de chaque village et quartier de ville de la
composante locale du système national de santé (CoLoSS) en partenariat avec toutes les
parties prenantes. Le document précise les conditions requises et les mesures
d’accompagnement pour la réussite de la nouvelle politique dans le sens de l’autonomisation
(empowerment) progressive des populations.
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The goal of this course is to provide participants with the foundational skills needed to begin the development, implementation and ongoing improvement of a congenital anomalies surveillance programme, in particular for countries with limited resources. It focuses on the methodology needed to devel...op either population-based or hospital based surveillance programmes.
A set of congenital anomalies will be used as examples throughout this course. The specific examples used are typically severe enough that they would probably be captured within the first few days after birth, have a significant public health impact and, for some of them, have the potential for primary prevention.
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The National Strategy for Natural Disaster, Prevention, Response and Mitigation to 2020, which outlines Vietnam’s main disaster risk management objectives and the National Target Program (NTP) form the overarching policy framework for disaster risk management and climate change adaption activities.... The CCFSC’s main mandate is to translate this strategy into action. Other decrees and laws are also complementary. The Government of Vietnam has prioritized disaster preparedness, recognizing that the most cost-effective measures to mitigate flood related disasters are often non-structural. These measures include flood mapping, river flood warning systems, television-based disaster information and warning systems, training at all government and grassroots levels on disaster preparedness, and reforestation of certain areas. Land use and development have also been addressed through government regulations.
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Malaria is a prevalent cause of febrile illnesses in areas with high transmission, and its clinical presentation overlaps with initial signs of Ebola disease. For this reason, the effectiveness of the Ebola response in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone can be optimized through the deployment of targe...ted measures to reduce the number of fever cases due to malaria
WHO recommends specific adaptations in the diagnosis of malaria and in LLIN distribution in countries heavily affected by the Ebola outbreak and mass drug administration using artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in areas where transmission of both Ebola and malaria is high and access to malaria treatment is very low.
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Burial Management Teams have a difficult job resolving two critical issues relevant to their tasks. First, they must safeguard and ensure infection control and prevention for team members, family members and members of the community. Second, they must remain sensitive to the cultural and religious p...ractices of families and others affected by Ebola deaths. This module, based solidly on WHO guidelines, provides burial management teams with practices appropriate to ensure infection control and to remain sensitive to religious and cultural burial practices.
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The immediate objective of the country visit to Cameroon was to ensure that the country is as operationally ready as possible to effectively and safely detect, investigate and report potential Ebola virus disease cases and to mount an effective response that will prevent a larger outbreak. After te...chnical working group meetings, field visits, a “table-top” exercise and a hospital-based simulation exercises were undertaken.
Key strengths and weaknesses were identified, and the following areas for improvement were proposed to the Ministry of Health: coordination, surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, rapid response teams, case management, social mobilization, laboratory, points of entry, budget, logistics.
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This study highlights the challenges and areas in need of improvement as perceived by CHWs and beneficiaries, in regards to a nationwide scale-up of CHW interventions in a resource-challenged country. Identifying and understanding these barriers, and addressing them accordingly, particularly within ...the context of performance-based financing, will serve to strengthen the current CHW system and provide key guidance for the continuing evolution of the CHW system in Rwanda.
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he WHO global disability action plan 2014-2021 is a significant step towards achieving health and well-being and human rights for people with disabilities. The action plan was endorsed by WHO Member States in 2014 and calls for them to remove barriers and improve access to health services and progra...mmes; strengthen and extend rehabilitation, assistive devices and support services, and community-based rehabilitation; and enhance collection of relevant and internationally comparable data on disability, and research on disability and related services. Achieving the objectives of the action plan better enables people with disabilities to fulfil their aspirations in all aspects of life.
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This field guide is a practical tool for improving and maintaining drinking-water safety. It is designed to be used by YOU as a rural community member who shares responsibility for operation and management of the drinking-water supply in your community. It can also be used by YOU as a staff member o...f the local health or water supply office, local government authority, nongovernmental organization (NGO) or other community-based organization that supports drinking-water safety in rural communities. Ensuring the safety of the community water supply is a daily job, and community members and other stakeholders have to work jointly to achieve this goal.
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DHS Working Papers No. 105 - Rwanda has developed and implemented many strategies at the national level to reduce the incidence of HIV in the general population. One of the main objectives of such interventions is to improve the general level of knowledge of HIV, with the hypothesis that increasing... HIV knowledge will reduce risky sexual behavior. However, there has been a concern that HIV knowledge may not necessarily reduce risky sexual behavior. Only a limited number of population-based studies describe the results of these interventions in terms of how HIV knowledge affects risky sexual behavior. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to fill in this gap, by exploring HIV knowledge and its effect on risky sexual behavior among men in Rwanda.
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Nepal has performed exceptionally in improving reproductive, maternal and child health outcomes over the past two decades. In this article, we discuss these achievements and outline a vision for the future of maternal, newborn and child survival in Nepal after the era of the Millennium Development G...oals. On the pathway towards quality universal health care services for all, we propose strengthening of health information systems, gradual health system reforms, improvement of existing facility based services, development of integrated service delivery models, improved technical and managerial capacity at district and facility levels. Elimination of all preventable causes of maternal, newborn and child deaths in Nepal should be our collective aspirational goal.
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This evaluation report of UNICEF’s Psychosocial Support Response for Syrian Children in Jordan was conducted by
Antares Foundation team (Albertien van der Veen, Reem AbuKishk, Shadi Bushnaq, Orso Muneghina, Reem Rawdha
and Tineke van Pietersom) under the supervision of guidance Farhod Kamidov, M...onitoring and Evaluation Officer
and Muhammad Rafiq Khan, Child Protection Specialist (CPiE).This is achieved through community-supported child and
adolescent friendly spaces (CFSs)1 and community-based
child protection mechanisms and processes. Currently,
in its fourth year of operation as part of the Syria crisis,
UNICEF considers it an opportune moment to take stock
of the programme’s overall effectiveness to date and in so
doing to inform its future.
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We will soon be piloting a project titled “Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care” that will form “spiritual care teams” to assess and address patients’ spiritual needs in physician outpatient practices within Adventist Health System, the largest Protestant healthcare system ... in the United States.This paper describes the goals, the rationale, and the structure of the spiritual care teams that will soon be implemented, and discusses the barriers to providing spiritual care that health professionals are likely to encounter.Spiritual care teams may operate in an outpatient or an inpatient setting, and their purpose is to provide health professionals with resources necessary to practice whole person healthcare that includes spiritual care.We believe that this project will serve as a model forfaith-based health systems seeking to visibly demonstrate their mission in a way that makes them unique and expresses their values.Not only does this model have the potential to be cost-effective, but also the capacity to increase the quality of patient care and the satisfaction that health professionals derive from providing care.If successful, this model could spread beyond faith-based systems to secular systems as well both in the U.S. and worldwide.
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The ethical values and behaviors are not only abstract terms, but they are refined and conceptualized byreal-life experiences. The societal context where the actions of humans can be analyzed by ethicaldecision-making is entirely relevant to deliberate on what is the right thing to do and what the m...oralagent should do, since the ethical values and principles response to the actual practices of life and to theneeds of humans in the society. This elaboration takes us to the realm of social ethics.This article reviews the definition and contextual meaning of social ethics at a broader level by givingspecial emphasis to the ethical theories and principles, focusing on the societal and public setting. Ethicswill be deliberated with social and community aspects. Based on the principle of justice and public healthethics, the concept of social ethics has been investigated concisely through the relationship between man,as a moral person, and the society in exemplification of the issues of healthcare ethics. It is argued that thetension between individualism and communitarian needs can be reconciled with the perspective of socialethics by respecting the individual autonomy without disregarding the common good and social justice.By promoting the values of social responsibility, solidarity, and social utility, social ethics has beenproposed as the basis of a rational, moral, egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic society rising on the pillars ofhuman rights and human dignity.
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Nurses play a critical role in patient care, detecting potential problems, and advocating for a culture of safety. NSO and our insurance carrier partner, CNA, designed this self-assessment checklist based on significant topics from our Nurse Claim Report to help nurses enhance patient safety and min...imize your liability exposure.
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Stats SA has released an in-depth report on persons with disabilities. The report, written using Census 2011 data, is the first in a series of in-depth analyses of various Census 2011 variables, such as ageing and education.
The report provides statistical evidence relating to the prevalence of dis...ability and characteristics of persons with disabilities at both individual and household levels. Two methods were used to profile disability prevalence and patterns based on the six functional domains, namely seeing, hearing, communication, remembering/concentrating, walking and self-care. These two methods were:
- the level/degree of difficulty in a specific functional domain and;
- the disability index.
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