Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are critical in the prevention and care for all of the 17 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) scheduled for intensified control or elimination by 2020.
Provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene is one of the five key interventions within the global NTD ...roadmap. Yet to date, the WASH component of the strategy has received little attention and the potential to link efforts on WASH and NTDs has been largely untapped.
Focused efforts on WASH are urgently needed if the global NTD roadmap targets are to be met. This is especially needed for NTDs where transmission is most closely linked to poor WASH conditions such as soil-transmitted helminthiasis, schistosomiasis, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis.
This strategy aims to mobilise WASH and NTD actors to work together towards the roadmap targets.
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This report aims to support countries in the necessary transition toward healthier, more sustainable diets by integrating biodiversity in food-based interventions to support nutrition and health. It is intended to help guide decision-makers in the health, nutrition and other sectors, to:
Consider... the important role of biodiversity in food systems for the development of integrated interventions to support healthy, diverse and sustainable diets;
To focus investments and country support for more comprehensive, coordinated and cross-cutting public health and nutrition projects and policies; and
To strengthen the resilience of food systems, health systems, and societies, each of which are each increasingly compromised by widespread ecological degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.
Biodiversity at every level (genetic, species and ecosystem level) is a foundational pillar for food security, nutrition, and dietary quality. It is the basic source of variety in essential foods, nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and medicines, and underpins life-sustaining ecosystem services. It is a core environmental determinant of health, often a vital ingredient of healthy nutritional outcomes and livelihoods, gender equality, social equity, and other health determinants.
Biodiversity can play a more prominent role in planning for nutritional outcomes in various ways, e.g. by facilitating the production of nutritious fruits and plant products, sustaining livelihoods through more efficient production and increasing the diversity of products available in markets. This Guidance presents and expands on six core building blocks for mainstreaming biodiversity for nutrition and health:
Cross-sectoral knowledge development and knowledge co-production;
Enabling environments;
Integration;
Conservation and the wider use of biodiversity;
Education and awareness-raising;
Monitoring and evaluation;
This WHO report builds on an unprecedented opportunity to mainstream biodiversity in order to support healthy and sustainable diets, and offers the necessary technical guidance to catalyze and support a transformation of the global food system and transition to healthier, more sustainable diets.
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Health ministries currently lack effective tools for monitoring and evaluation of schistosomiasis control programmes. Egg detection can be used, but the cost, challenges of obtaining samples, and the need for trained personnel and equipment limit the frequency of monitoring. The purpose of this TPP ...is to guide the development of new diagnostic tools to reliably measure when prevalence is above or below a cut-off of 10% in school-aged children. Communities remaining above 10% require annual MDA, while communities below 10% can reduce MDA frequency as long as < 10% prevalence can be maintained. However, the lack of a reliable test has hindered the development of maintenance strategies. The test is also needed to track changes of prevalence > 10% to ensure that annual MDA is reducing overall prevalence.
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Special Focus on COVID-19
The report provides updated estimates for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in schools including progress from 2015 to 2019. It highlights the rapid improvement needed to ensure students have access to handwashing facilities with soap and water during the COVID-19 pan...demic, and to meet associated SDG targets by 2030.
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Specifically the Strategy focuses on five strategic objectives:
commitment to action on Healthy Ageing in every country;
developing age-friendly environments;
aligning health systems to the needs of older populations;
developing sustainable and equitable systems for providing lon...g-term care (home, communities, institutions); and
improving measurement, monitoring and research on Healthy Ageing.
Available in Englisch, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish
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The animal health subsector within the agriculture sector is the gatekeeper of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in livestock, aquaculture, animal products, and the immediate animal environment. In support of member countries taking responsibility for and moving forward with putting AMR monitoring and ...surveillance in place for the animal sector, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP) developed a regional AMR surveillance framework, each pillar of which is complemented by a guideline to reinforce its progressive implementation. The first of this series, Volume 1: Monitoring and surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from healthy food animals intended for consumption, is centered on healthy animals reaching consumers and on the protection of public health.
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To improve survival and quality of life among the 2.5 million children living with HIV, a comprehensive package of prevention, care and treatment is required. This package should include management of infections such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and ear infections, as well as common opportunisti...c infections and HIV-related co-morbidities. WHO is developing a series of guidelines on each of these conditions, following the GRADE approach. The document on the management of pneumonia and diarrhoea in HIV-infected infants and children is the first of this series. The recommendations are similar to those for non infected children, but they cover specific aspects related to HIV infection.
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Special summit of African Union on HIV and Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (atm) Abuja, Nigeria 2–4 may, 2006Sp/Assembly/ATM/2 (I), Rev.3
Abuja call for accelerated action towards universal access to HIV and Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria services in Africa
This guidance is intended to be used by programme managers following the decision to introduce human papillomavirus (HPV) virological testing as a screening assay in their national cervical cancer prevention and control programme. The guidance includes a step-by-step process to be followed after the... decision has been made to specifically introduce and/or scale-up HPV virological testing for screening, which would be followed up with adequate management within the context of cervical cancer prevention
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Effective malaria prevention is threatened by widespread and increasing vector insecticide resistance. Failure to mitigate this threat will likely result in an increased burden of disease, with significant cost implications. This new framework provides support for the development of a national insec...ticide resistance monitoring and management plan as part of a national malaria strategic plan.
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The Cholera Fact Sheet is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Haitian Kreyol. This heavily-illustrated, easy-to-read handout provides information for preventing, diagnosing and treating cholera with limited resources. It offers instructions for purifying drinking water and prepari...ng a rehydration drink at home.
You can link to the English sheet, which includes links to all other languages: http://en.hesperian.org/hhg/Cholera_Factsheet#utm_source=MedBox&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=cholera_hw
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Kenya Quality Model for Health - Hospitals
Despite being a curable and preventable disease, tuberculosis (TB) remains as one of the major challenges for health systems, globally. Every year, TB affects more than 10 million people and kills more than 1.4 million people. WHO’s Digital Health for the End TB Strategy – an Agenda for Action o...utlines a conceptual framework in which advantageously positioned digital health solutions are matched to the most urgent needs of TB programmes. Video-supported treatment is a component of one of the four core functions of this framework, the Patient Care domain, and primarily supports the first pillar of the End TB Strategy. This quick guide provides information on the solutions available for asynchronous modes of video communication and how these can be of use to TB programmes.
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