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More than 700 000 people lose their life to suicide every year. The world is not on track to reach the 2030 suicide reduction targets. WHO advocates for countries to take action to prevent suicide, ideally through a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. Governments
...
and communities can contribute to suicide prevention by implementing LIVE LIFE – WHO’s approach to starting suicide prevention so that countries can build on it further to develop a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. The guide is for all countries, with or without a national suicide prevention strategy; national or local focal points for suicide prevention, mental health, alcohol or NCDs; and community stakeholders with a vested interest or who may already be engaged in implementing suicide prevention activities.
Excecutive Summary available in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanisch here:
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Containment strategies: lessons from early COVID-19 responses in five African countries
World Health Organization WHO, Regional Office of Africa; AHOP
WHO Regional Office for Africa
(2021)
C_WHO
The number of COVID-19 cases is on the rise again, with South Africa nearing half of all confirmed cases in the WHO African Region. Threats of new variants loom and low vaccination coverage raises questions on the future of the response to COVID-19.
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Prevention remains the key strategy in most sub-Saharan countries. Five National Centres (NCs) from the African Health Observatory Platform on Health Systems and Policies (AHOP), based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal, reflect on lessons to be learnt from their containment responses in the initial phases. They construct timelines to highlight the policies and challenges associated with introducing a range of public health containment measures and
discuss the extent to which these measures continue to be valuable given the ever-changing nature of the pandemic.
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Together for One Health. Building on the momentum of increased collaboration, the WHO, FAO, OIE and UNEP have developed a Strategic Framework for collaboration on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Thi
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s Framework reflects the joint work of the four organizations to advance a One Health response to AMR at the global, regional and country level. It broadly supports the implementation of the five pillars of the Global Action Plan on AMR, as well as strengthening global AMR governance.
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Children continue to be exposed to powerful food marketing, which predominantly promotes foods high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or sodium and uses a wide variety of
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marketing strategies that are likely to appeal to children. Food marketing has a harmful impact on children’s food choice and their dietary intake, affects their purchase requests to adults for marketed foods and influences the development of their norms about food consumption. Food marketing is also increasingly recognized as a children’s rights concern, given its negative impact on several of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.This WHO guideline provides Member States with recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, based on evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing. Guidelines on other policies to improve the food environment are currently under development.
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National action plans on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) often overlook the critical intersection of gender, despite evidence that exposure and susceptibility to infection, health-seeking behaviours,
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as well as antimicrobial prescribing and use patterns are all influenced by gender.
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The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture (MoEAC) has been implementing the Integrated School Health Programme in various forms since before the country attained political independence in 1990. Sc
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hool health goes beyond the physical health of the learner, in that it includes the holistic wellbeing of the individual learner, meaning that the school environment should be safe and conducive to learning. The National Safe Schools Framework (NSSF) is an exciting dimension of the Integrated School Health Programme. The Programme focuses on promoting the health, safety and wellbeing of learners and other school stakeholders in Namibia, and the NSSF was developed to provide practical guidance to the schools and school stakeholders on how to systematically improve the standards of school safety, and how to develop a culture of care in any school.
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Following review of the latest evidence, WHO recommends that TB-LAMP can be used as a replacement for microscopy for the diagnosis of pulmonary TB in adults with signs and symptoms of TB. It can also be considered as a follow-on test to microscopy i
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n adults with signs and symptoms of pulmonary TB, especially when further testing of sputum smear-negative specimens is necessary.
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Managing possible serious bacterial infection in young infants when referral is not feasible
recommended
It provides guidance on care for use in resource-limited settings or in settings where families with sick young infants do not accept or cannot access referral care, but can be managed in outpatient settings by an appropriately trained health worker
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. The guideline seeks to provide programmatic guidance on the role of CHWs and home visits in identifying signs of serious infections in neonates and young infants.
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It is the policy of the GoR to ensure that children’s rights are met through the provision of basic needs and services for all children in the country, and protect them from abuse
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and exploitation. Children are defined as persons below the age of 18 years and the ICRP covers children from the time before their birth until they complete the age of 18 years. The Integrated Child Rights Policy of Rwanda is based on seven key themes: Identity and Nationality; Family and Alternative Care; Survival, Health and Standards of Living; Education; Protection; Justice; and Child Participation.
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The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health and was developed in response to
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the globalization of the tobacco epidemic. Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region have made attempts to implement the demand and supply reduction strategies for tobacco control as recommended by the treaty. While recognizing the need to accelerate implementation of the WHO FCTC in the Region, this document has been developed to support the Member States in implementing the treaty using a ‘PRACTICAL’ Approach which pertains to identified demand and supply reduction strategies under the treaty.
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no cover page / publication year available
The process to develop this "National Traditional Medicine Policy" included a detailed situational analysis of traditional medicine in Liberia and a desk review of relevant documents ... and the regional policy framework on the alignment of WAHO countries policy harmonization. more
The process to develop this "National Traditional Medicine Policy" included a detailed situational analysis of traditional medicine in Liberia and a desk review of relevant documents ... and the regional policy framework on the alignment of WAHO countries policy harmonization. more
The strategic priorities of the CCS 2014–2018 are:
(1) Strengthening the health system.
(2) Enhancing the achievement of communicable disease control targets.
(3) Controlling the growth of the noncommunicable disease burden.
(4 ... ) Promoting health throughout the life course.
(5) Strengthening capacity for emergency risk management and surveillance systems for various health threats. more
(1) Strengthening the health system.
(2) Enhancing the achievement of communicable disease control targets.
(3) Controlling the growth of the noncommunicable disease burden.
(4 ... ) Promoting health throughout the life course.
(5) Strengthening capacity for emergency risk management and surveillance systems for various health threats. more
9 April 2020
WHO has published the guidance “Clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) when COVID-19 disease is suspected” This document is intended for clinicians taking care of hospitalized adult and paediatric patients
...
with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) when COVID-19 infection is suspected. Optimized supportive care should be provided to ensure the best possible chance for survival of COVID-19 patients as described in the WHO guidance:
1. Management of severe COVID-19 requires oxygen therapy and monitoring. Supplemental oxygen therapy should be given immediately to patients with SARI and respiratory distress, hypoxaemia or shock.
2. Management of critical COVID-19 (acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)) requires advanced oxygen/ventilatory support.
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Project protocol
Introduction Ready-to-eat food sold in the street represents a global phenomenon, more common in urbanized areas, that constitutes an important dietary source in populations from low- and middle-income countries. However, research
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on the kind of street food offered and its composition is scarce. The main objective of this study is to characterize the urban street food environment, including vending places, the food offered, its nutritional composition, food purchasing patterns and advertising.
Methods and analysis This protocol provides a framework for a stepwise, standardized characterization of the street food environment; it consists of three steps that are of increasing complexity and demand increasingly great human and technical resources. Step 1 comprises identification of street food vending sites and characterization of the products available; this stage may be complemented with an evaluation of food advertising in the streets. Step 2 comprises description of street food purchasing patterns, by direct observation. Step 3 requires collection of food samples for bromatological analysis. Different levels of data collection may be defined for each step; hereafter, these are presented as core and expanded evaluations. For the most part, data analysis involves descriptive statistics and basic spatial analysis.
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A study conducted by the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on older persons both globally and in the African region. Although o
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verall the region’s population is younger relative to many other world regions, the WHO AFRO region has a population just over 62 million older people and is ageing rapidly, with the number of older people expected to triple in the next three decades (Aboderin et al., 2020).
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In this edition, the Antimicrobial Resistance chapter discusses the growing, dangerous trend of antimicrobial resistance and the potential catastrophic consequences on global health.
Chapter 1 of F
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rontier 2017: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern
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March 2022. This report on good practices to combat AMR focuses on activities across human, animal, and environmental health in European countries. The report provides a description of practices, ho
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w they were implemented, achievements, and why the practice was unique.
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The mhGAP community toolkit: field test version is an integral part of WHO's Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP), and aims at scaling up services for people with mental
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health conditions to achieve universal health coverage.
The toolkit provides guidance for programme managers on how to identify local mental health needs and tailor community services to match these needs. It offers practical information and necessary tools for community providers to promote mental health, prevent mental health conditions and expand access to mental health services.
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This country cooperation strategy (CCS) outlines how the World Health Organization (WHO) will work with the Lao People’s Democratic Republic over the next five years (2024–2028), supporting the implementation of the five-year
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health sector development plans and the Health Sector Reform Strategy 2021–2030 to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic experienced substantial economic growth in the 30 years prior to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, contributing to reduced poverty and significant progress toward the SDGs. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought this development to a halt. It was anticipated that the COVID-19 recovery and the tremendous population growth in recent years would provide opportunities for a shift toward more sustainable and inclusive development in the years ahead. In 2023, however, the contrary was the case. Rural residents, including many ethnic minorities, continued to face marginalization because of limited access to education, health care and economic opportunities.
Despite the challenges of COVID-19 and other disease outbreaks, the country has made significant improvements in health. Nonetheless, progress has been uneven and not everyone has benefited from these achievements. In the mountainous region, many people lack access to quality health care because of the unequal distribution of well-trained health-care workers. Preventable deaths due to poor-quality health care for children and newborns, infants and mothers remain a concern, as do communicable diseases such as sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis. The increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases and the health impact of worsening climate change further heighten the need for strengthened and resilient health systems, which are at risk due to an underfunded health sector and weak economy.
This CCS aims to address remaining and future challenges as well as health needs while creating an impact that is sustainable. It identifies three strategic priorities and nine deliverables (Table 1) to support the attainment of the national vision of Health for all by all, as articulated in the 9th Health Sector Development Plan 2021–2025. It contributes to the country’s goals to achieve universal health coverage, graduate from least developed country status by 2026 and attain SDGs by 2030.
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About one fourth of the world’s population is estimated to have been infected with the tuberculosis (TB) bacilli, and about 5–10% of those infected develop TB disease in their lifetime. The risk for TB disease after infection depends on several
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factors, the most important being the person’s immunological status. TB preventive treatment (TPT) given to people at highest risk of progressing from TB infection to disease remains a critical element to achieve the global targets of the End TB Strategy, as reiterated by the second UN High Level Meeting on TB in 2023. Delivering TPT effectively and safely necessitates a programmatic approach to implement a comprehensive package of interventions along a cascade of care: identifying individuals at highest risk, screening for TB and ruling out TB disease, testing for TB infection, and choosing the preventive treatment option that is best suited to an individual, managing adverse events, supporting medication adherence and monitoring programmatic performance
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