The growing problem of child marriage among Syrian girls in Jordan
This report presents key findings from a study on ‘assessing the effectiveness of targeting mechanisms under PMJAY’. It provides a detailed analysis of potential inclusion and exclusion errors in two select states in India (Haryana and Uttarakhand) to inform National Health Authority’s (NHA) p...olicy and approach
around beneficiary targeting.
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The winter season is approaching fast, while older people (OP) and people with disabilities (PwD) have already been living in the harsh environment of a full-scale war for eight months, with their basic needs and human rights at risk of being neglected and violated for eight years of ongoing war.
T...he recent brutal attacks on the critical infrastructure facilities such as power plants and power substations in eight regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv, show the alarming prediction that this winter is going to be challenging for the affected areas, especially for the vulnerable people residing there
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The CWG in Iraq has updated the SMEB and has designed a new MEB and gap analysis to inform the transfer values for cash programming in 2023. This document is a technical note with the summary of the values and the methodology.
In our fourth year of producing The State of Open Humanitarian Data, we can report the highest levels yet for data availability across priority humanitarian operations. These gains can be attributed to the commitment of organizations to sharing and maintaining their data publicly. There was also str...ong demand for data about the world's largest humanitarian crises, from the war in Ukraine to drought and food insecurity in the Horn of Africa.
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This brochure presents a summary of the situation of health systems and services in the Americas as they progress toward the achievement of universal access to health and universal health coverage (universal health). The information provided presents an overview of the situation before the COVID-19 ...pandemic, how the pandemic has impacted health systems, and recommendations to address current and future challenges for building resilient health systems to advance toward universal health in the Americas.
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This perspective draws on the record of ancient pathogengenomes and microbiomes illuminating patterns of infectious disease over the course of the Holocene in order toaddress the following question. How did major changes inliving circumstances involving the transition to and intensification of farmi...ng alter pathogens and their distributions? Answers to this question via ancient DNA researchprovide a rapidly expanding picture of pathogen evolution and in concert with archaeological and historical data, give a temporal and behavioral context for heath in the past that is relevant for challenges facing the world today, including the rise of novel pathogens.
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The WHO continuously reviews available data on SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. For this version, the global epidemiological
situation of the COVID-19 pandemic as of 21 January 2022 – at a time when the Omicron VOC had been identified in 171
countries across all six WHO Regions and was rapidly re...placing Delta worldwide – was considered Omicron has a substantial growth advantage, higher secondary attack rates and a higher observed reproduction number than Delta.
There is now significant evidence that immune evasion contributes to the rapid spread of Omicron. Other factors may be a shorter
serial interval (by about 0.8 to 1.2 days compared to Delta) and potential increased intrinsic transmission fitness . There is
growing evidence that with Omicron, there is lower vaccine effectiveness (VE) against infection and symptomatic disease soon after vaccination compared to Delta. There is also evidence of accelerated waning of VE over time of the primary series against infection and symptomatic disease for the studied vaccines. Further studies are required to better understand the drivers of transmission and declining incidence in various settings. These factors include the intrinsic transmission fitness properties of the virus, degree of immune evasion, vaccination coverage and level of vaccine-derived and post-infection immunity, levels of social mixing and degree of application of public health and social measures (PHSM).
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Promoting health and preventing disease is a critical component of the effort required to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC). to date, efforts to achieve UHC have focused mostly on strengthening health systems and their capacities to provide curative care. However, experience from the COVID-19 ...pandemic has reaffirmed the need for resilient health systems, emphasizing primary health care, including preventive and promotive health and well-being.
Emerging from the eye of the storm as the global health lead agency during the pandemic, WHO is equipped with the required insights and actions for a holistic approach to “building back fairer and better” after COVID-19.
The Healthier Populations (UHP) Cluster in the African Region is designed to support Pillar 3 of WHO’s 13th Global Programme of Work (GPW13) which aims to make 1 billion people healthier by reducing health inequities, preventing diseases and injuries, addressing health determinants, and promoting partnerships for collaborative actions amongst all stakeholders.
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The Fifty-first World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA51.11 in 1998, which targets the
global elimination of trachoma as a public health problem by 2020 (1). The strategy recommended
to achieve that goal is encapsulated by the acronym “SAFE”, which represents: Surgery for
individuals wi...th trachomatous trichiasis (TT; the late blinding stage of trachoma); and Antibiotics,
Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement (2). The A, F and E interventions are delivered to
entire districts in which active (inflammatory) trachoma is common in order to treat ocular infection
with Chlamydia trachomatis, the causative organism of trachoma, and sustainably reduce its
transmission.
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Presentation on WASH in Malawi
Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable in humanitarian settings, yet they are often not able to access the services and protection they need. While multiple factors create these barriers, a major cause is how data about children with disabilities is collected and mapped. Data collect...ion processes often exclude or underrepresent the views of children with disabilities and thier caretakers. When the experiences of children with disabilities and their caretakers are not defined and collected, they become excluded from mainstreamed protective services, which are meant to serve all children. Children with disabilities also do not get the specialised interventions they need.
This guidance note explores how to use qualitative methods to create more robust assessment processes to ensure more effective programming and services for children with disabilities. This note provides promising practices for engaging with children with disabilities and includes sample tools that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular assessment process. The note also explores the importance of thoughtful cross-sectoral responses so that children with disabilities, and their families, are carefully considered in areas like water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), education, health, and nutrition, and therefore receive the holistic support they need and deserve.
This note is intended for a broad audience of relevant child protection actors, including practitioners, coordination groups, researchers, and donors. The information is not limited to one type of humanitarian setting, geographic region, or culture. As a result, the practices and guidance should be adapted to each specific context, ideally in partnership with well-informed local actors, such as representatives from local organisations for persons with disabilities.
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This report started with a simple question—“How can we tell how much funding is devoted to global health programs?”—and ended (more than two years later) with an answer that is far from simple. As those who have tried know well, tracking health-related funding is challenging in any setting, ...given the range of public and private sources and the many types of services and programs that fall within the definition of “health sector.” It is made all the more complicated when significant external support from donors and private charities plus in-kind donations of drugs and other inputs are taken into account. The task is made yet harder by inadequate public expenditure management systems in countries where public agencies’ capacity is stretched very thin and by donor accounting structures that are not designed to respond in a timely way
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To support the achievement of health equity in the Region, the regional inter-agency movement Every Woman Every Child Latin America and the Caribbean (EWEC-LAC) advocates for and supports the use of equity and evidence-based policies, strategies and interventions to accelerate equitable progress in ...the health of women, children and adolescents. Although progress has been made, great inequities persist. Women from the LAC region’s poorest countries are almost four times more likely to die due to complications during childbirth than those living in the wealthiest countries. Through the years, several tools, instruments and methods (TIMs) have been developed by global, regional and country partners that can be used to conduct systematic equity-based analyses and/or re-designs of health systems, programs, strategies and interventions. The main purpose of this document is to present an overview of existing TIMs that can be used by policymakers, program managers, development partners, nongovernmental organizations, academia and civil society partners to strengthen systematic identification, analysis and responding to social inequities in the health of women, children and adolescents in LAC. The TIMs included were identified through a systematic search process
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Climate-induced water insecurity poses one of the biggest threats to humanity and will lead to more hunger, disease and displacement
Oxfam water engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, mo...re often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs.
Today, during World Water Week, Oxfam publishes the first of its series of reports, “Water Dilemmas”, about the growing water crisis, in large part driven by global heating from greenhouse gas emissions. The report describes how climate change will impact water security in different regions, leading to more hunger, disease and displacement.
Carlos Calderon, Humanitarian Advocacy and Partnerships Lead for Oxfam Aotearoa said, “This new Oxfam research is focused on the global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) situation, but it paints a picture that illustrates the complexity of elements that, combined, will continue to increasingly affect women, girls, boys and men in the decades to come. Changing weather, poverty, inequality, gender-based violence, political instability and conflicts are impacting the availability and quality of adequate water systems. All governments, particularly those from rich countries, should responsively take action at a global scale. The clock is ticking. Our children will judge us for our actions today, or for the lack of them.”
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To examine how health aid is spent and channelled, including the distribution of resources across countries and between
subsectors. Our aim was to complement the many qualitative critiques of health aid with a quantitative review and to provide insights on the level of development assistance availa...ble to recipient countries to address their health and health development needs.
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This paper is motivated by the global spread of the coronavirus referred to as COVID-19 and its efect on Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has alluded to the COVID-19 not only afecting the global health but also trade and tourism, commodity prices, and fnanci...al conditions that calls for an additional policy response to support demand and ensure an adequate supply of credit
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Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is advancing the global fight against acute malnutrition in children under 5 with the launch of its new guideline on the prevention and management of wasting and nutritional oedema (acute malnutrition). This milestone is a crucial response to the persistent... global issue of acute malnutrition, which affects millions of children worldwide.
In 2015, the world committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the ambitious target of eliminating malnutrition in all of its forms by 2030. However, despite these commitments, the proportion of children with acute malnutrition has persisted at a worrying level, affecting an estimated 45 million children under five worldwide in 2022.
In 2022, approximately 7.3 million children received treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Although treatment coverage has increased, children with SAM in many of the worst affected countries are still unable to access the full necessary care for them to recover.
The Global Action Plan (GAP) on child wasting recognized the need for updated normative guidance to support governments in the prevention and management of acute malnutrition. WHO answered this call to action and developed a comprehensive guideline that provides evidence-based recommendations and good practice statements and will be followed by guidance and tools for implementation.
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In 2006, the Special Session of African Union Health Ministers adopted the Maputo Plan of Action for implementing the Continental Policy Framework on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which expired at the end of 2015. The goal was for all stakeholders and partners to join forces and ...re-double efforts, so that together, the effective implementation of the Continental Policy framework including universal access to sexual and reproductive health by 2015 in all countries in Africa can be achieved. The Revised Maputo Plan of Action (MPoA) 2016 – 2030 was subsequently endorsed by the African Union Heads of State at the 27th AU Summit in July 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda. The plan reinforces the call for universal access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in Africa and lays foundation to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 3 and 5, as well as the African Union Agenda 2063.
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The document is part of the briefing package for Ethiopia's Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster, which consists of resources that provide greater clarity and guidance to the cluster partners and other humanitarian actors.
The document is divided into four sections. Each section represen...ts the cluster’s coordination system (i) WASH Cluster coordination management, (ii) HPC process, (iii) Response monitoring, (iv) WASH response, and (v) Cluster meeting coordination.
Cluster Overview
The WASH Cluster in Ethiopia is part of and supports the Ministry of Water and Energy (MoWE). MoWE leads the WASH cluster emergency task force (ETF), which is co-led by the WASH Cluster secretariat hosted by UNICEF. In Ethiopia, the WASH Cluster was established with the activation of the cluster approach in 2006, and UNICEF, as the global Cluster Lead Agency, was assigned to appoint the WASH Cluster Coordinator.
The WASH Cluster aims to provide guidance and support to its partners to ensure well-coordinated, quality assistance reaches those in need in accordance with humanitarian standards and principles. Conflict, severe drought conditions, seasonal flooding, and Cholera remain the key drivers of WASH needs in Ethiopia.
In 2024, the WASH Cluster aims to work with 79 partners to preserve life, well-being, and dignity and reduce the risk of WASH-related disease through timely interventions to vulnerable populations and preparedness to respond to shocks. Significant humanitarian WASH needs in 2024 are projected with a rigorous HPC process in Ethiopia.
The Humanitarian Program Cycle
The humanitarian program cycle (HPC) is a coordinated series of actions to help prepare for, manage, and deliver humanitarian response. It consists of five coordinated elements, each step logically building on the previous and leading to the next. Successful implementation of the HPC depends on effective emergency preparedness, effective coordination with national/local authorities and humanitarian actors, and information management. Affected people are central to the response; preparedness, coordination, and information management processes continually occur.
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