These consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services (HTS) bring together existing and new guidance on HTS across different settings and populations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) first released consolidated guidelines on HTS in 2015, in response to requests from Member States, national pr...ogramme managers and health workers for support to achieve the United Nations (UN) 90–90–90 global HIV targets – and specifically the first target of diagnosing 90% of all people with HIV. In 2016, based on new evidence, WHO released a supplement to address important new HIV testing approaches – HIV self-testing (HIVST) and provider-assisted referral.
Since the release of 2015 and 2016 HTS guidelines, new issues and more evidence have emerged. To address this, WHO has updated guidance on HIV testing services. In this guideline, WHO updates recommendation on HIVST and provides new recommendations on social network-based HIV testing approaches and western blotting (see box, next page). This guideline seeks to provide support to Member States, programme managers, health workers and other stakeholders seeking to achieve national and international goals to end the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
These guidelines also provide operational guidance on HTS demand creation and messaging; implementation considerations for priority populations; HIV testing strategies for diagnosis HIV; optimizing the use of dual HIV/syphilis rapid diagnostic tests; and considerations for strategic planning and rationalizing resources such as optimal time points for maternal retesting
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This 2019 edition of The State of the World’s Children (SOWC) examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge. Despite progress in the past two decades, one third of children under age 5 are malnourished – stunted, wasted or overw...eight – while two thirds are at risk of malnutrition and hidden hunger because of the poor quality of their diets. At the center of this challenge is a broken food system that fails to provide children with the diets they need to grow healthy. This report also provides new data and analyses of malnutrition in the 21st century and outlines recommendations to put children’s rights at the heart of food systems.
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A Capstone Project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science Degree in Counselor Education at Winona State University | This article reviews the use of Art Therapy to treat children who suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It explores the clinical need for ...addressing trauma, including PTSD, and then reviews the effects of trauma on the brain, and how Art Therapy affects the brain. It also identifies mental health characteristics and needs for children diagnosed with PTSD.
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The report is geared towards mayors, local government officials and city policy planners.It highlights key areas where city leaders can tackle the drivers of NCDs, including tobacco use, air pollution, poor diets and lack of exercise, and improve road safety.
From anti-tobacco actions in Beijing a...nd Bogor, to road safety initiatives in Accra and Bangkok, a bike sharing scheme in Fortaleza, and actions to create walkable streets for seniors that have reduced elderly pedestrian deaths by 16% in New York City, the report aims to share knowledge between urban policy planners.
Of the 19 case studies cited, 15 are from developing countries, where 85% of premature adult deaths through NCDs take place, and over 90% of road traffic fatalities are recorded. You can download the case studieson the website https://www.who.int/ncds/publications/tackling-ncds-in-cities/en/.
Over 90% of future urban population growth will be in low or middle-income countries, and seven of the world’s 10 largest cities are in developing countries.
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In this report a nutrition governance framework was applied to research and analyse the provincial experience with nutrition policy in Pakistan, looking both at chronic and acute malnutrition. Twenty-one in-depth interviews with key stakeholders were also conducted along with a review of published a...nd grey literature. Findings were validated and supplemented by consultative provincial roundtable meetings. Punjab’s nutritional puzzle is that it has high levels of chronic malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies despite a surplus production of food and a low poverty level. Under-nutrition is mainly linked to insufficient attention to preventive health strategies and to a lack of connection between relevant sectors such as Education, Health, Poverty, Safe Water and Sanitation, and Food. Strategic opportunities are recommended which include cross-party political support and ownership for nutrition, with steering by executive leadership; multi-sectoral action and functional integration of various departments and programmes with the creation of a central convening structure for effective cross-sectoral coordination; broadening of nutritional activities beyond salt iodization and vitamin A coverage; central co-ordination of monitoring and evaluation and effective partnerships between the state and non-state sector around data production, awareness, advocacy, and monitoring.
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The seven essential features of practice for scaling up are described with great clarity. They are practical and universal, and encourage local innovation. They include policy, funding and local management structure, as well as working with all possible partners and developing local context adaptati...ons. The case studies give ideas and inspiration to develop new programmes and find ways around obstacles in existing programmes, especially through involving those with most at stake including users and their families and local community leaders
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Having completed this course, learners will be able to: Describe and analyze the opportunities, challenges and limits of Global Health Diplomacy. Examine the diplomatic, financial, and geopolitical context that underlies global health decision-making. Explain the role of the many players in the spac...e, including governments, philanthropists, and multilateral institutions . Course Objective The field of global health is often thought of purely in medical or public health terms, but there are important geopolitical and policy dimensions of global health that underlie programmatic responses to global health challenges. By completing this course, learners will be able to explain the specific institutions and initiatives that are fundamental to current global health diplomacy activities and functions, and how these influence global health outcomes. Learners will further be able to summarize real-world examples where global health diplomacy either helped or limited global health outcomes, and explain the reasons for those outcomes.
Accessed July 27th, 2019
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ABOUT THE REPORT
Based on more than seventy interviews, surveys of both mainstream and social media in Myanmar, and a desk review of available election-related materials, this report evaluates the environment in which the current electoral cycle, Rakhine conflicts, and the 21st Century Panglong pea...ce process intersect and identifies opportunities for mitigating conflict risks in the lead-up to the 2020 Myanmar election.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mary Callahan is an associate professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Myo Zaw Oo is an independent researcher focusing on conflict and elections.
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Report of the Joint World Health Organization–Brien Holden Vision Institute Global Scientific Meeting on Myopia | University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 16–18 March 2015
In many of Myanmar’s contested regions, healthcare services are provided through two parallel governance systems – by the government’s Ministry of Health, and by providers linked to ethnic armed organizations. Building upon efforts to build trust between these two actors following ceasefires s...igned in 2011 and 2012, the new National League for Democracy-led government offers an unprecedented opportunity to increase cooperation between these systems and to ensure health services reach Myanmar’s most vulnerable populations.
The report provides an overview of existing health service arrangements in these areas, from both the Ministry of Health and from ethnic and community-based health organizations. It then unpacks the concept of “convergence”, highlighting key opportunities and policy recommendations for both government and non-government actors.
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There is no question that over the last thirty years environmentaldegradation and the ecological crisis have become in our day and age apredominant sign of the times. In response to this worrisome develop-ment official documents of the Roman Catholic Church, at various lev-els, have sought to addres...s the growing ecological concern from theperspective of Catholic social teaching. Consequently references to ecol-ogy and environmental issues have surfaced in papal encyclicals duringthe last fifteen years generating national and regional responses. In theUnited States, for example, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops hasissued two pastoral statements on environmental issues in 1991 and2001. Significantly, the Catholic Bishops of the Pacific Northwest, rep-resenting Canada and the U.S. have also issued a unique internationalletter focused on a particular ecological region—the Columbia RiverWatershed. What all of these efforts hold in common is the attempt toapply Catholic social teaching to a new and disturbing phenomenon inhuman experience. The result has been an expansion of Catholic socialthought. What was once the “social question” has now become the socialand “ecological question.” This development, the effort to address ecol-ogy and environmental issues as ethical problems, is the focus of thispaper. In particular this paper will link environmental and humanecology with the concept of sustainability, with the intention of propos-ing an interpretation of the common good and a definition of sustain-ability within Catholic social teaching.
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The purpose of this article is to consider the relationshipbetween religion and healthcarein order to suggest how physicians and other health care providers shouldrespond when the faith-based preference of apatient clashes with the medically indicatedtreatment modalities.
The document is structured into five sections. The first presents the key experiences and challenges that justify a renewal of the EPHFs. The second section updates the groundwork for the exercise of public health and provides a framework to inform the exercise of the new essential functions. The th...ird section proposes a new integrated approach for implementing the EPHFs. The fourth section presents a new list of 11 EPHFs related to each stage of this integrated approach. Finally, in the last section, considerations are put forth to guide EPHF implementation as a means of strengthening the health sector.
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The document is structured into five sections. The first presents the key experiences and challenges that justify a renewal of the EPHFs. The second section updates the groundwork for the exercise of public health and provides a framework to inform the exercise of the new essential functions. The th...ird section proposes a new integrated approach for implementing the EPHFs. The fourth section presents a new list of 11 EPHFs related to each stage of this integrated approach. Finally, in the last section, considerations are put forth to guide EPHF implementation as a means of strengthening the health sector.
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The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Georgetown University, and the United Nations University have today launched new guidelines to provide the first-ever global policy framework that will help protect, include, and empower children on the ...move in the context of climate change.
The Guiding Principles for Children on the Move in the Context of Climate Change provides a set of 9 principles that address the unique and layered vulnerabilities of children on the move both internally and across borders as a result of the adverse impacts of climate change. Currently, most child-related migration policies do not consider climate and environmental factors, while most climate change policies overlook the unique needs of children.
The guidelines note that climate change is intersecting with existing environmental, social, political, economic, and demographic conditions contributing to people’s decisions to move. In 2020 alone, nearly 10 million children were displaced in the aftermath of weather-related shocks. With around one billion children – nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children – living in 33 countries at high risk of the impacts of climate change, millions more children could be on the move in the coming years.
Developed in collaboration with young climate and migration activists, academics, experts, policymakers, practitioners, and UN agencies, the guiding principles are based on the globally ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child and are further informed by existing operational guidelines and frameworks.
Recommendations for safeguarding the rights and well-being of children regardless of their location or migration status.
The guiding principles provide national and local governments, international organizations and civil society groups with a foundation to build policies that protect children’s rights. The organizations and institutions are calling on governments, local and regional actors, international organizations, and civil society groups to embrace the guiding principles to help protect, include, and empower children on the move in the context of climate change.
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This Commission report aims to contribute to a new era of multilateral cooperation based on strong UN institutions to reduce the dangers of COVID-19, forestall the next pandemic, and enable the world to achieve the agreed goals of sustainable development, human rights, and peace that governments are... committed to pursue as members of the UN. We address this Commission report to the UN member states, the UN agencies and multilateral institutions, and multilateral processes such as the G20 and the G7.
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Violence against women and girls is widespread in the Region of the Americas, resulting in enormous consequences for the health and wellbeing of women and girls, their families and communities. These costs are unacceptable and they can be prevented through evidence-based action, including the health... sector through its policies and protocols, as well as in collaboration with other sectors. This report remains the first of its kind and is a major milestone for the Region. It is specifically informed by the commitments of Member States in the regional Strategy and Plan of Action on Strengthening the Health System to Address Violence against Women. The report provides an analysis of efforts to advance the prevention of violence against women through health policies, clinical protocols, multisectoral plans and related approaches across the Americas. Attention to this topic is timely, as the COVID-19 pandemic has created new visibility for this area of work. This report offers critical information on efforts in the Region that can be learned from and used to build upon in the future to prevent and respond to violence against all women and girls everywhere.
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This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing—including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing—from China to 138 countries between 2000 and 2014. We use these data to investigate whether and to what extent Chinese aid affects economic growth ...in recipient countries. To account for the endogeneity of aid, we employ an instrumental-variables strategy that relies on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese aid over time resulting from changes in Chinese steel production. Variation across recipient countries results from a country’s probability of receiving aid. Controlling for year- and recipient-fixed effects that capture the levels of these variables, their interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Our results show that Chinese official development assistance (ODA) boosts economic growth in recipient countries. For the average recipient country, we estimate that one additional Chinese ODA project produces a 0.7 percentage point increase in economic growth two years after the project is committed. We also benchmark the effectiveness of Chinese aid vis-á-vis the World Bank, the United States, and all members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
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Little is known about foreign aid provided by private donors. This paper contributes to closing this research gap by comparing the allocation of private humanitarian aid to that of official humanitarian aid awarded to 140 recipient countries over the 2000-2016 period. We construct a new database tha...t offers information on the country in which the headquarters of private donors are located to test whether private donors follow the aid allocation pattern of their home country. Our empirical results confirm that private aid “follows the flag.” This finding is robust against the inclusion of various fixed effects, estimating instrumental variables models, and disaggregating private aid into corporate aid and NGO aid. Donor country-specific estimations reveal that private aid from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “follow the flag.”
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Asia remained the world’s most disaster-hit region from weather, climate and water-related hazards in 2023. Floods and storms caused the highest number of reported casualties and economic losses, whilst the impact of heatwaves became more severe, according to a new report from the World Meteorolog...ical Organization (WMO).
The State of the Climate in Asia 2023 report highlighted the accelerating rate of key climate change indicators such as surface temperature, glacier retreat and sea level rise, which will have major repercussions for societies, economies and ecosystems in the region.
In 2023, sea-surface temperatures in the north-west Pacific Ocean were the highest on record. Even the Arctic Ocean suffered a marine heatwave.
Asia is warming faster than the global average. The warming trend has nearly doubled since the 1961–1990 period.
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