The document provides an overview of malaria in the Americas, describing its transmission, symptoms, vulnerable populations, and regional trends, while highlighting prevention strategies and the efforts of PAHO/WHO and member states to eliminate the disease by 2020.
Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease caused by the Leishmania parasite. This parasite typically lives in infected sand flies. You can contract leishmaniasis from a bite of an infected sand fly.
The sand flies that carry the parasite typically reside in tropical and subtropical environments. Fatal... epidemics have occurred in areas of Asia, East Africa, and South America.
Affected regions are often remote and unstable, with limited resources for treating this disease. Doctors Without Borders calls leishmaniasis one of the most dangerous neglected tropical diseases. The organization also states this disease is second only to malaria in parasitic causes of death.
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El informe se encamina a documentar si los gobiernos:
• tienen planes de acción, políticas y leyes nacionales en consonancia con aquellos cuya eficacia se ha comprobado en el contexto de INSPIRE;
• están contando los incidentes violentos mortales y no mortales con exactitud;
• han establ...ecido valores de partida y valores a alcanzar que les permitan monitorear su progreso hacia la erradicación de la violencia contra los niños;
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As information about COVID-19 is rapidly evolving, it can be challenging to navigate and synthesize all of the information. The purpose of this document is to provide a synthesized, indexed reference of accurate, standardized COVID-19 information from trustworthy sources. Information is presented in... simple, clear language to support the development of messages and materials needed for social and behavior change interventions.
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The presentation titled "Malaria Capacity Building Initiative" outlines efforts led by the WHO and partner organizations to strengthen the skills and systems needed to fight malaria globally. It highlights the need for a coordinated, long-term strategy to build human resource capacity in malaria-end...emic countries—especially among national malaria control programs, frontline health workers, NGOs, and WHO staff. The document reviews past and current training activities, such as workshops on case management, entomology, vector control, epidemiology, and planning. It emphasizes the development of standardized training materials and competency frameworks, the role of national and regional training centers, and the use of blended learning methods (e.g., e-learning and in-person sessions). The goal is not just to deliver training, but to build sustainable capacity through partnerships, continuous improvement, quality assurance, and integration into health systems. It also calls for better coordination, tracking of trained personnel, and engagement of ministries of finance to ensure long-term support.
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The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, echoed the concerns of people and organisations around the world when he recently referred to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on schooling as a
‘generational catastrophe’.
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COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. Everything has been impacted. How we live and interact with each other, how we work and communicate, how we move around and travel. Every aspect of our lives has been affected.
The Climate Dictionary is an initiative aimed at providing an everyday guide to understanding climate change. It seeks to bridge the gap between complex scientific jargon and the general public, making climate concepts accessible and relatable to individuals from various backgrounds and levels of ex...pertise.
The concept was driven by the belief that empowering people with knowledge is crucial in fostering action and collective responsibility towards addressing climate change. By utilizing a creative combination of compelling visuals, concise explanations, and engaging storytelling, "The Climate Dictionary" effectively communicated complex climate concepts in a user-friendly and visually captivating manner. The publication features a series of climate-related term or phenomenon. The content was meticulously crafted to cater to diverse audiences, catering to both the scientifically inclined and those with limited prior knowledge of the subject.
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Recommended actions and international and national level
The Return Counselling Toolkit is a capacity-building instrument aimed at providing a harmonized and coherent approach to return counselling, based on key migrant-centred principles while protecting migrants’ rights. Mindful of the specific needs and rights pertaining to children, this additional ...module on counselling children and families further complements the first five modules of the Return Counselling Toolkit. It provides specialized guidance on how to prepare and deliver return counselling to accompanied, unaccompanied and separated children while upholding child rights and safeguards.
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Published: November 24, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000938
Climate change is expected to have complex effects on infectious diseases, causing some to increase, others to decrease, and many to shift their distributions. There have been several important advances in understanding the ...role of climate and climate change on wildlife and human infectious disease dynamics over the past several years. This essay examines 3 major areas of advancement, which include improvements to mechanistic disease models, investigations into the importance of climate variability to disease dynamics, and understanding the consequences of thermal mismatches between host and parasites. Applying the new information derived from these advances to climate–disease models and addressing the pressing knowledge gaps that we identify should improve the capacity to predict how climate change will affect disease risk for both wildlife and humans.
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By 2100, new UN figures show that 4 of today’s 10 most populous nations will be replaced by African countries.
Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia and Mexico—where populations are projected to stagnate or decline—will drop out. In their place: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and E...gypt. All 4 are projected to more double in population.
Top 10 rankings in population growth by 2100 include only 2 non-African nations—Pakistan and the US.
c1China will shrink by 374 million fewer people—more than the entire US population.
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World Report 2021, Human Rights Watch’s 31st annual review of human rights practices and trends around the globe, reviews developments in more than 100 countries.
In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth calls on the incoming US administration to more deeply embed respect for ...human rights as an element of domestic and foreign policy to counter the “wild oscillations in human rights policy” that in recent decades have come with each new resident of the White House. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, joined by China, Russia and others, other governments—typically working in coalition and some new to the cause—stepped forward to champion rights. As it works to entrench rights protections, the Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort.
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The majority of developing countries will fail to achieve their targets for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)1 and the health- and poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless they take urgent steps to strengthen their health financing. Just over a decade out from the SDG deadline of 20...30, 3.6 billion people do not receive the most essential health services they need, and 100 million are pushed into poverty from paying out-of-pocket for health services. The evidence is strong that progress towards UHC, core to SDG 3, will spur inclusive and sustainable economic growth, yet this will not happen unless countries achieve high-performance health financing, defined here as funding levels that are adequate and sustainable; pooling that is sufficient to spread the financial risks of ill-health; and spending that is efficient and equitable to assure desired levels of health service coverage, quality, and financial protection for all people— with resilience and sustainability.
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The Director-General has the honour to transmit to the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly the report of the seventh meeting of the Working Group on Sustainable Financing, which met in a hybrid format, from 25 to 27 April 2022.
Forests, trees and green spaces, hereinafter ‘forests and trees’ for short, provide multiple goods and services that contribute to human health. These include medicines, nutritious foods and other non-wood forest products (NWFPs). Globally, at least 3.5 billion people use NWFPs, including medici...nal plants, which are particularly important for vulnerable groups and Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs).
During periods of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for forest products typically increases amongst these groups. Forests and trees also contribute to better health by playing a role in climate change
mitigation and adaptation, contributing to regulating the carbon cycle, but also moderating the micro-climate, filtering pollutants from the air and protecting settlements against the effects of extreme events such as droughts and flash floods.
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Within an Australian context, the medium to long-term health impacts of climate change are likely to be wide, varied and amplify many existing disorders and health inequities. How the health system responds to these challenges will be best considered in the context of existing health facilities and ...services. This paper provides a snapshot of the understanding that Australian health planners have of the potential health impacts of climate change.
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Following the publication of Guidelines on certification of elimination of human onchocerciasis in 2001 by the World Health Organization (WHO), these are the first evidence-based guidelines developed by NTD Department according to the international standards. They provide a set of recommendations th...at would guide national programme managers in collaboration with their respective oversight committees on when to stop mass drug administration (MDA) and conduct post-treatment surveillance (PTS) activities for a minimum period of 3 to 5 year before confirming the interruption of transmission of Onchocerca volvulus parasite and hence its elimination. They also include steps to undertake for verification of elimination of transmission of the parasite in the whole endemic country by the International Verification Team (IVT) prior to the official acknowledgement by WHO Director General.
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This WHO information note provides an updated list of recommended criteria for selecting RDTs for malaria, and highlights the performance of RDTs evaluated by the WHO malaria RDT product testing programme. It also provides an overview of additional considerations in the procurement of rapid tests.
Accessed on 31.03.2020
This Guidance Note aims to provide humanitarian child protection practitioners, particularly child protection advisors and program managers, with guidance on how to engage in responses to infectious disease outbreaks to ensure children’s protection needs are taken into ac...count in preparedness for, and during responses to, the outbreaks. The Guidance Note draws upon lessons learned during infectious disease outbreaks globally in a variety of contexts.
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