The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for major societal transformations that will require significant fiscal outlays as well as private investments. The fiscal outlays cover public investments, the public provision of social services, and social protection for vulnerable populations. The ke...y message of this paper, building on recent reports by the IMF and SDSN (IMF, 2019b; SDSN, 2018) is that the governments of Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) will require a substantial increase in fiscal (budget) revenues, far beyond what they can achieve by their own fiscal reforms. For this reason, SDG financing will require substantial international cooperation to enable the LIDCs to finance their SDG fiscal outlays. One important source of increased revenues should be the globally coordinated taxation of ultra-high-net worth assets. Today’s ultra-rich should help to pay for the survival and basic needs of the world’s poorest people.
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The Mekong Malaria Elimination (MME) programme is an initiative aimed at supporting Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries – Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam, and Yunnan (China) – in achieving the goal of malaria elimination by 2030. Data for this epidemi...ological summary were compiled from country reports. Between January and March 2024, 22 632 malaria cases were reported. During that period, GMS countries recorded 28% fewer cases, with P. falciparum + mixed and P. vivax cases declining by 50% and 23%, respectively. Meanwhile, testing declined by 21% when compared to the same period in 2023.
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This brief presents the guidelines and agreements in the information document Status of access to sexual and reproductive health services, prepared by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) at the request of its Member States at the 30th Pan American Sanitary Conference. It was presented and un...animously approved by the countries of the Region of the Americas at the 60th Meeting of the Directing Council, 75th session of the WHO Regional Committee for the Americas, held in Washington, D.C., USA, September 25-29, 2023. Its objective is to describe the status of access to sexual and reproductive health services in the Americas region, identify health responses and barriers to access, and suggest recommendations for countries. It was developed based on a review and systematization of data, plans and initiatives, scientific papers, United Nations reports, and legal and regulatory frameworks on sexual and reproductive health.
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The Framework serves to guide efforts to deliver safe and sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), health care waste management and reliable electricity in all health care facilities. The ultimate aim is to provide quality care for all. The Framework reflects a global consultative process a...nd includes data and recommendations articulated in recent WHO/UNICEF global reports on WASH, waste and electricity in health care facilities. It also provides an operational roadmap for implementing the 2023 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on WASH, waste and electricity in health care facilities. The target audiences for this Framework include health leaders and programme managers at the global and national levels; policymakers; WASH, waste and energy leaders and technical experts; development partners and finance institutions; and actors and experts on gender equality, disability and social inclusion and climate; and, more generally, civil society. The Framework addresses the WASH, waste and electricity elements of the WHO comprehensive approach to build safe, climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities.
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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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AidData has developed a set of open source data collection methods to track project-level data on suppliers of official finance who do not participate in global reporting systems. This codebook outlines the version 1.1 set of TUFF procedures that have been developed, tested, refined, and implemented... by AidData researchers and affiliated faculty at the College of William & Mary and Brigham Young University.
In the first iteration of this codebook, AidData's Media-Based Data Collection Methodology, Version 1.0, we referred to our data collection procedures as a “media-based data collection” (MBDC) methodology. The term “media-based” was misleading, as the methodology does not rely exclusively on media reports; rather, media reports are used only as a departure point, and are supplemented with case studies undertaken by scholars and non-governmental organizations, project inventories supplied through Chinese embassy websites, and grants and loan data published by recipient governments. In the interest of providing greater clarity, we now refer to our methodology for systematically gathering open source development finance information as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology. This codebook outlines the set of TUFF procedures that have been developed, tested, refined, and implemented by AidData staff and affiliated faculty at the College of William & Mary and Brigham Young University.
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Background: Donor countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been among the largest donors in the world. However, little is known about their contributions for health. In this study, we addressed this gap by estimating the ...amount of development assistance for health (DAH) contributed by MENA country donors from 2000 to 2017. Methods: We tracked DAH provided and received by the MENA region leveraging publicly available development assistance data in the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) database of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), government agency reports and financial statements from key international development agencies. We generated estimates of DAH provided by the three largest donor countries in the MENA region (UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) and compared contributions to their relative gross domestic product (GDP) and government spending; We captured DAH contributions by other MENA country governments (Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, etc.) disbursed through multilateral agencies. Additionally, we compared DAH contributed from and provided to the MENA region.
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Background: Disbursements of development assistance for health (DAH) have risen substantially during the past several decades. More recently, the international community's attention has turned to other international challenges, introducing uncertainty about the future of disbursements for DAH.
Meth...ods: We collected audited budget statements, annual reports, and project-level records from the main international agencies that disbursed DAH from 1990 to the end of 2015. We standardised and combined records to provide a comprehensive set of annual disbursements. We tracked each dollar of DAH back to the source and forward to the recipient. We removed transfers between agencies to avoid double-counting and adjusted for inflation. We classified assistance into nine primary health focus areas: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, maternal health, newborn and child health, other infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, Ebola, and sector-wide approaches and health system strengthening. For our statistical analysis, we grouped these health focus areas into two categories: MDG-related focus areas (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, child and newborn health, and maternal health) and non-MDG-related focus areas (other infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, sector-wide approaches, and other). We used linear regression to test for structural shifts in disbursement patterns at the onset of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; ie, from 2000) and the global financial crisis (impact estimated to occur in 2010). We built on past trends and associations with an ensemble model to estimate DAH through the end of 2040.
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Substantial progress in the fight against HIV has been made over the past decade. Advances in HIV prevention, testing, and treatment have been matched by declines in HIV incidence and HIV-related deaths. The success of Botswana reaching the 95-95-95 targets, despite resource limitations, points to a... hopeful future. However, the recent publication of In Danger: UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2022, the UNAIDS annual report, paints a sobering picture of the fragility of these gains.
Stagnating financing for the HIV response, alongside continued global inequities, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, jeopardises progress. Current projections indicate that neither the UNAIDS 2025 95-95-95 targets nor the goal of ending the AIDS
epidemic by 2030 will be met.
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Global health funding has increased in recent years. This has been accompanied by a proliferation in the number of global health actors and initiatives. This paper describes the state of global heath finance, taking into account government and private sources of finance, and raises and discusses a n...umber of policy issues related to global health governance. A schematic describing the different actors and three global health finance functions is used to organize the data presented, most of which are secondary data from the published literature and annual reports of relevant actors.
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The waves of yellow fever transmission in the Region of the Americas in 2016–2018 involved the largest number of human and epizootic cases to be reported in several decades. Yellow fever is a serious viral hemorrhagic disease that poses a challenge for health professionals. It requires early recog...nition of signs and symptoms, which are often nonspecific, and it can mimic other acute febrile syndromes. Early detection of suspected or confirmed cases, monitoring of vital signs, life support measures, and treatment of acute kidney failure continue to be the recommended strategies for case management. This report is the result of discussions among experienced specialists in the Americas on the clinical management of yellow fever patients, especially during outbreaks and epidemics, in the context of current medical and scientific evidence and taking into account the technical guidelines already available in the countries of the Region. It includes flowcharts for initially addressing patients with clinical suspicion of yellow fever and proposes a minimum package of laboratory tests that may be useful in contexts where resources are limited. In addition, it considers aspects of health system organization for dealing with yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
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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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Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne tropical/subtropical disease caused by an intracellular parasite transmitted to humans by sand fly bite. It is endemic in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Mediterranean region. Worldwide reports include 1.5–2 million new cases each year, more than 300 million at ...risk of acquiring the disease, and 70,000 deaths per year. Clinical features depend on the Leishmania species and immune response of the host, varying from localized cutaneous disease to visceral form with potentially fatal outcome; however, the common presentation is either cutaneous, mucocutaneous, or visceral leishmaniasis. Many therapeutic agents are being used in Leishmania treatment, but the only effective treatment is achieved with current pentavalent antimonials. WHO considers Leishmaniasis as one of the “Neglected Tropical Diseases” that continues to be prevalent despite international, national, and local efforts towards its control and elimination over the last decade. This chapter reviews the global perspective of Leishmaniasis with increasing recognition of emerging “Atypical forms” and new surge of disease across the world mainly due to increasing conflicts in endemic areas leading to forced migration among other causes. All these challenges related to environment, disease, and vector pose major implications on WHO’s leishmaniasis control and elimination plan.
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Leishmaniases are a group of diseases of zoonotic importance caused by over 20 species of protozoa of the genus Leishmania, in which domestic dogs are considered to be the main reservoir for the disease. However, the involvement of other vertebrates as reservoirs for these parasites has also been in...vestigated. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to carry out a systematic review with meta-analysis on occurrences of leishmaniasis in equids. The case reports described animals with cutaneous symptoms of leishmaniasis (papules, nodules, ulcers or crusts) that regressed spontaneously, located mainly on the head and limbs, from which three species of protozoa were identified in the lesions: Leishmania braziliensis, Leishmania infantum and Leishmania siamensis. In turn, the meta-analysis showed a combined prevalence of 25%, although with high heterogeneity among the studies, which was attributed to the use of different methods for diagnosing the disease. Leishmaniasis in equids is a benign disease but it should be included in the differential diagnosis of cutaneous diseases among these species. Seroepidemiological studies are important in investigating and monitoring suspected exposure of these hosts to the parasite, especially in endemic areas. However, there is also a need to standardize diagnostic methods.
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The WHO estimates that 19 million children aged 15 years or younger are visually impaired. Of these, 1.4 million are irreversibly blind and need visual rehabilitation interventions for full psychological and personal development. The remainder have visual problems that could be prevented or treated.... Identifying children with visual problems early in life so that they can benefit from medical and optical interventions remains a key challenge for most child eye health programmes. Reports from various low-and middle-income countries indicate that the age of children undergoing operation for cataract is frequently too high to achieve maximum benefit.
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To enhance health co-benefits across urban policies which tackle air pollution and climate change, WHO, in cooperation with various international, national, and local partners, implemented the Urban Health Initiative (UHI) pilot project in Accra, Ghana. The Initiative prompted the health sector to u...se its influential position to demonstrate to decision-makers and the public the full range of health, environmental and economic benefits that can be achieved from implementing local emission reduction and energy access policies and strategies. Policy tracking, although not always considered, is a fundamental component of this procedure. It assesses the planning, implementation and progress of a policy to refine or adjust policies with the final objective of increasing the likelihood of the policy being successful. This report is an outcome of the last component of the UHI model process, Policy tracking and monitoring outcomes. The report proposes a framework for tracking urban health policies, with a special focus on the impacts of air quality and energy access on human health and well-being in African countries, giving some examples from the pilot project in Accra. The report also provides resources to survey air quality in cities and other tools to assess public health and the environmental impacts of urban policies and monitor or track their effects.
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Every day in 2020, approximately 800 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth - meaning that a woman dies around every two minutes.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.1 is to reduce maternal mortality to less than 70 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births by ...2030.
The United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group (MMEIG) – comprising WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (UNDESA/Population Division) has collaborated with external technical experts on a new round of estimates covering 2000 to 2020. The estimates represent the most up to date, internationally-comparable MMEIG estimates of maternal mortality, using refined input data and methods from previous rounds.
The report presents internationally comparable global, regional and country-level estimates and trends for maternal mortality between 2000 and 2020.
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This chapter discusses the antibacterial treatment of leprosy infections. Antibiotic treatment is
a key component of leprosy treatment, as it is vital to prevent the progression of the infection.
Treatment with rifampin and other antibiotics is highly effective and cures 98% of patients with
the ...leprosy infection. Furthermore, the relapse rate is very low, at about 1% over 5–10 years.
There is little M. leprae drug resistance in leprosy and few reports of multi-drug resistance (1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8). An antibiotic treatment may take months or years to produce clinical improvement,
especially in patients with an initial high bacterial index (BI).
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The indicators and questions in this document are designed for use by national AIDS programmes and partners to assess the state of a country’s HIV and AIDS response, and to measure progress towards achieving national HIV targets. Countries are encouraged to integrate these indicators and questions... into their ongoing monitoring efforts and to report comprehensive national data through the Global AIDS Monitoring (GAM) process. In this way they will contribute to improving understanding of the global response to the HIV epidemic, including progress that has been made towards achieving the commitments and global targets set out in the new United Nations Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030, adopted in June 2021, and the linked Sustainable Development Goals.
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Atlas of African Health Statistics 2022: Health situation analysis of the WHO African Region
Since 2019, we have been implementing Phase 2 of the regional Transformation Agenda, which informs and aligns with the global WHO Transformation, to ensure WHO is accountable, driven by re- sults and provid...ing value for money in the pursuit of better health. Our global priority in this period is to contribute to delivering on the triple billion targets of expanding universal health coverage, protecting people from emergencies, and promoting health and well-being for people across the Region.
This year’s Atlas of African Health Statistics is being produced in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that we have been expe- riencing for over two years. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic, together with other health emergencies in the WHO African Re- gion, is yet again testing the strength and resilience of our health systems. Indeed, the impact of COVID-19 is visible in the disruption of services. The report also presents the latest data for more than 50 health-related indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals and WHO’s “triple billion” targets and provides comprehensive country-level statistics using the results chain of the AFRO frame- work of actions for strengthening health systems to achieve UHC and the health-related SDGs.
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