This flipbook, released in Nov. 2011, contains key messages that pregnant women and their families need in order to plan care of an infant at home right after birth. It focuses on essential actions families can take both to prevent newborn death and illness and to promote healthy newborn development....
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In an effort to improve the capabilities and accountability of humanitarian and economic practitioners, the SEEP (Small Enterprise Education and Promotion) Network's Minimum Economic Recovery Standards focus on minimum industry standards for facilitating economic recovery in crisis situations.
Th...e handbook sets out strategies and interventions designed to improve income, cash flow, asset management, and growth among crisis-affected households and enterprises. These include financial services, productive assets, employment, and enterprise development. It emphasizes encouraging the re-start of enterprises and livelihoods strategies, and improving market productivity and governance
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The Global Movement for Mental Health has brought renewed attention to the neglect of people with mental illness within health policy worldwide. The maltreatment of the mentally ill in many low-income countries is widely reported within psychiatric hospitals, informal healing centres, and family hom...es. International agencies have called for the development of legislation and policy to address these abuses. However such initiatives exemplify a top-down approach to promoting human rights which historically has had limited impact at the level of those living with mental illness and their families.
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Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Over 2 million children die from pneumonia each year, accounting for almost 1 in 5 under five deaths worldwide. Yet, little attention is paid to this disease. This joint UNICEF/WHO report examines ...the epidemiological evidence on the burden and distribution of pneumonia and assesses current levels of treatment and prevention. It is a call to action to reduce pneumonia mortality, a key step towards the achievement of the millennium development goal on child mortality.
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All young people, including those with special needs and from the most vulnerable groups, have the right to quality health care services. Unfortunately, this right is not a reality, particularly in the case of sexual and reproductive health services. Many youth in need of sexual and reproductive hea...lth care may either decline or be denied access to health services for a variety of reasons: Providers are often biased and do not feel comfortable serving youth who are sexually active; youth do not feel comfortable accessing existing services because they are not "youth-friendly" and may not meet their needs; and, often, community members do not feel that youth should have access to sexual and reproductive health services.
To address provider and site bias toward serving youth, EngenderHealth created a training curriculum intended to sensitize all staff at a health care facility on the provision of youth-friendly services. The curriculum was created as a result of the participatory work that we have been doing with youth in Nepal to address the needs of all levels of providers at different service-delivery settings. The curriculum has been field-tested and used in Nepal, Russia, Mongolia, and the United States.
Youth-Friendly Services allows staff to reflect upon and assess their own beliefs about adolescent sexuality while ensuring that those values and attitudes do not compromise the basic sexual and reproductive health rights to which youth are entitled. The curriculum also helps providers understand cross-cultural principles of adolescent development and health needs specific to youth. Once participant knowledge, attitudes, and skills are improved, sites conduct a self-assessment on the youth-friendliness of their services and create an action plan for specific improvements.
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Medicinal plants occupied an important position in the socio-cultural, spiritual and medicinal arena of rural people of India. T
The present report is based on contribution made by members of the task force and many other experts on medicinal plants. We hope the report on implementation will promot...e sustainable and equitable development of medicinal plants sector provide "Health for All", boost exports, and will improve livelihood of the people and green the country for the present and the
generation to come.
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nt. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, 11(12), 13097-13116; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph111213097
Climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and create risks that will impact health care facilities. Health care facilities will need to assess climate chang...e risks and adopt adaptive management strategies to be resilient, but guidance tools are lacking. In this study, a toolkit was developed for health care facility officials to assess the resiliency of their facility to climate change impacts. A mixed methods approach was used to develop climate change resiliency indicators to inform the development of the toolkit. The toolkit consists of a checklist for officials who work in areas of emergency management, facilities management and health care services and supply chain management, a facilitator’s guide for administering the checklist, and a resource guidebook to inform adaptation. Six health care facilities representing three provinces in Canada piloted the checklist. Senior level officials with expertise in the aforementioned areas were invited to review the checklist, provide feedback during qualitative interviews and review the final toolkit at a stakeholder workshop. The toolkit helps health care facility officials identify gaps in climate change preparedness, direct allocation of adaptation resources and inform strategic planning to increase resiliency to climate change.
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The Lancet Global Health Volume 9, ISSUE 3, e361-e365, March 01, 2021
The public health community has tried for decades to show, through evidence-based research, that safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and clean cooking fuels that reduce household air pollution are essential to safeguard he...alth and save lives in low-income and middle-income countries. In the past 40 decades, there have been many innovations in the development of low-cost and efficacious technologies for WASH and household air pollution, but many of these technologies have been associated with disappointing health outcomes, often because low-income households have either not adopted, or inconsistently adopted, these technologies.
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Global actions to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR) include optimising the use of antimicrobial medicines in human and animal health. In countries with weak healthcare regulation, this requires a greater understanding of the drivers of antibiotic use from the perspective of providers and consume...rs. In Bangladesh, there is limited research on household decision-making and healthcare seeking in relation to antibiotic use and consumption for humans and livestock. Knowledge is similarly lacking on factors influencing the supply and demand for antibiotics among qualified and unqualified healthcare providers. The aim of this study is to conduct integrated research on household decision-making for healthcare and antibiotic use, as well as the awareness, behaviours and priorities of healthcare providers and sellers of antibiotics to translate into policy development and implementation
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Maternal and Neonatal health update: by the Nepal government, Health and population ministry, Health protection unit, Family health department, created in 2010 (English) 2067 (Nepali). Compiled together by: UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA, NHSSP, Nepal medical college hospital and other government health departm...ents.
This is a training directory and reference guideline, very useful for physicians, students and for training purposes of medical staff. Majority of the content is for medical personnel. It gives detailed descriptions regarding procedures and how to perform them, and also regarding the statistics in Nepal, prevalence rates, morbidity and mortality rates.
Contents:
1) Nepal health status
2) Post Partum Hemorrhage (PPH)
3) Partograph
4) Hypertension during pregnancy
5) Status of Neonatal Health
6) Neonatal Resuscitation
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Tackling COVID-19 misinformation. Ensuring communities have access to lifesaving public health information from trusted sources and are not misled by misinformation is essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to empower doctors and nurses – some of the most effective and trusted... messengers of public health information – to actively address COVID-19 misinformation and build vaccine confidence globally, the WHO welcomes this social media toolkit for healthcare practitioners, developed by the Government of the United Kingdom.
This toolkit aims to provide healthcare workers with the tools, skills and content needed to effectively share authentic and reliable information online. Centered around three core vaccine confidence messages, Vaccine Safety, Vaccine Development and Vaccine Reducing Risk of Sickness; this toolkit sets out three approaches: creating your own posts, posting the images and videos provided in the toolkit, or resharing vaccine information from trusted sources.
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April 2022 Volume 35 Issue 2 e00152-21
Population movements have turned Chagas disease (CD) into a global public health problem. Despite the successful implementation of subregional initiatives to control vectorial and transfusional Trypanosoma cruzi transmission in Latin American settings where t...he disease is endemic, congenital CD (cCD) remains a significant challenge. In countries where the disease is not endemic, vertical transmission plays a key role in CD expansion and is the main focus of its control. Although several health organizations provide general protocols for cCD control, its management in each geopolitical region depends on local authorities, which has resulted in a multitude of approaches. The aims of this review are to (i) describe the current global situation in CD management, with emphasis on congenital infection, and (ii) summarize the spectrum of available strategies, both official and unofficial, for cCD prevention and control in countries of endemicity and nonendemicity. From an economic point of view, the early detection and treatment of cCD are cost-effective. However, in countries where the disease is not endemic, national health policies for cCD control are nonexistent, and official regional protocols are scarce and restricted to Europe. Countries of endemicity have more protocols in place, but the implementation of diagnostic methods is hampered by economic constraints. Moreover, most protocols in both countries where the disease is endemic and those where it is not endemic have yet to incorporate recently developed technologies. The wide methodological diversity in cCD diagnostic algorithms reflects the lack of a consensus. This review may represent a first step toward the development of a common strategy, which will require the collaboration of health organizations, governments, and experts in the field.
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Since the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978, community health volunteers (CHVs) have been at the forefront, providing health services, especially to underserved communities, in low-income countries. However, consolidation of CHVs position within formal health systems has proved to be complex and continue...s to challenge countries, as they devise strategies to strengthen primary healthcare. Malawi’s community health strategy, launched in 2017, is a novel attempt to harmonise the multiple health
service structures at the community level and strengthen service delivery through a team-based approach. The core community health team (CHT) consists of health surveillance assistants (HSAs), clinicians, environmental health officers and CHVs. This paper reviews Malawi’s strategy, with particular focus on the interface between HSAs, volunteers in community-based programmes and
the community health team. Our analysis identified key challenges that may impede the strategy’s implementation:
(1) inadequate training, imbalance of skill sets within CHTs and unclear job descriptions for CHVs; (2) proposed community-level interventions require expansion of pre-existing roles for most CHT members; and (3) district authorities may face challenges meeting financial obligations and filling community-level positions. For effective implementation, attention and further deliberation is needed on the appropriate forms of CHV support, CHT composition with possibilities of co-opting trained CHVs
from existing volunteer programmes into CHTs, review of CHT competencies and workload, strengthening coordination and communication across all community actors, and financing mechanisms. Policy support through the development of an addendum to the strategy, outlining opportunities for task-shifting between CHT members, CHVs’ expected duties and interactions with paid CHT personnel is recommended.
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To survive and thrive, children and adolescents need good health, adequate nutrition, security, safety and a supportive clean environment, opportunities for early learning and education, responsive relationships and connectedness, and opportunities for personal autonomy and self-realization. To prom...ote their health and wellbeing, children and adolescents need support from parents, families, communities, surrounding institutions, and an enabling environment. Scheduled well care visits provide a critical opportunity for support of individual children, adolescents, parents, caregivers and families promote health and wellbeing. This guidance on scheduled child and adolescent well-care visits is the first in a series of publications to support the operationalization of the comprehensive agenda for child and adolescent health and wellbeing. It provides guidance on what is required to strengthen health systems and services to ensure healthy growth and development of all children and adolescents, and to support their parents and caregivers.
The guidance focuses on scheduled routine contacts with providers to support children and adolescents in their growth and developmental trajectory, as well as their primary caregivers and families. It outlines the rationale and objectives of well care visits and proposes a minimum 17 scheduled visits; describes the expected tasks during a contact; provides age-specific content to be address during each contact; and proposes actions to build on and maximize existing opportunities and resources.
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Many features of the environment have been found to exert an important influence on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, progression, and severity. Changes in the environment due to migration to different geographic locations, modifications in lifestyle choices, and shifts in social policies and cultu...ral practices alter CVD risk, even in the absence of genetic changes. Nevertheless, the cumulative impact of the environment on CVD risk has been difficult to assess
and the mechanisms by which some environment factors influence CVD remain obscure. Human environments are complex; and their natural, social and personal domains are highly variable due to diversity in human ecosystems, evolutionary histories, social structures, and individual choices. Accumulating evidence supports the notion that ecological features such as the diurnal cycles of
light and day, sunlight exposure, seasons, and geographic characteristics of the natural environment such altitude, latitude and greenspaces are important determinants of cardiovascular health and CVD risk. In highly developed societies, the influence of the natural environment is moderated by the physical characteristics of the social environments such as the built environment
and pollution, as well as by socioeconomic status and social networks. These attributes of the
social environment shape lifestyle choices that significantly modify CVD risk. An understanding
of how different domains of the environment, individually and collectively, affect CVD risk could
lead to a better appraisal of CVD, and aid in the development of new preventive and therapeutic
strategies to limit the increasingly high global burden of heart disease and stroke.
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It is widely understood that the food insecurity crisis in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing and most neglected crises. It lacks sufficient global focus, resources and urgency. As in so many crises, women and girls are disproportionately affected and shoulder t...he consequences of protracted neglect, with unconscionable impacts on their safety, life chances and agency.
Gaining a holistic view of the gendered drivers, risks and impacts of food insecurity in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is difficult. This is due to a lack of data and prioritization, and the large geographical and socioeconomic terrain covered by both regions. However, what we do know about this crisis is more than enough to urgently address the needs of women and girls.
An OCHA discussion paper on this topic (which will be published imminently, and from which this policy brief is drawn) found that there is:
A strong risk of profound regression in gender equality gains made to date in the countries of concern, including on education, sexual and reproductive health, and the economic independence of women and girls (with knock-on effects on broader humanitarian and development outcomes).
An increasing challenge to reverse what must be recognized as a protracted and growing gender-based violence (GBV) emergency in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
The food insecurity crisis in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa is protracted, multidimensional and highly gendered, with spiralling impacts on gender equality and food security outcomes. It is driven by interwoven and overlapping factors, including climate change, political instability, conflict, socioeconomic conditions, migration and displacement and, more recently, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Interlinked with these factors are gendered structural drivers of food insecurity, including deeply entrenched gender inequalities and harmful social norms. Gendered risks and impacts of food insecurity include alarming limitations on access to education, sexual and reproductive health rights, women’s agency and participation, and dramatic increases in different existing forms of GBV and the emergence of new ones. Recognition of such gendered dimensions of food insecurity and of the need for a multisectoral approach in the response is key to addressing the crisis, along-side sustained commitment and adequate allocation of resources. This policy brief draws out key findings from the OCHA discussion paper on this topic, which includes a desk review of studies, assessments and reports, and interviews with local women’s organizations on the front lines of the food insecurity crisis in communities across both regions.
Below are the most pressing gendered drivers, risks and impacts of food insecurity (not in order of priority), as well as key gaps in the current humanitarian response to food insecurity, and recommendations to take forward.
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This report includes six case studies from 12 individuals with lived experience of diverse health conditions. These case studies explore the topics of power dynamics and power reorientation towards individuals with lived experience; informed decision-making and health literacy; community engagement ...across broader health networks and health systems; lived experience as evidence and expertise; exclusion and the importance of involving groups that are marginalized; and advocacy and human rights.
It is the first publication in the WHO Intention to action series, which aims to enhance the limited evidence base on the impact of meaningful engagement and address the lack of standardized approaches on how to operationalise meaningful engagement. The Intention to action series aims to do this by providing a platform from which individuals with lived experience, and organizational and institutional champions, can share solutions, challenges and promising practices related to this cross-cutting agenda. The Intention to action series also aims to provide powerful narratives,inspiration and evidence towards the Fourth United Nations High Level Meeting on NCDs in 2025 and achieving the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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This report is the first of its kind. It brings together various data sets to present the current status of hand hygiene, highlight lagging progress, and call governments and supporting agencies to action, offering numerous inspiring examples of change.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, hand hygiene ...received unprecedented attention and became a central pillar in national COVID prevention strategies. However, concern with hand hygiene should not only be as temporary public health measure in times of crisis, but as a vital everyday behaviour that contributes to health and economic resilience. Hand hygiene is a highly cost-effective investment, providing outsized health benefits for relatively little cost.
Despite efforts to promote hand hygiene, the rates of access to hand hygiene facilities remain stubbornly low. If current rates of progress continue, by the end of the SDG era in 2030, 1.9 billion people will still lack facilities to wash their hands at home.
This report presents a compelling case for investment in five key ‘accelerators’ as a pathway towards achieving hand hygiene for all – governance, financing, capacity development, data and information, and innovation. These accelerators are identified under the UN-Water SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework.
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Hendra virus (HeV) continues to pose a serious public health concern as spillover events occur sporadically. Terminally ill horses can exhibit a range of clinical signs including frothy nasal discharge, ataxia or forebrain signs. Early signs, if detected, can include depression, inappetence, colic o...r mild respiratory signs. All unvaccinated ill horses in areas where flying foxes exist, may potentially be infected with HeV, posing a significant risk to the veterinary community. Equivac® HeV vaccine has been fully registered in Australia since 2015 (and under an Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority special permit since 2012) for immunization of horses against HeV and is the most effective and direct solution to prevent disease transmission to horses and protect humans. No HeV vaccinated horse has tested positive for HeV infection. There is no registered vaccine to prevent, or therapeutics to treat, HeV infection in humans. Previous equine HeV outbreaks tended to cluster in winter overlapping with the foaling season (August to December), when veterinarians and horse owners have frequent close contact with horses and their bodily fluids, increasing the chance of zoonotic disease transmission. The most southerly case was detected in 2019 in the Upper Hunter region in New South Wales, which is Australia's Thoroughbred horse breeding capital. Future spillover events are predicted to move further south and inland in Queensland and New South Wales, aligning with the moving distribution of the main reservoir hosts. Here we (1) review HeV epidemiology and climate change predicted infection dynamics, (2) present a biosecurity protocol for veterinary clinics and hospitals to adopt, and (3) describe diagnostic tests currently available and those under development. Major knowledge and research gaps have been identified, including evaluation of vaccine efficacy in foals to assess current vaccination protocol recommendations.
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The document "Diabetes in Pregnancy" by NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) outlines quality standards for managing diabetes in women during pregnancy, with a focus on five key areas. First, it emphasizes the importance of preconception planning for women of childbearing age wit...h diabetes. These women should receive guidance on optimizing their health before pregnancy, including achieving target HbA1c levels and taking high-dose folic acid to minimize risks. Second, joint diabetes and antenatal care is recommended for pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes, who should be seen early in pregnancy (ideally by 10 weeks gestation) by a combined diabetes and antenatal team to ensure optimal care throughout their pregnancy.
The third focus area is continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), which should be offered to pregnant women with type 1 diabetes. This includes either real-time CGM or flash monitoring to help improve blood glucose control and reduce complications during pregnancy. Fourth, postnatal testing and referral are essential for women diagnosed with gestational diabetes, who should receive glucose testing after birth to detect any persistent diabetes. Those eligible are referred to the National Diabetes Prevention Programme to lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Lastly, the document recommends annual HbA1c testing for women with a history of gestational diabetes to monitor for type 2 diabetes development.
These standards aim to improve pregnancy outcomes for women with diabetes by providing individualized, accessible, and culturally appropriate care.
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