Every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born preterm – before 37 weeks of pregnancy. That is more than 1 in 10 live births. Approximately 1 million children die each year worldwide due to complications from their early birth. Those that survive often face a lifetime of ill-health including ...disability, learning difficulties, and visual and hearing problems.
Half of the babies born at or below 32 weeks (2 months early) die in low-income settings, due to a lack of feasible, cost-effective care, such as warmth, breastfeeding support, and basic care for infections and breathing difficulties. In high-income countries, almost all these babies survive.
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This operation update provides a summary of key results achieved against the IFRC Syria Complex Emergency Plan of Action covering 13-month period, from 1 June 2019 to 30 June 2020.
This paper reviews the effects of vertical responses to COVID-19 on health systems, services, and people’s access to and use of them in LMICs, where historic and ongoing under-investments heighten vulnerability to a multiplicity of health threats. We use the term ‘vertical response’ to describ...e decisions, measures and actions taken solely with the purpose of preventing and containing COVID-19, often without adequate consideration of how this affects the wider health system and pre-existing resource constraints.
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Bioethics - Medical, Ethical and Legal Perspectives
There’s evidence that implementing the four medical ethics principles may be challenging especially in low income country contexts with extreme resource scarcity and limited capacity to facilitate deliberations on the different ethical dilemmas.... These challenges can partly be explained by the social, economic, and political contexts in which the decisions are made, as well as the limited time, training and guidance to facilitate ethical decision making. Based on current literature, and using the example of bedside rationing; this chapter synthesizes the challenges clinicians face when operationalizing the four principle; identifying the opportunities to address them. We suggest that clinicians’ ability to implement the four principles are constrained by meso‐ and macro‐level decision making as well as their lack of training, explicit guidelines, and peer support. To ameliorate this situation, current efforts to strengthen the clinicians’ capacity to make ethical decisions should be complimented with developing of context relevant guidelines for ethical clinical decision making. The renewed global commitment to the sustainable development goals and universal healthcare coverage should be recognized as an opportunity to leverage resources and champion the integration of equity and justice as a core value in resource allocation at the bedside, meso-, macro- and global levels.
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J Pharm Pharm Sci (www.cspsCanada.org) 16(3) 441 - 455, 2013
The content of these guidelines goes beyond the technicalities of medical needs with additional insights into community empowerment, possible access to welfare and economic opportunities and similar issues. If these are adequately explored, the health and quality of life of people affected and their... families would be greatly restored.
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Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the second common cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounting for about 35% of all deaths, after a composite of communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases. Despite prior perception of low NCDs mortality rates, current evidence suggests t...hat SSA is now at the dawn of the epidemiological transition with contemporary double burden of disease from NCDs and communicable diseases. In SSA, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the most frequent causes of NCDs deaths, responsible for approximately 13% of all deaths and 37% of all NCDs deaths. Although ischemic heart disease (IHD) has been identified as the leading cause of CVDs mortality in SSA followed by stroke and hypertensive heart disease from statistical models, real field data suggest IHD rates are still relatively low. The neglected endemic CVDs of SSA such as endomyocardial fibrosis and rheumatic heart disease as well as congenital heart diseases remain unconquered. While the underlying aetiology of heart failure among adults in high-income countries (HIC) is IHD, in SSA the leading causes are hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, rheumatic heart disease, and congenital heart diseases. Of concern is the tendency of CVDs to occur at younger ages in SSA populations, approximately two decades earlier compared to HIC. Obstacles hampering primary and secondary prevention of CVDs in SSA include insufficient health care systems and infrastructure, scarcity of cardiac professionals, skewed budget allocation and disproportionate prioritization away from NCDs, high cost of cardiac treatments and interventions coupled with rarity of health insurance systems. This review gives an overview of the descriptive epidemiology of CVDs in SSA, while contrasting with the HIC and highlighting impediments to their management and making recommendations.
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One of the first steps in developing a multisectoral action plan (MSAP) is to use a situation analysis to provide a comprehensive assessment of the health needs, prevailing risks and the context of the area to which the plan will apply. This will help countries, regions, provinces or cities intendi...ng to create a multisectoral action plan to align with the global commitments on targeting the four major NCDs: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases.
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Available in English, French, Spanish and Russian from the website https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/344562
The World Happiness Report 2021 focuses on the effects of COVID-19 and how people all over the world have fared. Our aim was two-fold, first to focus on the effects of COVID-19 on the structure and quality of people’s lives, and second to describe and evaluate how governments all over the world ha...ve dealt with the pandemic. In particular, we try to explain why some countries have done so much better than others.
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For over a decade, Senegalese and international journalists, human rights advocates, and child protection experts have documented and denounced the ongoing exploitation, abuse and neglect of children living in many of Senegal’s traditional Quranic schools, or daaras. Thousands of these children, k...nown as talibés, continue to live in conditions of extreme squalor, deprived of adequate food and medical care.
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Guidelines on the management of chronic pain in children, developing and implementing national and local policies for pain management and protocols in children, implementing national and local regulations for pain management in children, pain management and protocols
The main aim of these guidelines is to enable the central units of national TB and HIV/AIDS programmes to support districts to plan, coordinate and implement collaborative TB/HIV activities. These guidelines reinforce current medical understanding, that highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART)... has decreased TB incidence of people living with HIV/AIDS. They are comprehensive, giving an overview of the range of activities that could be undertaken in high burden TB/HIV countries or where a rising prevalence of HIV might fuel TB. Activities highlight the need for comprehensive care, prevention and support for adults living with HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive TB and HIV care and prevention rely on full implementation of the DOTS strategy as part of a wide ranging HIV/AIDS care and prevention programme as well as collaborative TB and HIV programme activities.
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New research published today shows that older, disabled and injured Syrian refugees are paying a double toll as a result of the conflict. The report, released by Handicap International and HelpAge International, provides new data showing how much these vulnerable refugees are struggling to meet thei...r specific needs
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The 2019 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) sets out the framework within which the humanitarian community will respond to the large-scale humanitarian and protection needs in Syria throughout 2019, on the basis of the prioritization undertaken across and within sectors. The HRP, based on United Natio...ns’ assessments and analysis, also presents urgent funding requirements to address these needs. It is anchored by three strategic objectives: saving lives and alleviating suffering, enhancing protection, and increasing resilience. These objectives are interlinked and achieving positive outcomes for affected people requires concerted action across all three.
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Historically, the discovery of the sulfa drugs in the 1930s and the subsequent development of penicillin during World War II ushered in a new era in the treatment of infectious diseases. Infections that were common causes of death and disease in the pre-...antibiotic era - rheumatic fever, syphilis, cellulitis and bacterial pneumonia - became treatable, and over the next 20 years most of the classes of antibiotics that find clinical use today were discovered and changed medicine in a profound way. The availability of antibiotics enabled revolutionary medical interventions such as cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants and essentially all major invasive surgeries from joint replacements to coronary bypass. Antibiotics, though, are unique among drugs in that their use precipitates their obsolescence. Paradoxically, these cures select for organisms that can evade them, fueling an arms race between microbes, clinicians and drug discoverers.
Wright BMC Biology 2010, 8:123 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/12
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Nota INformatIva Nº 13/2020 - SE/GaB/SE/mS
September 2020
The report “Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region” provides ground breaking insights into the state of health inequities in the Region and urges countries to take action to address the social determinants of health to reverse the worsening trend of inequi...ty – aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflict, mass movements of people, environmental challenges, gender inequities and unemployment.
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