Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has depended on international donor support to fund essential services like health care. But this donor support has been falling for years and will likely to continue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by United States President Joe Bide...n that the US will withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. This decline in funding has already had a harmful—and life-threatening—impact on the lives of many Afghan women and girls, as it affects access to, and quality of, health care.
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On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement outlining a phased withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments not to allow attacks on the US or its allies from Afghan territory. The troop withdrawal is expected to take place in parallel w...ith negotiations between representatives from the Afghan government and other Afghan political groups and Taliban leaders aimed at achieving a political settlement after decades of armed conflict.
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In reviewing State Parties report on the implementation of the Charter, the Committee has identified children on the move as an emerging child protection issue in African, and therefore commissioned a study in view of making recommendations to tackle the problem in Member States. The Committee obse...rved that there were challenges with regard to upholding the rights and welfare of children on the move and that there are gaps on the type of protection measures and treatment that is be accorded to such children within our beloved Continent.
The study presents key drivers of the children on the move, migration routes, challenges faced by children on the move, policy and institutionalized content protecting children on the move and finally the way forward.
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Drawing light from the pandemic: A new strategy for health and sustainable development (2021)
Available in English, French, German and Russian
Legislative and Policy analysis and recommendations for reform
This report - the largest of its kind to date - draws on the experiences of over 8,500 women and 300 health professionals across eight countries. It exposes the aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry, and highlights impacts on families’ decisions about how to feed their b...abies and young children.
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This handbook is an adaptation from the WHO Clinical Handbook Health care for women subjected to intimate partner violence or sexual violence developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women and United Nations Population Fund. The handbook draws on the work from professionals who are dedic...ated to preventing and responding to Gender Based Violence.
The Handbook guides health care service providers to provide comprehensive services to survivors of intimate partner violence and/or sexual violence. It also guides health professionals with respect to relevant stakeholders for referral purposes. The purpose is to ensure that relevant authorities are informed timeously in order act and ensure that those affected by violence receive speedy service as required.
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Background paper 11
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
May 2021
A study conducted by the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on older persons both globally and in the African region. Although overall the region’s population is younger relative to many other world regions, the WHO AFRO region ...has a population just over 62 million older people and is ageing rapidly, with the number of older people expected to triple in the next three decades (Aboderin et al., 2020).
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Report of a mission 20–24 April 2015
Climate change is already having severe impacts across our planet, bringing new and previously unimaginable challenges to the people least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
This report, the first we’ve released jointly in the history of our organizations, provides a sobering review of h...ow just one of those challenges – the increase in deadly heat-waves – threatens to drive new emergency needs in the not-so-distant future.
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Education of children with disabilities in India and Pakistan: An analysis of developments since 2000 | Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015 | Education for All 2000-2015: achievements and challenges
The objectives of the meeting were:
1. To step up the commitment of national authorities and technical and financial partners toWHO’s elimination objective for g-HAT.
2. To share achievements, challenges and views on the elimination goal among countries and implementing partners.
3. To assess t...he status of critical technical aspects to be solved in research and development of drugs and diagnostic tools, epidemiology, vector control and animal reservoirs.
4. To define the mechanisms for strengthening and organizing collaboration and coordination among stakeholders.
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The “United Nations Framework for the immediate socio-economic response to COVID-19: Shared responsibility, global solidarity and urgent action for people in need” calls for protecting jobs, businesses and livelihoods to set in motion a safe recovery of societies and economies as soon as possibl...e for a more sustainable, gender-equal, and carbon-neutral path—better than the “old normal”.
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Children expressed the need for organisations to
support in the delivery of services such as health and
sanitation. The children also emphasized that schools
and the child-friendly spaces (CFSs) were effective
and important spaces to provide them with what they
need.
Strategic communication is at the heart of public health and more important than ever in the digital age. Using communication strategically requires expertise, skills and resources to plan, implement and evaluate interventions that encourage governments to implement policies that improve people’s ...lives and well-being, that empower health workers to deliver the best care possible, and that encourage people to take actions that protect and improve their health and that of their family and community. This Regional Action Framework on Communication for Health (C4H) aims to support Member States in implementing the C4H approach. It outlines steps to be taken by WHO and Member States to use C4H to achieve shared public health goals in the Western Pacific.
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To support the achievement of health equity in the Region, the regional inter-agency movement Every Woman Every Child Latin America and the Caribbean (EWEC-LAC) advocates for and supports the use of equity and evidence-based policies, strategies and interventions to accelerate equitable progress in ...the health of women, children and adolescents. Although progress has been made, great inequities persist. Women from the LAC region’s poorest countries are almost four times more likely to die due to complications during childbirth than those living in the wealthiest countries. Through the years, several tools, instruments and methods (TIMs) have been developed by global, regional and country partners that can be used to conduct systematic equity-based analyses and/or re-designs of health systems, programs, strategies and interventions. The main purpose of this document is to present an overview of existing TIMs that can be used by policymakers, program managers, development partners, nongovernmental organizations, academia and civil society partners to strengthen systematic identification, analysis and responding to social inequities in the health of women, children and adolescents in LAC. The TIMs included were identified through a systematic search process
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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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To support countries in adapting their response to different COVID-19 scenarios, the World Health
Organization (WHO) Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing commissioned this scoping review of published and grey literature. The objective was to identify interventions... implemented to maintain the provision and use of essential services for MNCAAH during disruptive events and to summarize lessons learned during these interventions. The review included outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Zika virus disease (ZVD), the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies that caused disruption to services, transport and other activities.
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