One of the main aims of the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer and the CureAll Americas framework is to strengthen centers of excellence and promote the training of the health workforce, especially pediatric oncology nurses, specialized in nursing care for children and adolescents with cance...r and their families. These health personnel provide compassionate, non traumatic, complex, continuous, ethical, conscious patient- and family-centered care in order to meet the physical, emotional, psychosocial, and cultural needs of the people involved. This publication is aimed at health administration teams, hospital management teams, and professional pediatric oncology nursing groups. Its objective is to identify, systematize, and consolidate available evidence on the scope of pediatric oncology nursing practice in Latin America and the Caribbean based on core competencies, in order to incorporate them into clinical practice, teaching, and research. The preparation process included a systematic review aimed at finding the best evidence on this subject. Patient- and family centered care and the conceptual model of competencies for teenagers and young adults with cancer, developed by the Teenage Cancer Trust with the support of the Royal College of Nursing, were the theoretical foundations supporting the systematization of recommendations.
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Developed as part of the UN Women–WHO Global Joint Programme on Violence Against Women Data, this briefing note focuses on the measurement of violence against women with disability and is one in a series of methodological briefing notes for strengthening the measurement and data collection of viol...ence against particular groups of women or specific aspects of violence against women.
The briefing note is meant for researchers, national statistics offices, and others involved in data collection on violence against women. It provides an overview of the challenges in the availability, measurement, and collection of data on violence against women with disability and outlines recommendations for good practice in measurement, with the aim of strengthening ongoing and future data collection efforts and increasing the availability of such data.
The inclusion of women with disability and the issue of disability within population-based surveys and research on violence against women is necessary for an improved understanding of populations of women at specific risk of violence. This knowledge would also allow more tailored prevention strategies and response/services and programmes to be designed in a way that addresses the specific needs of women with disability.
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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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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a double shock - health and economic. As of March 1, 2021, COVID-19 has cost more than 2.5 million lives and triggered an economic recession surpassing any economic downturn since World War II.
Part I of this paper explores the impact of this current macro-fisc...al outlook on the three primary sources of health spending. Drawing on experiences from previous economic crises, scenario analyses suggest a fall in government per capita spending on health in 2021 and 2022 unless governments make bold choices to increase the share of health in general government spending.
Part II of the paper discusses policy options to meet the spending needs in health. These options encompass strategies to make fiscal adjustments work and channel funds where they are most needed, as well as policies to stabilize the balance sheets of social health insurance (SHI) schemes. The paper explains how the health sector can play an active role in expanding fiscal space, contributing to tax reforms, most importantly pro-health taxes, and mobilizing and absorbing external financing, including debt relief.
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The development of this draft Proposed programme budget 2022–2023 comes at a unique moment for WHO. The world is in the grip of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and faces health, social and economic consequences on an unprecedented scale. Although it is not known when the COVID-19 pande...mic will end, recent encouraging vaccine results, in addition to the examples of countries that have achieved good results through public health measures, hold out the prospect of better days ahead. The full impact of the pandemic cannot yet be determined. But whatever its implications, the Secretariat will rise to the challenge and is ready to adapt so that it is fully equipped to support Member States for any eventuality in the future – to make sure that the world will never again have to face this kind of crisis.
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The GFF needs an additional US$2.5 billion from 2021 to 2025 to enable countries to protect health gains and accelerate progress toward the 2030 Goals. Of this amount, the GFF urgently needs to secure new pledges of US$1.2 billion by the end of 2021 to help its current 36 partner countries protect ...and maintain essential health services and implement time-sensitive service delivery and health system improvements to enable a sharp bend of the curve back to a positive trajectory to close the gap to the SDGs.
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Vaccines are powerful weapons in the fight against pandemic viruses as shown by responses to both the 2009 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics. However, planning for accessing, allocating and deploying vaccines in a pandemic situation is a complex endeavour, beset with multiple challenges at a...ll levels – local, regional and global. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have prepared this revised guidance document to assist countries update their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) by leveraging global learnings from past pandemic responses, including the recent COVID-19 vaccination effort. The development and testing of a NDVP would not only advance pandemic preparedness efforts but would also have benefits in terms of increasing national capabilities to manage other health emergencies which require emergency vaccination campaigns.
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Small drinking-water supplies commonly experience operational, managerial, technical and resourcing challenges that impact their ability to deliver safe and reliable services. The needs and opportunities associated with these supplies therefore warrant explicit consideration in policies and regulati...ons.
These Guidelines, specifically tailored to small water supplies, build on over 60 years of guidance by the World Health Organization (WHO) on drinking-water quality and safety. They focus on establishing drinking-water quality regulations and standards that are health based and context appropriate; on proactively managing risks through water safety planning and sanitary inspections; and on carrying out independent surveillance. The guidance is intended primarily for decision-makers at national and subnational levels with responsibility for developing regulatory frameworks and support programmes related to these activities. Other stakeholders involved in water service provision will also benefit from the guidance in this document.
Designed to be practical and accessible, these Guidelines offer clear guidance that is rooted in the principle of progressive improvement. State-of-the-art recommendations and implementation guidance are provided, drawn from a comprehensive evidence review and established good practices. Additionally, case examples are provided from countries and areas around the world to demonstrate how the guidance in this publication has been implemented in practice in a wide variety of contexts.
Together with WHO’s 2024 Sanitary inspection packages – a supporting tool for the Guidelines for drinking-water quality: small water supplies, these Guidelines update and supersede WHO’s 1997 Guidelines for drinking-water quality. Volume 3: surveillance and control of community supplies. Key changes to this updated publication include a greater focus on preventive risk management and a broader range of small water supplies covered, including those managed by households, communities and professional entities.
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Humanitarian crises exacerbate nutritional risks and often lead to an increase in acute malnutrition. Emergencies include both manmade (conflict) and natural disasters (floods, drought, cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Complex emergencies are combinations of both manmade a...nd natural disasters, often of a protracted nature. Millions of people are affected by humanitarian crises every year. The increasing frequency and scale of emergencies requires nutrition to be addressed in all phases of a response.
Crisis situations, whether acute or protracted, impact on a range of factors that can increase the risk of undernutrition, morbidity, and mortality. They may involve: the large-scale destruction of property and infrastructure; the erosion of livelihood strategies and purchasing power; a breakdown of and reduced access to essential services, including health services, water supply, and sanitation; and the displacement of large numbers of people. Emergencies can also disrupt social systems and the quality of care/feeding practices. Household access to food may be negatively affected and people may find themselves in overcrowded settlements with their families divided. As a result, at the individual level, there is often an increased risk of deteriorating health and nutritional status, resulting in a greater likelihood of death.
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Buruli ulcer (BU) is a bacterial skin infection that is caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans and mainly affects people who reside in the rural areas of Africa and in suburban and beach resort communities in Australia.
This technical report has been developed within the framework of the WHO Global Initiative for
Childhood Cancer. Its goal is to improve the situation of children and adolescents with cancer worldwide,
giving them the best chances of survival, living a full life and, above all, enjoying quality of ...life and dying
without suffering
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In 2006, the Special Session of African Union Health Ministers adopted the Maputo Plan of Action for implementing the Continental Policy Framework on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which expired at the end of 2015. The goal was for all stakeholders and partners to join forces and ...re-double efforts, so that together, the effective implementation of the Continental Policy framework including universal access to sexual and reproductive health by 2015 in all countries in Africa can be achieved. The Revised Maputo Plan of Action (MPoA) 2016 – 2030 was subsequently endorsed by the African Union Heads of State at the 27th AU Summit in July 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda. The plan reinforces the call for universal access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in Africa and lays foundation to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 3 and 5, as well as the African Union Agenda 2063.
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The Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (SDG3 GAP) is a set of commitments by 13 multilateral agencies to strengthen their collaboration. For this purpose several accelerators were created and an invitation for public comment was started. This document focuses on Accelerator ...Discussion Paper 1: Sustainable Financing.
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Marco Schäferhoff and colleagues critique funding estimates for the maternal and child health Millennium Development Goals, and make recommendations for improving the tracking of financing flows and estimating the costs of scaling up interventions for mothers and children.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown that public financial management (PFM) should be an integral part of the response. Effectiveness in financing the health response depends not only on the level of funding but also on the way public funds are allocated and spent, this is determined by the PFM r...ules, and how money flows to health service providers. So far, early assessments have shown that PFM systems ranged from being a fundamental enabler to acting as a roadblock in the COVID-19 health response. While service delivery mechanisms have been extensively documented throughout the pandemic, the underlying PFM mechanisms of the response also merit attention. To highlight the importance of PFM in health emergency contexts, this rapid review analyses various country PFM experiences and identifies early lessons emerging from the financing of the health response to COVID-19. The assessment is done by stages of the budget cycle: budget allocation, budget execution, and budget oversight. Identifying lessons from the varying PFM modalities used to finance the response to COVID-19 is fundamental both for health policy-makers and for finance authorities to prepare for future health emergencies.
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This checklist is an operational tool to help national authorities develop or revise national respiratory pathogen (inclusive of influenza and coronaviruses) pandemic preparedness plans.
Globally, over two million women live with obstetric fistula with the majority of the cases
being from Africa. In low-resource settings such as Zambia, obstetric fistula (OF) is a visible indicator of
gaps in maternal health care resulting in failure to provide adequate, accessible and quality m...aternal health
care, including family planning, skilled birth attendance, basic and emergency obstetric and neonatal care,
and affordable treatment of fistula. OF is preventable and treatable, and no woman in Zambia should continue to endure the condition. It is therefore necessary that Zambia intensifies national scale up of OF management centers including
community based interventions, train more surgeons and other health workers to provide quality and
affordable care closer to the women who are silently suffering from obstetric fistula.
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The Disaster Recovery Framework (DRF) Guide for the Health Sector provides guidance on how to implement a comprehensive, integrated, and structured approach to disaster recovery. Its overarching goal is to minimize the impact of the disaster on communities and help countries to recover quickly and e...ffectively from disasters, in coordination with key stakeholders.
The DRF Guide for the Health Sector is adapted from the generic DRF Guide, and draws on the Implementation Guide For Health Systems Recovery in Emergencies, the Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework as well as the Disaster Recovery Guidance Series. The guide also makes links with multi-sectoral, government-led recovery planning processes such as the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), and it supports the implementation of the HDPN.
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WHO-OHCHR launch new guidance to improve laws addressing human rights abuses in mental health care
Ahead of World Mental Health Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) are jointly launching a new guidance, entitled "Mental health, h...uman rights and legislation: guidance and practice", to support countries to reform legislation in order to end human rights abuses and increase access to quality mental health care.
Human rights abuses and coercive practices in mental health care, supported by existing legislation and policies, are still far too common. Involuntary hospitalization and treatment, unsanitary living conditions and physical, psychological, and emotional abuse characterize many mental health services across the world.
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Sound periodic programme reviews provide opportunities for countries to objectively assess progress and take corrective action to sustain or get back on track towards achieving their medium and long-term programme goals. It reflects people’s diverse needs, enables efficient use of health system re...sources and improves the predictability, sustainability and transparency of the programmes.
This publication provides guidance to countries on how to perform programme reviews for HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections in this dynamic health sector context. The guidance encourages integrated reviews across health programmes for more efficient use of health system resources. The welfare of populations to be served must be at the centre of health programme reviews, with the overarching resolve to protect and promote health as a human right.
This guidance is intended for use by all national partners, including health ministries, related ministries, civil society, affected communities and other stakeholders, for participatory and evidence-informed programme reviews.
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