Ebola Situation Assessment 6 October 2014
The role of evidence in the journey towards universal health coverage is paramount. Financial risk protection monitoring, the major focus of this report, informs where the WHO African Region stands in reducing the financial hardship people face due to health expenses. This report details the status ...of financial risk protection and related trends, the drivers of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial risk protection. As such, it provides evidence coutries can draw on to develop health financing systems and reforms that mitigate financial barriers to accessing health services. Through analysis of country data, cross-country learning and drawing on the published literature, this report proposes recommendations that countries may adapt to their contexts.
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Over the past decade, countries in the African region experienced slow progress in mobilizing resources for health while facing continued challenges. In their revised estimates published in 2017, Stenberg et al., developed two costs scenarios, termed progress and ambitious, aimed at strengthening co...mprehensive health service delivery to achieve SDG 3 and universal health coverage in low-income and middle-income countries (Stenberg et al., 2017). Out of the 47 countries in the WHO African region only eight, on average, met the recommended threshold of spending a minimum of US$ 249 per capita on health during the period from 2012 to 2020. In 2020, this achievement was observed in only five countries while the remaining countries spent less than US$ 249 per capita, with health expenditures ranging from US$ 16.4 to US$ 236.6, highlighting significant disparities across the region.
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Most foreign aid comes in one of two forms: either we pay a person or an institution today in exchange for delivering some beneficial activity in the future, or we observe something bad happen to them and then give them support to recover from it. This kind of aid is simple to design and deliver,
b...ut in the former case has limits in how sharply it incentivizes success and effort from a range of actors and in the latter case leads to the inefficient and undignified “begging bowl” approach to humanitarian financing. In what follows, I identify a broad family of alternative approaches, which
can loosely be grouped together as “contractually contingent financing,” and explain why they are still relatively underused.
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The UK could regain its leadershipin the provision of development assistance for healthunder the next government. But this doesn’t seem likely if the party manifestos are any guide.
The guidelines are primarily intended for health-care professionals working in first- or second-level health-care facilities, including emergency, inpatient and outpatient services. They are also directed at policy-makers, health-care planners and programme managers, academic institutions, non-gover...nmental and civil society organizations to inform capacity-building, teaching and research agendas.
Web annex A provides the quantitative evidence reports, Web annex B summarizes the qualitative and economic evidence and Web annex C presents the Evidence-to-Decision frameworks.
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The guidelines are primarily intended for health-care professionals working in first- or second-level health-care facilities, including emergency, inpatient and outpatient services. They are also directed at policy-makers, health-care planners and programme managers, academic institutions, non-gover...nmental and civil society organizations to inform capacity-building, teaching and research agendas.
Web annex A provides the quantitative evidence reports, Web annex B summarizes the qualitative and economic evidence and Web annex C presents the Evidence-to-Decision frameworks.
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The objectives of this guideline are the same as those of the 2011 edition, namely to provide evidence-based normative guidance on interventions to improve adolescent morbidity and mortality by reducing the chances of early pregnancy and its resulting poor health outcomes. The specific objectives of... the guideline were to: 1. identify effective interventions to prevent early pregnancy by influencing factors such as early marriage, coerced sex, unsafe abortion, access to contraceptives and access to maternal health services by adolescents; and 2. provide an analytical framework for policy-makers and programme managers to use when selecting evidence-based interventions to prevent early pregnancy and negative health outcomes when they occur that are most appropriate for the needs of their countries and context. The recommendations and best practice statements described in this document aim to enable evidence-based decision-making with respect to preventing early pregnancy and poor reproductive outcomes among adolescents in low- and middle-income country contexts.
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The place where you live, the communities you belong to, your education level, ethnicity, race, income and gender, and
whether you have a disability, all make a huge difference to how long you can expect to live a healthy life. People in the
country with the highest life expectancy will, on av...erage, live for 33 years more than those born in the country with the lowest
life expectancy. There are major differences in life expectancy between countries at very similar income levels: data shows that regardless of income level, some countries have managed to halve premature death over the past half-century, while in
others, it has remained the same or even increased. Within countries, life expectancy varies by decades, depending on which area you live in and the social group to which you belong
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emale genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve the partial or total removal of external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons; the procedure has no health benefits . Moreover, the removal of or damage to healthy genital tissue interferes... with the natural functioning of the body and may cause several immediate and long-term health consequences. In addition, FGM violates a series of well established human rights principles, including the principles of equality and nondiscrimination based on sex, the right to life (when the procedure results in death), and the
right to freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as well as the rights of the child to physical and mental integrity.
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This question bank is a menu of qualitative questions related to healthcare workers’ knowledge, perceptions and practices during infectious disease outbreaks. The question bank will generate qualitative data on healthcare workers’ subjective understandings of risks, case management, protection a...nd wider outbreak operations. These data can be used to inform risk communication and community engagement activities as well as other response pillars. Some of the issues covered in these questions are complex, for example stigma or views on vaccine safety
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This case study in Chile focused on the following two strategic levers of the WHO/UNICEF PHC Operational Framework during the implementation period 2022–2023: “Political Commitment and Leadership” and “Governance and Policy Frameworks”. This included examining how support from the three le...vels of the Organization (WHO headquarters, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/WHO Regional Office for the Americas and PAHO/WHO Chile Country Office) has been coordinated and operationalized. The case study also explored how, through these two strategic levers, catalytic actions have been planned and implemented in relation to other operational levers, in particular “Models of care”.
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2nd edition. This second edition builds on the experience of more than 10 years of SMC deployment, and reflects changes introduced in the WHO guidelines for malaria, 3 June 2022. The goal of this publication is to share these best practices to improve SMC implementation, coverage, and monitoring and... evaluation. Examples of materials and tools as well as links to resources are included to support managers and health workers in their efforts to conduct successful SMC activities and prevent malaria among vulnerable children.
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The document outlines essential steps and provides guidance to countries on the adoption and deployment of c-IPTp so that it is integrated into the existing health system. It draws upon best practices and lessons learned from pilot implementation experiences in eight African countries and targets st...akeholders at the national level that are involved in the provision of maternal and child services, including national and local policymakers and implementers of malaria, maternal health, child health, reproductive health and community health programmes, and nongovernmental and other organizations.
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WHO has updated it recommendations for 3 key malaria prevention strategies: seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), perennial malaria chemoprevention (PMC – previously known as intermittent preventive treatment in infants, or IPTi) and intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy (IPT...p). When given to the young children and pregnant women who are most vulnerable to malaria, preventive chemotherapy has been shown to be a safe, effective and cost-effective strategy for reducing the disease burden and saving lives.
The updated recommendations on SMC, PMC and IPTp, published today in the WHO Guidelines for malaria, will support the broader use of chemoprevention among young children at high risk of severe malaria in areas with both seasonal and year-round transmission and promote expanded access to preventive chemotherapy in pregnancy.
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WHO recommends artemisinin-based combination therapies for treating uncomplicated malaria, alongside studies to monitor treatment effectiveness. Given the threat of antimalarial resistance, including partial resistance in several African countries, molecular tools are vital for tracking resistance. ...In 2015, WHO launched the External Quality Assessment scheme for nucleic acid amplification testing to ensure reliable lab results. Coordinated by WHO and operated by the United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Service for Parasitology, the scheme provides quality-controlled specimens and reports to help improve testing accuracy. Experts recently discussed expanding the scheme to include antimalarial resistance markers.
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The Global Malaria Programme Toolkit app brings together the content of the latest World malaria report and of the consolidated WHO Guidelines for malaria as well as operational manuals and other technical documents – in one easy-to-navigate resource.