Rwanda first confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in March 2020. Although the number of cases has been low, health system resources are being redirected to respond and an increasing number of children are affected by the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, including disruptions... to schooling and heightened protection risks.
While Rwanda remained Ebola-free during the outbreak, it remains a priority country and continues to maintain its Ebola preparedness. Rwanda is also home to 147,000 refugees, half of whom are children, who require assistance in and outside of camps.1 In 2021, UNICEF will continue to deliver life-saving services to refugees and children and families affected by COVID-19 and its socio-economic impacts, and maintain its Ebola preparedness and contingency planning.
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Consensus -based guidelines for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of tuberculosis in children and adolescents
The Essential WASH Actions toolkit expands the connection between WASH and nutrition. This resource offers a comprehensive set of essential WASH actions, references training materials for health workers, nutrition managers and community workers to build capacity, and outlines accompanying behaviors ...needed to support the Essential Nutrition Actions.
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A practical toolkit for young people who are passionate about advancing HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights through national advocacy in the post-2015 agenda.
Primary care visits may be a time that refugee families express concerns about their child’s functioning at home or school and/or providers may identify concerns about emotional or behavioral health. Most refugee children have experienced trauma which may affect their emotional, behavioral, and ph...ysical development. However, many refugee children are resilient
and may not exhibit symptoms related to trauma.
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These guidance notes on stress, grief and loss have been compiled by IMC’s Mental Health Advisor, Dr. Lynne Jones, for organizations working with Hurricane Katrina-affected populations. They represent lessons learned regarding mental health activities from IMC’s international experiences in disa...ster response, including the recent tsunami, as well as summarize best-practices identified by international agency consensus.
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The article "Time to Align: Development Cooperation for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases" argues for greater international cooperation and investment in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), especially in low- and middle-income countries. Traditionally, global health fu...nding has focused on infectious diseases, but the growing burden of NCDs—such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and diabetes—necessitates new approaches to development assistance.
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Sudan recorded the first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020 and, at the beginning of July, the Federal Ministry of Health had confirmed that nearly 10,000 people had contracted the virus, including over 600 who died from the disease across the country. Although more than 70 per cent of the confirmed cas...es are in the Khartoum area, COVID-19 has spread throughout the country, with the highest numbers recorded in the central and eastern states. With extremely low testing capacity — around 800 samples per day, the lowest in the region — the official figures of confirmed cases likely underestimate the extent of the pandemic and the actual situation is unknown.
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In India, in response to the above and guided by our counterparts in the government of India, the UN agencies have developed the Novel Coronavirus Disease Joint Health Response Plan by UN Agencies and Partners, led by WHO-India, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, ...and with the support of other development partners. The UN in India is also preparing a COVID-19 Socio-economic Response and Recovery Plan, in partnership with the government.
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This revised and fully updated edition of the
International technical guidance on sexuality education
benefits from a new review of the current evidence, and reaffirms the position of sexuality education within a framework of human rights and gender equality. It promotes structured learning about... sex and relationships in a manner that is positive, affirming, and centered on the best interest of the young person. By outlining the essential components of effective sexuality education programmes, the Guidance enables national authorities to design comprehensive curricula that will have a positive impact on young people’s health and well-being.
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Over half a billion children are living in areas with extremely high levels of floods and nearly 160 million children live in areas of high or extremely high droughts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 26% of the annual 6.6 million deaths of children under five are linked to environ...ment-related causes and conditions. Children are also disproportionately affected by pollution, not only in terms of death rates, but also in terms of cognitive and physical development. This report illustrates that environmental causes also have an impact on whether children are pushed to work and on the kind of work they engage in, the conditions of work, exposure to dangerous toxicants and the risk of exploitation. However, the report raises more questions than it answers as it is one of the first reports addressing the question, how environmental degradation and climate change affect the vulnerability of children towards exploitation.
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Translating Community Research Into Global Policy Reform For National Action: A Checklist For Community Engagement To Implement The WHO Consolidated Guideline On The Sexual And Reproductive Health And Rights Of Women Living With HIV
3rd edition | December 2018
Evidence shows that oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces the risk of contracting HIV during sexual intercourse by more than 90% when taken daily. It is for this reason the National HIV Prevention Strategy 2015-2020 (2018 Revision) emphasises the role of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in ...reducing new HIV infections in Malawi.
The Ministry of Health has prioritised PrEP use among the populations most at-risk of HIV infection in Malawi: young women ages 10 to 24 years, sero-discordant couples, female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and other priority populations (such as members of the uniformed services, prisoners, and mobile populations).
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A qualitative assessment of knowledge gaps about female genital schistosomiasis among communities living in Schistosoma haematobium endemic districts of Zanzibar and Northwestern Tanzania.
PloS Neglected Tropical Diseases September 30, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009789
Schistosoma... haematobium causes urogenital schistosomiasis and is widely distributed in Tanzania. In girls and women, the parasite can cause Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS), a gynecological manifestation of schistosomiasis that is highly neglected and overlooked by public health professionals and policy makers. This study explored community members’ knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) on and health seeking behavior for FGS.
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Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and two types of HPV (16 and 18) cause nearly 50% of high-grade cervical pre-cancers. HIV and cervical cancer are inextricably linked. Women living with HIV are six times more likely to develop cervical cancer, which is o...ne of the AIDS-defining illnesses and the most common cancer among women living with HIV globally. Cervical cancer is a preventable, curable disease and can be eliminated as a public health problem with primary and secondary prevention, treatment, and care of cervical cancer, in combination with addressing social, health and other inequalities and integrated approaches.
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The world is not on track to end the AIDS pandemic. New infections are rising and AIDS deaths are continuing in too many communities. This report reveals why: inequalities are holding us back. In frank terms, the report calls the world’s attention to the painful reality that dangerous inequalities... are undermining the AIDS response and jeopardising the health security of everyone. The report highlights three specific areas of inequality for which concrete action is immediately possible—gender
inequalities and harmful masculinities driving HIV; marginalisation and criminalisation of key populations, which our data show is resulting in starkly little progress for those populations and undermining the overall response; and
inequalities for children whose lives must matter more than their market share. But this is not a counsel of despair, it is a call to action. Through bold action to confront these inequalities, we can end AIDS.
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Preventing tuberculosis infection from progressing to tuberculosis disease is a crucial component of the goal to eliminate tuberculosis. When deciding on the use of tuberculosis preventive therapy among household contacts, policy makers regularly ask questions, such as whether tuberculosis preventiv...e therapy is effective, safe, and feasible in a programme setting and what it will cost. For contact management and tuberculosis preventive therapy for multidrug-resistant and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis, studies from high-income and low-income countries have shown feasibility, safety, and effectiveness.
However, there is scarce information on the cost of tuberculosis preventive therapy for multidrug-resistant and rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis. In The Lancet Global Health, Peter Dodd and colleagues show that household contact management strategies are cost-effective even in low-income and middle-income countries, which has important policy implications for achieving the END TB Strategy goals.
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23 February 2022
A summary of the commitments and targets within the United Nations General Assembly’s 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS.The United Nations General Assembly’s 2021 Political Declaration on AIDS features bold global commitments and targets for 2025 that are ambitious but... achievable if countries and communities follow the evidence-informed guidance within the Global AIDS Strategy 2021–2026. This UNAIDS publication provides a summary of those commitments and targets to get every country and every community on-track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030
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While many of the countries hit by the COVID-19 in the first few months of the year are now beginning to relax lockdown measures as infection and death rates fall, in the regions most affected by HIV, TB and malaria, such as Africa, South Asia and Latin America, the pandemic continues to accelerate.... In lower resource settings, lockdowns are less effective and hard to sustain, and clinical care facilities are extremely limited. In such environments, the response to COVID-19 must focus on containing the pandemic’s spread as far as possible through testing, contact tracing and isolation, protecting the health workforce through training and the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) and minimizing the knock-on impact on other diseases through shoring up fragile health systems, and adapting existing disease programs.
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The Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis is one of the biggest external displacement crises in the world today. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded an already desperate situation for many refugees and migrants, as well as their hosts, sorely testing health and social welfare systems and the abilit...y of countries to assist the vulnerable population.
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