Women and children, especially pregnant girls and women, infants and young children and postpartum women, are populations that are extremely vulnerable in emergencies. Breastfeeding provides children with hydration, comfort, connection, high quality nutrition and protection against disease, shieldin...g them from the worst of emergency conditions. This ability has been described as empowering and healing by some breastfeeding women.
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The combined effects from ambient (outdoor) air pollution and indoor (household, in particular) air pollution cause approximately 7 million premature deaths every year, largely as a result of increased mortality from stroke, IHD, COPD, lung cancer and acute respiratory infections (1). Air pollution ...can occur in both the outdoor and indoor environments. Cook-stoves in homes, motor vehicles, industrial facilities and forest fires are common sources of air pollution. Air pollutants with the strongest evidence for adverse health outcomes include particulate matter (PM; both PM 2.5 (i.e. particles with an aerodynamic diameter
equal to or less than 2.5 μm) and PM10 (i.e. particles with an aerodynamic diameter equal to or less than 10 μm), ozone (O 3), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) and carbon monoxide (CO). Air pollution is however composed of many more pollutants (1).
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To survive and thrive, children and adolescents need good health, adequate nutrition, security, safety and a supportive clean environment, opportunities for early learning and education, responsive relationships and connectedness, and opportunities for personal autonomy and self-realization. To prom...ote their health and wellbeing, children and adolescents need support from parents, families, communities, surrounding institutions, and an enabling environment. Scheduled well care visits provide a critical opportunity for support of individual children, adolescents, parents, caregivers and families promote health and wellbeing. This guidance on scheduled child and adolescent well-care visits is the first in a series of publications to support the operationalization of the comprehensive agenda for child and adolescent health and wellbeing. It provides guidance on what is required to strengthen health systems and services to ensure healthy growth and development of all children and adolescents, and to support their parents and caregivers.
The guidance focuses on scheduled routine contacts with providers to support children and adolescents in their growth and developmental trajectory, as well as their primary caregivers and families. It outlines the rationale and objectives of well care visits and proposes a minimum 17 scheduled visits; describes the expected tasks during a contact; provides age-specific content to be address during each contact; and proposes actions to build on and maximize existing opportunities and resources.
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This guide presents a basis for understanding how diarrhoeal diseases are currently influenced by climate and weather, and may be further exacerbated by climate change. It is a technical guide on how to conduct a Vulnerability & Adaptation assessment for diarrhoeal diseases and climate change, and p...rovides guidance on how to:
identify populations and regions vulnerable to diarrhoeal diseases and the reasons for their vulnerability;
establish relevant baselines that can be analysed and monitored;
conduct analyses to project how diarrhoeal diseases may be impacted in the future due to climate change; and
identify appropriate responses to mitigate and monitor these risks over time.
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Bonchial asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the world. In Kenya, it has been estimated that about 7.5% of the Kenyan population, nearly 4 million people, are currently living with asthma. Many cases tend to be underdiagnosed and undertreated which leads to high levels of morbid...ity and avoidable deaths. The consequences of poorly controlled asthma, including physical, mental, social, and economic impacts, are magnified in the poor on account of poor access to asthma services and sub-optimal quality of those services. With these guidelines, Kenya's Ministry of Health aims to work towards embedding asthma care in Universal Health Care (UHC) to ensure that quality asthma services are available in primary care settings with
referral networks strengthened for those who may require secondary and tertiary care. These national asthma guidelines will also ensure that treatment for asthma is standardized in both the public and the non-state health care sector.
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Childhood Respiratory Diseases & the Environment learning objectives
•To understand how the respiratory tract is affected by the environment
•To describe respiratory diseases linked to the environment
•To list one population-level intervention and one personal-level intervention for d...ecreasing risk of respiratory diseases
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This report explores the extent to which evidence, policy, normative guidance and commitments on HIV and gender-based violence, and their interlinkages, is being translated into action on the ground in fragile settings. These issues are explored through the lens of training of peace support operatio...ns deploying African troops across Africa and beyond.
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This 10th edition of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s annual Financing Global Health report provides the most up-to-date estimates of development assistance for health, domestic spending on health, health spending on two key infectious diseases – malaria and HIV/AIDS – and fut...ure scenarios of health spending. Several transitions in global health financing inform this report: the influence of economic development on the composition of health spending; the emergence of other sources of development assistance funds and initiatives; and the increased availability of disease-specific funding data for the global health community. For funders and policymakers with sights on achieving 2030 global health goals, these estimates are of critical importance. They can be used for identifying funding gaps, evaluating the allocation of scarce resources, and comparing funding across time and countries.
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The 2022 Financing for Sustainable Development Report identifies a “great finance divide” as a main driver of the divergent recovery. Developed countries were able to borrow record sums at ultra-low interest rates to support their people and economies, but the pandemic response and investment in... recovery of poor countries was limited by fiscal constraints. This joint report, by over 60 agencies of the United Nations system and partner international organizations, provides analysis and puts forward policy recommendations to overcome this “finance divide” and enhance developing countries’ access to financing for recovery and productive and sustainable investment.
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The 2020 Financing for Sustainable Development Report, the fifth report of the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of sustainable finance. Prepared by more than 60 agencies of the United Nations system and partner international organ...izations, the report brings together a wide range of expertise and perspectives. It puts forward a set of policy recommendations to mobilize financing flows, and align them with economic, social and environmental priorities. These recommendations should assist Member States and all other stakeholders as they work toward fully implementing the Addis Agenda and achieve the SDGs.
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WHO has published the first-ever guidance on the clinical management of diphtheria. The only previously available guidance was an operational protocol. The new guidance followed the rigorous process for developing guidance at WHO.
It addresses the use of Diphtheria Antitoxin (DAT) in the treatmen...t of diphtheria. There is a worldwide shortage of DAT and evidence based recommendations on the use of DAT were requested by many Member States.
The guidance also includes new recommendations on antibiotics. In patients with suspected or confirmed diphtheria, WHO recommends using macrolide antibiotics (azithromycin, erythromycin) rather than penicillin antibiotics.
This clinical practice guideline has been rapidly developed recognizing the global increase in diphtheria outbreaks. Outbreaks of diphtheria in Nigeria, Guinea and neighbouring countries in 2023 have highlighted the urgent need for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of diphtheria. Given the sporadic nature of outbreaks, many clinicians in the affected regions have never managed acute diphtheria and its related complications. Diphtheria remains a neglected disease and vaccination is the top priority. At the same time, for patients with diphtheria, access to antibiotics, DAT and supportive care can be lifesaving.
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This WHO laboratory manual provides the most up to date methods and procedures for the laboratory identification of yellow fever virus infection in humans. It provides guidance on the establishment and maintenance of an effective laboratory providing routine surveillance testing for yellow fever, wh...ich operates within the WHO coordinated Global Yellow Fever Laboratory Network (GYFLaN) capable of providing confirmation of yellow fever infection reliably and timely. This second edition supersedes the first edition of the 2004 WHO manual for the monitoring of yellow fever virus infection.
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A System of Health Accounts 2011: Revised Edition provides an updated and systematic description of the financial flows related to the consumption of health care goods and services. As demands for information increase and more countries implement and institutionalise health accounts according to the... system, the data produced are expected to be more comparable, more detailed and more policy relevant. It builds on the original OECD Manual, published in 2000, and the Guide to Producing National Health Accounts to create a single global framework for producing health expenditure accounts that can help track resource flows from sources to uses. It is the result of a collaborative effort between the OECD, WHO and the European Commission, and sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts – responding to health care systems around the globe – from the simplest to the more complicated.
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The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH) was established by World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in January 2000 to assess the place of health in global economic development. Although health is widely understood to be both a central goal and an important outcome ...of development, the importance of investing in health to promote economic development and poverty reduction has been much less appreciated. We have found that extending the coverage of crucial health services, including a relatively small number of specific interventions, to the world’s poor could save millions of lives each year, reduce poverty, spur economic development, and promote global security.
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Multiple pandemics, numerous outbreaks, thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars of national income wiped out—all since the turn of this century, in barely 17 years—and yet the world’s investments in pandemic preparedness and response remain woefully inadequate. We know by now that the ...world will see another pandemic in the not-too-distant future; that random mutations occur often enough in microbes that help them survive and adapt; that new pathogens will inevitably find a way to break through our defenses; and that there is the increased potential for intentional or accidental release of a synthesized agent. Every expert commentary and every analysis in recent years tells us that the costs of inaction are immense. And yet, as
the havoc caused by the last outbreak turns into a fading memory, we become complacent and relegate the case for investing in preparedness on a back burner, only to bring it to the forefront when the next outbreak occurs. The result is that the world remains scarily vulnerable.
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A global Pandemic, Preparedness and Response (RRR) architecture
Multi-sectoral Cholera Elimination Plan
This report makes clear that there is a path to end AIDS. Taking that path will help ensure preparedness to address other pandemic challenges, and advance progress across the Sustainable Development Goals. The data and real-world examples in the report make it very clear what that path is. It is not... a mystery. It is a choice. Some leaders are already following the path—and succeeding. It is inspiring to note that Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe have already achieved the 95–95–95 targets, and at least 16 other countries (including eight in sub-Saharan Africa) are close to doing so.
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The Quadripartite organizations have developed the One Health Priority Research Agenda for AMR report, this is a joint initiative to assist in directing and catalysing scientific interest and financial investments for the priority research agenda across sectors for countries and funding bodies. The ...research agenda also serves as a guide to mitigate One Health AMR that will help policymakers, researchers, and a multidisciplinary scientific community work together on solutions to prevent and mitigate AMR within the One Health approach.
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The Strategic Plan of Action and Budget 2016-2025 for the elimination of onchocerciasisin countries was prepared based on the above dlrective for the consideration of IAF 18.The vision of the plan of action is to eliminate onchocerciasis in 80 percent of Africancountries. Implementation of the plan ...will also help strengthen health systems at community level while implementing CDI wlll help scale-up interventions agalnst other NTDs to the benefit of the wider national health systems.
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