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COVID-19 has heavily emphasized how contact tracing is crucial for managing outbreaks, and as part of the strategy for adjusting, and eventually lifting, lockdowns
...
and other stringent public health and social measures. As the pandemic develops further, it will be a core measure to manage further waves of infection. In early June 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an online global consultation on contact tracing in the context of COVID-19, looking at the lessons of the pandemic to date; known and emerging best practices; and the measures necessary for urgent implementation, scale-up, maintenance and enhancement of contact tracing activities.
more
At a time when the world is reeling from the deepest global disruption and health crisis of a lifetime, this year’s Living Planet
report provides unequivocal and alarming evidence that nature is
...
unraveling and that our planet is flashing red warning signs of
vital natural systems failure. The Living Planet Report 2020 clearly outlines how humanity’s increasing destruction of nature is having
catastrophic impacts not only on wildlife populations but also on human health and all aspects of our lives.
more
For thousands of years, humans have been using wildlife for commercial and subsistence purposes. Wildlife trade takes place at local, national and international levels, with different forms of wildl
...
ife, such as live animals, partly processed products and finished products. Wildlife is a vital source of safe and nutritious food, clothing, medicine, and other products, in addition to having religious and cultural value. Wildlife trade also contributes to livelihoods, income generation and overall economic development.
However, wildlife trade can have detrimental effects on species conservation, depleting natural resources, impoverishing biodiversity and degrading ecosystems (Morton et al., 2021). Wildlife trade, whether legal or illegal, regulated or unregulated, can pose threats to animal health and welfare. It also presents opportunities for zoonotic pathogens to spill over between wildlife and domestic animals, and for diseases to emerge with serious consequences for public or animal health and profound economic impacts (IPBES, 2020; Swift et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2009; Gortazar et al., 2014; Stephen, 2021; Stephen et al., 2022; FAO, 2020). The risk of pathogen spillover and disease emergence is amplified with increased interaction between humans, wildlife and domestic animals. The risk of pathogen spillover has also been exacerbated by climate change, intensified agriculture and livestock production, deforestation, and other land-use changes. Wildlife trade is also a risk to ecosystem biodiversity via the introduction of invasive species (Wikramanayake et al., 2021). Therefore, increased effort must be put into understanding the potential consequences of the wildlife trade, mapping and analysing the adjacent risks, and implementing strategies to manage those risks. Reducing wildlife-trade risks not only helps to limit disease but also minimises the negative effects of invasive species. Between 1960 and 2021, invasive alien species caused estimated cumulative damage of around 116 billion euros across 39 countries in the European Union alone, despite strict import regulations (Haubrock et al., 2021). The effect of invasive species is extremely apparent.
more
Evidence-based psychological interventions are an important part of health, social, protection and education services and can help increase access
...
to effective mental health treatments and progression towards universal health coverage.
This manual provides managers and others responsible for planning and delivering services with practical guidance on how to implement manualized psychological interventions for adults, adolescents and children. It covers the five key implementation steps: make an implementation plan; adapt for context; prepare the workforce; identify, assess and support potential beneficiaries; and monitor and evaluate the service.
more
This Framework offers a coherent approach for eliminating tuberculosis (TB) in low-incidence countries. It is designed to guide national policy-makers and those responsible for technical aspects of
...
the national TB response in accelerating efforts towards elimination. The document will also be informative for public health surveillance officers, practitioners and nongovernmental and civil society partners working on natioal TB care and prevention and serving the populations most vulnerable to TB.
more
In its report from 2014, the Working Group outlines the various factors influencing vaccine acceptance or refusal, and what can be done to create social norms around vaccine acceptance
...
and to encourage the general public regarding the necessity of vaccination.
more
All young people, including those with special needs and from the most vulnerable groups, have the right to quality health care services. Unfortunately, this right is not a reality, particularly in the case of sexual
...
and reproductive health services. Many youth in need of sexual and reproductive health care may either decline or be denied access to health services for a variety of reasons: Providers are often biased and do not feel comfortable serving youth who are sexually active; youth do not feel comfortable accessing existing services because they are not "youth-friendly" and may not meet their needs; and, often, community members do not feel that youth should have access to sexual and reproductive health services.
To address provider and site bias toward serving youth, EngenderHealth created a training curriculum intended to sensitize all staff at a health care facility on the provision of youth-friendly services. The curriculum was created as a result of the participatory work that we have been doing with youth in Nepal to address the needs of all levels of providers at different service-delivery settings. The curriculum has been field-tested and used in Nepal, Russia, Mongolia, and the United States.
Youth-Friendly Services allows staff to reflect upon and assess their own beliefs about adolescent sexuality while ensuring that those values and attitudes do not compromise the basic sexual and reproductive health rights to which youth are entitled. The curriculum also helps providers understand cross-cultural principles of adolescent development and health needs specific to youth. Once participant knowledge, attitudes, and skills are improved, sites conduct a self-assessment on the youth-friendliness of their services and create an action plan for specific improvements.
more
The main aim of this paper is to present the current situation of children with disabilities in the Republic of Namibia, with special regard to their educational chances and influence of cultural be
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liefs on their lives. Namibia has a law, which entitles education for all its citizens. Despite numerous legislative acts which should have increased the educational chances of Namibian children with disabilities, their real situation is completely different and depends on various factors, including the infrastructure of the schools, teacher competencies, their attitudes towards students, the small number of special and integrated schools as well as an insufficient amount of money transferred for the education of the children. The paper discusses all of the above factors and provides practical implications, which would improve the situation of children with disabilities in Namibia.
more
Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. The disaster uncovered the realities of a non-existent mental health care system with only ten psychiatrists nationwide. Attempts were made to assess the increased prevalence of mental illness, likely due to t
...
he trauma to which many were exposed. Several interventions were carried out with aims to integrate mental health into primary health care services. The interplay between socio-cultural beliefs and health (both mental and physical) in Haiti has been widely commented upon by both foreign aid and local caregivers. Observations frequently highlight barriers to the willingness of patients to seek care and to their acceptance of biomedicine over traditional Vodou beliefs. The perception of Haitian beliefs as barriers to the availability and acceptance of mental health care has intensified the difficulty in providing effective recommendations and interventions both before and after the earthquake. Argued in this review is the importance of considering the interactions between socio-cultural beliefs and mental health when developing models for the prevention, screening, classification and management of mental illness in Haiti. These interactions, especially relevant in mental health care and post-disaster contexts, need to be acknowledged in any healthcare setting. The successes and failures of Haiti’s situation provide an example for global consideration.
more
GO pre-deployment training: participant handbook
recommended
This is a pre-deployment training, tailored specially to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, offered to WHO personnel, consultants, and key partners. The material covered in modules 1-4 is applicable and
...
useful to frontline response workers, national and international. Only Module 5, which focuses on operational aspects - the code of conduct for international civil servants and human resources arrangements for WHO deployees, are specifically geared to all internationally recruited personnel and to WHO deployees respectively
more
The purpose of this publication is to facilitate the implementation of existing WHO guidelines on nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive actions required for improving health and well-being of a
...
dolescents. Implementing these actions should explicitly take into account the heterogeneity of adolescents in general (for instance, in their state of physical growth and social development), as well as the diversity within their country (for instance, in terms of the expected responsibilities in the family, the number out of school or out of work and existing social norms).
more
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Georgetown University, and the United Nations University have today launched new guidelines to provide the first-ever global policy framework that will
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help protect, include, and empower children on the move in the context of climate change.
The Guiding Principles for Children on the Move in the Context of Climate Change provides a set of 9 principles that address the unique and layered vulnerabilities of children on the move both internally and across borders as a result of the adverse impacts of climate change. Currently, most child-related migration policies do not consider climate and environmental factors, while most climate change policies overlook the unique needs of children.
The guidelines note that climate change is intersecting with existing environmental, social, political, economic, and demographic conditions contributing to people’s decisions to move. In 2020 alone, nearly 10 million children were displaced in the aftermath of weather-related shocks. With around one billion children – nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children – living in 33 countries at high risk of the impacts of climate change, millions more children could be on the move in the coming years.
Developed in collaboration with young climate and migration activists, academics, experts, policymakers, practitioners, and UN agencies, the guiding principles are based on the globally ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child and are further informed by existing operational guidelines and frameworks.
Recommendations for safeguarding the rights and well-being of children regardless of their location or migration status.
The guiding principles provide national and local governments, international organizations and civil society groups with a foundation to build policies that protect children’s rights. The organizations and institutions are calling on governments, local and regional actors, international organizations, and civil society groups to embrace the guiding principles to help protect, include, and empower children on the move in the context of climate change.
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This manual will aid in building the capacity of nurses with clinical knowledge of the unique needs, complex health problems, common geriatric syndromes, and principles of care of older people. It will also enable them to acquire the skills necessar
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y to perform an in-depth multidimensional geriatric assessment. This manual will go a long way in establishing effective geriatric care services and improving the awareness of nurses regarding the various aspects of geriatric care in the WHO South-East Asia Region.
more
In East Africa, the trend in cross-border FGM puts at risk the progress achieved in eliminating the practice. The only way we can reach zero FGM by 2030 is by concerted and immediate action to address all
...
aspects of FGM.
This policy brief highlights the cross-border dimension of FGM (Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda) in the East Africa region. The brief describes the factors that perpetuate cross-border FGM and the work that is being done to reduce the rates.
more
Problem Management Plus (PM+)
recommended
Individual psychological help for adults impaired by distress in communities exposed to adversity.
The manual describes a scalable psychological intervention called Problem Management Plus (PM+) for adults impaired by distress in communities who are exposed to adversity.
...
Aspects of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) have been changed to make them feasible in communities that do not have many specialists. To ensure maximum use, the intervention is developed in such a way that it can help people with depression, anxiety and stress, whether or not exposure to adversity has caused these problems. It can be applied to improve aspects of mental health and psychosocial well-being no matter how severe people’s problems are.
more
Objectives: This paper reviews the mental health policies that have been implemented in Chile in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the international context of countries' responses. Even before the start of the pandemic, there were significant b
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arriers to access mental health services in Chile, coupled with a scenario of nationwide social unrest and protests that questioned the legitimacy of public institutions; now the rapidly worsening outbreaks of COVID-19 are exacerbating the pre-existing mental health crisis.
Methods: We conducted a bibliometric and content analysis of the Chilean mental health public policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic and then compared these policies with international experiences and emerging scientific evidence on the mental health impact of pandemics.
Results: Our analysis of the policies identifies five crucial points of action developed in Chile: (i) an established framework to address mental health in emergency and disaster situations; (ii) a timely COVID-19 Mental Health Action Plan; (iii) inclusion of mental health in the public health agenda; (iv) development of a presidential strategy during the pandemic for comprehensive mental health and well-being; and (v) emerging research assessing the mental health implications of COVID-19.
Conclusions: In Chile, the public policy responses to address the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by the coordinated implementation of mental health plans, ranging from a health sectoral initiative to inter-agency and intersectoral efforts. However, it is imperative that increased funding is allocated to mental health, and efforts should be made to promote the participation of people with lived experiences and communities in the design and implementation of the proposed actions. This aspect could be of key importance to social peace and community recovery after the pandemic.
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The family-centered approach to reaching every child living with HIV. This report examines the structural barriers impeding equitable access to HIV testing, treatment initiation and long-term adherence – essential elements for sustaining health
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and well-being for children, adolescents and young women. Rooted in socio-cultural norms, gender disparities and systemic inequalities, these barriers obstruct progress by perpetuating stigma, limiting healthcare access and destabilizing treatment continuity, stalling efforts toward the 10-10-106 and 95-95-957 targets.
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Looking forward, the 2019-2020 Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRRP) for the DRC situation aims at addressing the needs of new arrivals of Congolese refugees in the region, and those in protracted situations. By supporting livelihoods opportunities
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and through a resilience-based approach, refugees will be able to contribute to the development of their host countries, and of their country of origin upon their return. Given the limited capacity of host communities to support the impact of massive numbers of refugees, the response strategy will also address the needs of local populations, strengthening peaceful co-existence and building social cohesion.
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In many humanitarian emergencies, there is a serious lack of access to even the most basic materials needed for managing the blood in addition to a lack of appropriate sanitation facilities (including water), which are critical for addressing menstrual hygiene. Privacy in emergencies is often scarc
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e, and even if toilets are available they often lack locks, functioning doors, lighting and separation between genders. These barriers are often intensified by cultural beliefs and taboos surrounding menstruation which can restrict the movements and behaviors of girls and women
more
Countries, partners, and donors are committed to the global elimination of blinding trachoma by 2020.
Achieving this public health milestone requires more than funding; it requires health personnel with the
right mix of skills,
...
and well supported and managed health systems. Mass drug administration (MDA)
with Zithromax®, the Pfizer, Inc. donated antibiotic, is a key component of the SAFE strategy, endorsed
by the World Health Organization. There is growing
recognition that improving all aspects of MDA, from
planning to training, recording to reporting, and
receipt of drug to distribution (the supply chain), will
be necessary if MDA programmes are going to reduce
the community burden of Chlamydia trachomatis, and
eliminate trachoma as a cause of blindness by 2020.
more
