The second edition of the WHPCA Global Atlas of Palliative Care was launched during World Hospice & Palliative Care Day 10 October. The Atlas is an update of the original WHPCA/WHO Global Atlas of Palliative care at the end of life published in 2014. It is full of useful facts and figures to support... palliative care advocacy and development. In this edition we have switched from using the WHO methodology for need for palliative care to the evolving Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief methodology. As a result the number of people needing palliative care has gone from 40 million per year to almost 57 million and more accurately reflects the need for palliative care globally models of palliative care worldwide? What resources are devoted to palliative care? What is the way forward?
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World Drug Report 2017
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Accessed: 14.03.2019
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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Thefirst report on Latin America and the Carribean presents key indicators on health and health systems in 33 Latin America and the Caribbean countries. . Analysis is based on the latest comparable data across almost 100 indicators including equity, health status, determinants of health, health car...e resources and utilisation, health expenditure and financing, and quality of care. The editorial discusses the main challenges for the region brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as managing the outbreak as well as mobilising adequate resources and using them efficiently to ensure an effective response to the epidemic.
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Republic of The Gambia; Accessed on 31.01.2019
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the lead UN agency working to further gender equality and women’s empowerment in Sri Lanka. We are pleased to be a part of the joint effort with the Ministry of Health to develop the first ‘Standard Operating Procedures on sexual and gender-based vio...lence for first-contact-point healthcare providers’.
These operating procedures were developed alongside the ‘National guidelines on sexual and gender-based violence’, which aims to strengthen Sri Lanka’s health systems response to survivors of violence. We are grateful to the British High Commission in Colombo for their support in developing these guidelines and procedures as they mark an important milestone in creating a safer Sri Lanka for all women and girls. UNFPA is proud to be a part of this journey, and we stand ready to provide continued assistance to the Government of Sri Lanka and all key stakeholders to ensure women and girls receive essential services that support their safety, well-being and access to justice and to create a violence-free Sri Lanka.
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To complement the Global Strategy progress reporting, this report provides a detailed look at country leadership and action toward the Every Newborn National Milestones by 2020. Countries have taken the initiative to show the way forward and have demonstrated significant progress. As part of monitor...ing this progress, countries have adopted the Every Newborn Tracking Tool. This report presents a compilation of the data collated by the Every Newborn Tracking Tool in 2016, when 51 countries adopted the tool; it also spotlights examples of specific country activity for each National Milestone. Finally, Global Milestones for 2020 were part of the Every Newborn Action Plan to guide global and regional work in support of country efforts and this report highlights relevant progress towards those Global Milestones.
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Under-diagnosis of asthma in ‘under-fives’ may be alleviated by improved inquiry into disease history. We assessed a questionnaire-based screening tool for asthma among 614 ‘under-fives’ with severe respiratory illness in Uganda. The questionnaire responses were compared to post hoc consensu...s diagnoses by three pediatricians who were guided by study definitions that were based on medical history, physical examination findings, laboratory and radiological tests, and response to bronchodilators. Children with asthma or bronchiolitis were categorized as “asthma syndrome”. Using this approach, 253 (41.2%) had asthma syndrome. History of and present breathing difficulties and present cough and wheezing was the best performing combination of four questionnaire items [sensitivity 80.8% (95% CI 77.6–84.0); specificity 84.7% (95% CI 81.8–87.6)]. The screening tool for asthma syndrome in ‘under-fives’ may provide a simple, cheap and quick method of identifying children with possible asthma. The validity and reliability of this tool in primary care settings should be tested.
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The Road to Recovery. This synthesis report is based on three national studies on the evolution of the Ebola epidemic and its impact on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
This publication provides guidance on reducing disability and premature deaths from coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and peripheral vascular disease in people at high risk, who have not yet experienced a cardiovascular event.
Natural disasters often increase morbidity and mortality rates. Taking appropriate measures to maintain environmental health helps to reduce or eliminate the risks of preventable disease and death. Such measures contribute not only to the health of individuals in and near disaster-stricken areas, bu...t they also contribute to decreasing the high costs of providing emergency health services in the aftermath of disaster.
This document is divided into several parts. The first section primarily addresses the effects of natural disasters on environmental health conditions and services. In the second section, environmental health measures are described that should be undertaken in each of three time frames: the predisaster, disaster, and postdisaster periods.
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This document outlines Rwanda's policy on non-communicable diseases. The overall goal of NCDs Policy is to alleviate the burden of NCDs and their risk factors and protect Rwandan population from premature morbidity and mortality related to NCDs. This policy was developed through a series of consulta...tive meetings and workshops of NCDs' core team members of MOH and RBC, National Technical Working Group (TWG), all implementing and non implementing partners and other development partners. This policy was developed in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Vision 2020, Rwanda Economic Development Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS II) of 2013-18 and NCDs Global Action Plan 2013-2020 and national Health Policy. This policy focuses on of the following NCDs: Cardiovascular diseases, Chronic Pulmonary Diseases (CPD), Cancers, Diabetes, injuries and disabilities, oral, eye and kidney diseases.
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