Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) both in human and veterinary medicine has reached alarming levels in
most parts of the world and has now been recognized as a significant emerging threat to global public
health and food security. In June 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nati...ons
(FAO) passed a resolution on AMR at its governing
Conference. This followed the adoption of counterpart
resolutions on AMR by The World Organisation
for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization
(WHO) in May 20152, and marked the
beginning of a joint effort by the three organizations
to combat AMR globally.
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The National Health Plan (NHP) aims to strengthen the country’s health system and pave the way towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC),choosing a path that is explicitly pro-poor. The main goal of NHP 2017-2021 is to extend access to a Basic Essential Package of Health Services (EPHS) to the entir...e population by 2020 while increasing financial protection.
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Where must I go if I feel unwell or have had an accident? Is medical treatment free in Switzerland or must I pay for it? What should I do in an emergency? What types of insurance do I need? How can I protect myself from illness? Where can I find health information in my own language? The Health Guid...e to Switzerland answers these and many other qüstions. Available in 18 languages: Albanian, Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian, Portugüse, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Thai, Tamil, Tigrinya, Vietnamese, Urdu, Farsi, Somali. For other languages check following link: http://www.migesplus.ch/publikationen/gesundheitsversorgung/show/gesundheitswegweiser-schweiz-3-komplett-überarbeitete-auflage/
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This is the sixth of our 11-paper supplement entitled “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of New Era”. Expectations of community health workers (CHWs) have expanded in recent years to encompass a wider array
of services to numerous subpopulations, engage communities to collaborate with and to... assist health systems in responding to complex and sometimes intensive threats. In this paper, we explore a set of key considerations for training of CHWs in response to their enhanced and changing roles and provide actionable recommendations based on
current evidence and case examples for health systems leaders and other stakeholders to utilize.
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The waves of yellow fever transmission in the Region of the Americas in 2016–2018 involved the largest number of human and epizootic cases to be reported in several decades. Yellow fever is a serious viral hemorrhagic disease that poses a challenge for health professionals. It requires early recog...nition of signs and symptoms, which are often nonspecific, and it can mimic other acute febrile syndromes. Early detection of suspected or confirmed cases, monitoring of vital signs, life support measures, and treatment of acute kidney failure continue to be the recommended strategies for case management. This report is the result of discussions among experienced specialists in the Americas on the clinical management of yellow fever patients, especially during outbreaks and epidemics, in the context of current medical and scientific evidence and taking into account the technical guidelines already available in the countries of the Region. It includes flowcharts for initially addressing patients with clinical suspicion of yellow fever and proposes a minimum package of laboratory tests that may be useful in contexts where resources are limited. In addition, it considers aspects of health system organization for dealing with yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated, describes current healthcare waste management syst...ems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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This report aims to raise awareness about the role that the reform of public health laws can play in advancing the right to health and in creating the conditions for people to live healthy lives. By encouraging a better understanding of how public health law can be used to improve the health of the ...population, the report aims to encourage and assist governments to reform their public health laws in order to advance the right to health.
The report highlights important issues that may arise during the process of public health law reform. It provides guidance about issues and requirements to be addressed during the process of developing public health laws. It also includes case studies and examples of legislation from a variety of countries to illustrate effective law reform practices and some features of effective public health legislation.
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Nearly 800 women die every day from preventable maternal causes, and in 2022 alone, an estimated 2.3 million newborns died. For every maternal death, countless more women endure life-altering injuries, infections, and disabilities related to childbirth.
Maternal deaths are concentrated in the poo...rest regions and conflict-affected areas. In 2020, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for nearly 70% of all maternal deaths, with just 22 countries responsible for 81% of the global total. Humanitarian crises and fragile health systems exacerbate these challenges, with maternal mortality rates in crisis-affected areas often double the global average. The barriers to progress are multifaceted, including inadequate funding, poor-quality healthcare, harmful gender and social norms, and critical gaps in data and accountability.
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This document adopts a health determinants framework for examining the evidence related to women’s poor mental health. From this perspective, public policy including economic policy, socio-cultural and environmental factors, community and social support, stressors and life events, personal behavio...ur and skills, and availability and access to health services, are all seen to exercise a role in determining women’s mental health status. Similarly, when considering the differences between women and men, a gender approach has been used. While this does not exclude biological or sex differences, it considers the critical roles that social and cultural factors and unequal power relations between men and women play in promoting or impeding mental health. Such inequalities create, maintain and exacerbate exposure to risk factors that endanger women’s mental health, and are most graphically illustrated in the significantly different rates of depression between men and women, poverty and its impact, and the phenomenal prevalence of violence against women.
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Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis on 24 February 2022, WHO has supported Government-led efforts and initiatives alongside key partners on the ground. Building on efforts to date, and working alongside Bulgaria’s health authorities to bring added value to existing mechanisms, the WHO Countr...y Office Bulgaria, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the WHO Health and Migration Programme, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Bulgaria and key partners, undertook a joint review mission to support Bulgaria, with a focus on addressing the health system needs of refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and vulnerable host populations in Bulgaria.
The assessment team developed this report on the key findings and a package of potential interventions based on the opportunities identified and the need for technical support and assistance. The report summarizes concrete areas of work for which collaborations can be further strengthened. The joint review team identified key recommendations for consideration across 8 priority areas. The report and the outcomes of the review mission serve as a basis for future technical collaboration in the area of refugee health, to address the health needs of refugees and third-country nationals fleeing from Ukraine.
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Rwanda’s national health sector is focused on the equitable delivery of high-quality health services. The Government of Rwanda (GoR) recognizes that developing human resources in the health sector is a critical factor to the well-being of the population. Development of the health workforce has bee...n guided by the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Programme (2012-2019) and its successor, the National Strategy for Health Professions Development (NSHPD) (2020-2030). Rwanda has made significant progress in enhancing its skilled health workforce, with notable improvements in the health professional-to-population ratio over the past decade, attaining 13.4 doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, and dentists per 10 000 people in 2022. Despite such progress, health workforce levels remain below national and global recommendations.
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This guide is intended to support national governments developing their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) for COVID-19 vaccines by outlining the roles, needs and opportunities for community health workers (CHWs) to contribute. This note builds on and is structured to align with the G...uidance on developing a national deployment and vaccination plan for COVID-19 vaccines. By providing CHW-relevant considerations for the VIRAT Tool, this document aims to support national governments in developing robust NDVPs for introducing COVID-19 vaccine(s) that leverage all the community-based deployment, implementation and monitoring tools at their disposal.
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8 January 2021
Sequencing enabled the world to rapidly identify SARS-CoV-2 and develop diagnostic tests and other tools for outbreak management. Continued genome sequencing supports the monitoring of the disease’s spread and evolution of the virus. Accelerated integration of genome sequencing int...o the practices of the global health community is required if we want to be better prepared for the future threats. This document provides guidance for laboratories on maximizing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing now and other emerging pathogens in the future.
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The document is structured into five sections. The first presents the key experiences and challenges that justify a renewal of the EPHFs. The second section updates the groundwork for the exercise of public health and provides a framework to inform the exercise of the new essential functions. The th...ird section proposes a new integrated approach for implementing the EPHFs. The fourth section presents a new list of 11 EPHFs related to each stage of this integrated approach. Finally, in the last section, considerations are put forth to guide EPHF implementation as a means of strengthening the health sector.
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This paper explores access to water, sanitation, and health in pastoral communities in northern Tanzania. It argues that the concept of gender, used on its own, is not enough to understand the complexities of sanitation, hygiene, water, and health. It explores pastoralists’ views and perspectives ...on what is ‘clean’, ‘safe’, and ‘healthy’, and their need to access water and create sanitary arrangements that work for them, given the absence of state provision of modern water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. Although Tanzania is committed to enhancing its citizens’ access to WASH services, pastoral sanitation and hygiene tend to be overlooked and little attention is paid to complex ways in which access to ‘clean’ water and ‘adequate sanitation’ is structured in these communities. This paper offers an intersectional analysis of water and sanitation needs, showing how structural discrimination in the form of a lack of appropriate infrastructure, a range of sociocultural norms and values, and individual stratifiers interact to influence the sanitation and health needs of pastoralist men, women, boys, and girls.
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This version of Field Trials of Health Interventions includes seven new chapters on conducting systematic literature reviews, trial
governance, preliminary studies and pilot testing, budgeting and accounting, intervention costing and economic analysis, and Phase IV studies. Before new interventions... are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in ‘field trials’. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long periods. This manual was designed to provide guidance on the practical issues in great detail
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This publications outlines the specific reproductive health needs of this cadre of adolescents and the programmatic responses that can be used to reach them.
Inequality of access to palliative care and symptom relief is one of the greatest disparities in global health care (1). Currently, there is avoidable suffering on a massive scale due to lack of access to palliative care and symptom relief in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (1). Yet basic p...alliative care that can prevent or relieve most suffering due to serious or life-threatening health conditions can be taught easily to generalist clinicians, can be provided in the community and requires only simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment. For these reasons, the World Health Assembly (WHA) resolved that palliative care is "an ethical responsibility of health systems"(2). Further, most patients who need palliative care are at home and prefer to remain there. Thus, it is imperative that palliative care be provided in the community as part of primary care. This document was written to assist ministries of health and health care planners, implementers and managers to integrate palliative care and symptom control into primary health care (PHC).
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This report includes six case studies from 12 individuals with lived experience of diverse health conditions. These case studies explore the topics of power dynamics and power reorientation towards individuals with lived experience; informed decision-making and health literacy; community engagement ...across broader health networks and health systems; lived experience as evidence and expertise; exclusion and the importance of involving groups that are marginalized; and advocacy and human rights.
It is the first publication in the WHO Intention to action series, which aims to enhance the limited evidence base on the impact of meaningful engagement and address the lack of standardized approaches on how to operationalise meaningful engagement. The Intention to action series aims to do this by providing a platform from which individuals with lived experience, and organizational and institutional champions, can share solutions, challenges and promising practices related to this cross-cutting agenda. The Intention to action series also aims to provide powerful narratives,inspiration and evidence towards the Fourth United Nations High Level Meeting on NCDs in 2025 and achieving the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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To support countries in adapting their response to different COVID-19 scenarios, the World Health
Organization (WHO) Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing commissioned this scoping review of published and grey literature. The objective was to identify interventions... implemented to maintain the provision and use of essential services for MNCAAH during disruptive events and to summarize lessons learned during these interventions. The review included outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Zika virus disease (ZVD), the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies that caused disruption to services, transport and other activities.
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