Overcoming barriers in low- and middle-income countries
For the first time, this year’s report includes information on hepatitis C diagnostics. With a focus on selected countries with diverse HCV epidemics, the report provides updates on the various dimensions of access to HCV diagnostics and pha...rmaceutical products, including product pricing, the regulatory environment and patent status, which together shape the national hepatitis response in different settings. It highlights key areas for action by ministries of health and other government decision-makers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and technical partners.
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This compendium represents a curated, pragmatic and non-prescriptive collection of tools and resources to support the implementation of interventions to improve quality of care in such contexts. Relevant tools and resources are listed under five areas: Ensuring access and basic infrastructure for qu...ality; shaping the system environment; reducing harm; improving clinical care; and engaging and empowering patients, families and communities.
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Available in English, French, Spanish and Russian from the website https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/344562
14 January 2021
This practical guide can be used to help countries monitor and analyse the impact of COVID-19 on essential health services to inform planning and decision-making. It provides practical recommendations on how to use key performance indicators to analyse changes in access to and deliv...ery of essential health services within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; how to visualize and interpret these data; and how to use the findings to guide modifications for safe delivery of services and transitioning towards restoration and recovery. The guide focuses on existing indicators and data that are captured in routine reporting systems and how they can be used by national and subnational authorities to understand specific contexts, challenges and bottlenecks. This guide supports Maintaining essential health services: operational guidance for the COVID-19 context, which provides an integrated framework to guide countries in their efforts to reorganize, adapt and maintain safe delivery of high-priority essential health services within the context of the pandemic.
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Climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessment
In 2013 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the report Protecting health from climate change:
vulnerability and adaptation assessment. The aim was to provide basic and flexible guidance on conducting national or subnati...onal assessments of current and future vulnerability (the susceptibility of a population or region to harm) to the health risks of climate change, and of policies and programmes that could increase resilience, taking into account the multiple determinants of climate-sensitive health outcomes.
That guidance has been a very useful tool, applied to more than 50 countries and settings, and has helped countries to prepare their health contributions to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change national adaptation plans.
Since the launch of the guidance, WHO, technical partners such as Health Canada, and countries have learned much in terms of its applicability in different countries, at national and local levels.
At the same time, knowledge on climate change and health has increased.
WHO, the Pan American Health Organization and Health Canada have produced this updated version, which aims to better support countries in their assessments by proposing a simpler tool that incorporates all lessons learned.
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The overall goal of this strategy is to ensure accurate understanding of the
benefits of covid-19 vaccination and alleviate apprehension about the vaccine, to ensure its acceptance and encourage uptake across various audiences.
Objectives
x Create demand, promote acceptability and accessibility o...f COVID-19
vaccine among at least 90% of the general public.
x Develop appropriate messages and identify channels to communicate
the potential benefits and risks of the vaccine to all concerned parties,
including decision-makers at all levels.
x Provide timely and accurate information to address misinformation,
rumors and other crisis situations.
x Effectively mobilize and empower communities to ensure participation
and ownership of the vaccination process
x Strengthen communication mechanisms and partnerships among key
stakeholders to support the national communication effort.
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The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report – Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000 - 2020 – presents estimates on household access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services over the past five years, and assesses progress toward achieving the s...ixth sustainable development goal (SDG) to ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030’.
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Technical Meeting Report, 14-15 July 2020, Geneva
Covid-19 Social Policy Response Series / No.14
This report examines Ecuador’s social policy response to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects and protect
vulnerable populations. It chronologically traces containment, closure policies, social policies and programmes
put in place following t...he announcement of Covid-19 as a global pandemic. A combination of external con-
straints and domestic structures, i.e. informality and weak coordination, led to truncated efforts in the healthcare
response, while persistent inequalities in access to technology and high levels of informality led to fragmented
education, labour policies and social protection responses. The report zooms into the Family Protection Grant
(Bono de Protección Familiar or BPF), a new social protection programme that covers informal workers, which
captures the difficulties in reaching unregistered populations amid lockdown and containment measures.
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The number of COVID-19 cases is on the rise again, with South Africa nearing half of all confirmed cases in the WHO African Region. Threats of new variants loom and low vaccination coverage raises questions on the future of the response to COVID-19. Prevention remains the key strategy in most sub-Sa...haran countries. Five National Centres (NCs) from the African Health Observatory Platform on Health Systems and Policies (AHOP), based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal, reflect on lessons to be learnt from their containment responses in the initial phases. They construct timelines to highlight the policies and challenges associated with introducing a range of public health containment measures and
discuss the extent to which these measures continue to be valuable given the ever-changing nature of the pandemic.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected more than 30 million people in the world, having major impact on global health with collateral damage. In Mozambique, a public state of emergency was declared at the end of March 2020. This has limited people's movements and reduced public services, leading ...to a decrease in the number of people accessing health care facilities. An implementation research project, The Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital, has been promoting access to maternal and child health care, in Natikiri, Nampula, for the last four years. Nampula has the second highest incidence of Covid-19. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions on access to maternal and child healthcare services. We compared health centres in Nampula city with healthcare centres in our research catchment area. We wanted to see if our previous research interventions have led to a more resilient response from the community.
METHODS: Mixed-methods research, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, using a review of patient visit documentation. We compared maternal and child health care unit statistical indicators from March-May 2019 to the same time-period in 2020. We tested for significant changes in access to maternal and child health services, using KrushKall Wallis, One-way Anova and mean and standard deviation tests. We compared interviews with health professionals, traditional birth attendants and patients in the two areas. We gathered data from a comparable city health centre and the main city referral hospital. The Marrere health centre and Marrere General Hospital were the two Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital intervention sites.
RESULTS: Comparing 2019 quantitative maternal health services access indicators with those from 2020, showed decreases in most important indicators: family planning visits and elective C-sections dropped 28%; first antenatal visit occurring in the first trimester dropped 26%; hospital deliveries dropped a statistically significant 4% (p = 0.046), while home deliveries rose 74%; children vaccinated down 20%.
CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated the negative collateral effects of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions, on access to maternal and child healthcare services, and highlighted the need to improve the health information system in Mozambique.
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Community health worker teams are potential game-changers in ensuring access to care in vulnerable communities. Who are they? What do they actually do? Can they help South Africa realize universal health coverage? As the proactive arm of the health services, community health workers teams provide ho...usehold and community education, early screening, tracing and referrals for a range of health and social services. There is little local or global evidence on the household services provided by such teams, beyond specific disease-oriented activities such as for HIV and TB. This paper seeks to address this gap.
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This report of the EFSA and ECDC presents the results of zoonoses monitoring activities carried out in 2020 in 27 EU Member States (MS) and nine non-MS. Key statistics on zoonoses and zoonotic agents in humans, food, animals and feed are provided and interpreted historically.
Rev Panam Salud Publica. 2021;45:e74.
Some characteristics of patients and healthcare providers influence treatment success in MDR-TB cases. Physicians’ and nurses’ knowledge about MDR-TB must be improved, and follow-up of MDR-TB patients who are living with HIV and of those affiliated with the... subsidized health insurance scheme in Colombia must be strengthened, as these patients have a lower likelihood of a successful treatment outcome.
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WHO technical advisory group on behavioural insights and sciences for health, meeting report, 15 October 2020
The purpose of this guide is to offer recommendations for improving the implementation of non‑pharmacological public health measures during the COVID-19 response and compliance with these measures by population groups in situations of vulnerability. This requires determining the main barriers to i...mplementing these measures so that we can identify the groups and territories most affected during the different phases of the pandemic. With this objective in mind––and within the framework of an equity, human rights, and diversity approach––, policies, strategies, and interventions to accompany the implementation and flexibilization of the measures are recommended to ensure that no one is left behind.
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