COVID-19 disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable. Community health workers are poised to play a pivotal role in fighting the pandemic, especially in countries with less resilient health systems. Drawing from practitioner expertise across four WHO regions, this article outlines the targete...d actions needed at different stages of the pandemic to achieve the following goals: (1) PROTECT healthcare workers, (2) INTERRUPT the virus, (3) MAINTAIN existing healthcare services while surging their capacity, and (4) SHIELD the most vulnerable from socioeconomic shocks. While decisive action must be taken now to blunt the impact of the pandemic in countries likely to be hit the hardest, many of the investments in the supply chain, compensation, dedicated supervision, continuous training and performance management necessary for rapid community response in a pandemic are the same as those required to achieve universal healthcare and prevent the next epidemic.
BMJ Global Health2020;5:e002550. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002550
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High levels of storage iron may increase malaria susceptibility. This risk has not been investigated in semi-immune adolescents. We investigated whether baseline iron status of nonpregnant adolescent girls living in a high malaria transmission area in Burkina Faso affected malaria risk during the fo...llowing rainy season. For this prospective study, we analysed data from an interim safety survey, conducted six months into a randomised iron supplementation trial. We used logistic regression to model the risk of P. falciparum infection prevalence by microscopy, the pre-specified interim safety outcome, in relation to iron status, nutritional indicators and menarche assessed at recruitment.
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Aviation plays an important role in humanitarian operations around the world, especially in countries where overland transport is difficult or impossible due to insecurity, damaged or inadequate infrastructure, and challenging climatic conditions. Aviation allows the transport of humanitarian aid wo...rkers and humanitarian cargo to communities in some of the world’s most inaccessible places.
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The technical note calls for raising awareness among practitioners and policymakers about the importance of strong tobacco control measures for protecting the health and development of children, including banning tobacco advertising, implementing 100% smoke-free environments and raising taxes on tob...acco.
Exposure to tobacco smoke has devastating impacts throughout childhood and adolescence, starting from conception.
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Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments was created by the Public Health Institute, the California Department of Public Health, and the American Public Health Association in response to growing interest in using collaborative approaches to improve population health by embedd...ing health considerations into decision-making processes across a broad array of sectors. The Guide draws heavily on the experiences of the California Health in All Policies Task Force and incorporates information from the published and gray literature and interviews with people across the country.
The guide was developed through funding from the American Public Health Association and The California Endowment.
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Countries across the world are facing diverse epidemiological situations with varying response
capacities and access to life saving tools. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that national authorities continue to apply a risk-based approach when implementing measures related to COVID-19... and international travel while respecting the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of travellers. This approach should consider the risk posed by travel for the importation and exportation of cases in the context of the evolving epidemiology, including the emergence and circulation of virus variants of concern; the expansion of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out; and lessons learned while responding to the pandemic, including on the early detection and management of cases and the application of public health and social measures.
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Health and Human Rights Series. 6 Tobacco: a rights-based approach.
16 Dec. 2021
This document is a prioritization toolkit providing a set of action steps to follow in the event of an impending surge in cases of COVID-19 in health-care facilities. The document provides a framework for action steps to be followed within 2-4 weeks of identification of a surge or resu...rgence of cases, and is accompanied by references to existing WHO resources to assist with managing each step. This document is intended for emergency operations centre focal persons for health facilities, incident managers, health-care managers and administrators, and infection prevention and control focal persons.
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WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA joint statement
Contact tracing for COVID-19 is the process of identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to someone who has been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while quarantine is the separation of contacts from other people after exposure to a probable or confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 i...nfection. In the context of growing global population immunity from COVID-19 vaccination and past SARS-CoV-2 infection, WHO recommends that identification, contact, quarantine and follow-up should be prioritized for individuals at high risk who have been in contact with a confirmed or probable case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, rather than targeting all contacts. This updated guidance also introduces shorter recommended quarantine periods, including the ability to further shorten quarantine through the use of testing. National and local health authorities should use risk-based approaches to contact tracing and quarantine that include reviewing and adjusting to their local circumstances and disease epidemiology, population immunity, their health system’s capacities, and risk tolerance.
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El Salvador Humanitarian Response Plan - August 2021 to December 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the challenges countries face for maintaining their COVID-19 response while addressing competing public health challenges, conflicts, climate change and economic crises.
It remains critical for national programmes to continue to offer testing for COVI...D-19 in line with three main objectives: reduce morbidity and mortality through linkage to prompt care and treatment, reduce onward transmission and track the evolution of the epidemic and the virus
itself.
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To improve the quality of care during labour and childbirth, facilitate effective implementation of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations: Intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience, published in 2018, and promote a shift towards improving the experience of childbirth, WHO d...eveloped the WHO Labour Care Guide (LCG) and an accompanying WHO labour care guide: user's manual. The WHO LCG is a tool to facilitate implementation of quality, evidence-based, woman-centred care for a positive childbirth experience within the context of a broader, rights-based approach.
The goal of this policy brief is to provide maternal and newborn health stakeholders and decision-makers with an overview of the WHO LCG and its guiding principles, key advantages of making the shift from the WHO partograph to the WHO LCG, and what is required to ensure an enabling environment that will facilitate a sustainable introduction of the WHO LCG.
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As part of the UN’s data strategy—which seeks to nurture data as a strategic asset for insight, impact and integrity—UNAIDS plays an indispensable role in generating data for effective action against the AIDS pandemic. It leads the
world’s most extensive data collection on HIV epidemiology,... programme coverage, policy and finance, and it publishes the most authoritative and up-to-date information on the HIV pandemic and response. The UNAIDS database of countryreported data is a foundational pillar for global and regional AIDS programmes, research, advocacy and resource mobilization
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Leishmaniasis is a climate-sensitive disease. Changes in temperature, rainfall, and humidity can have strong impacts on
the sandfly vector, altering their distribution and influencing their survival and population sizes. Increased temperatures shorten vector development time, reduce Leishmania para...site incubation time, and increase vector biting rates, allowing transmission
in areas not previously endemic for the disease. Poor and
marginalized communities will be hit disproportionately harder by
the effects of climate change, and droughts, famines, and floods
can also lead to displacement and migration of immunologically
naive people to areas where leishmaniasis is endemic, posing a
threat of leishmaniasis outbreaks.
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Rabies is a disease of animals but too often the outcome is gauged in terms of human suffering and
death. Despite this, in areas of the world where rabies is endemic there is often a lack of communication between veterinary and medical professionals, to the extent that the disease continues to thri...ve and potential victims are not treated. The problem is partly
exacerbated by a lack of awareness and experience of the disease and of what to do when confronted by suspect cases. In these technologically advanced days, although it is possible to learn “all there is to know” about almost any subject, it is sometimes difficult to distil the essence.
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This briefing note summarizes work undertaken by UN Women and WHO to inform the development of a module on violence against women 60 years and older that can be included in dedicated surveys on violence against women. It provides an overview of the challenges in the availability, measurement, and co...llection of data on violence against older women. It also makes recommendations to address some of the issues identified, with the aim of strengthening ongoing and future data collection efforts on violence against older women and increasing its availability.
Developed as part of the UN Women–WHO Global Joint Programme on Violence Against Women Data, this methodological briefing note is one in a series that aims to strengthen the measurement and data collection of violence against particular groups of women or specific aspects of violence against women. These briefing notes are meant for researchers, national statistics offices, and others involved in data collection on violence against women. They seek to contribute to strengthening the quality and availability of data on violence against women and enhance global, regional, and national level monitoring of progress towards its elimination.
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The Government of Malawi is committed to improving health and livelihoods in Malawi through community health – the
provision of basic health services in rural and urban communities with the participation of people who live there.
Historically, Community Health has significantly contributed to im...provements in Malawi’s health outcomes in particular
attainment of MDG4. However, the community health system faces resource constraints and inconsistencies around quality
of service – which negatively affect health outcomes.
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