Pakistan is the world’s fourth most polluted country. Air pollution shortens the average Pakistani’s life expectancy by 3.8 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 μg/m3 was met.1 Some areas of Pakistan fare much worse than average, with air pol...lution shortening lives by almost 7 years in the country’s most polluted regions, like Lahore and Peshawar.
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Nepal is the world’s third most polluted country. Air pollution shortens average Nepalese life expectancy by 4.1 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 μg/m3 was met.1 The highest concentrations of air pollution are observed in Nepal’s southwes...tern districts, which share their borders with the highly-polluted Indo-Gangetic Plain of India. Here, residents stand to lose nearly 7 years of life expectancy.
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Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI) is involved in an effort to curb the COVID-19 pandemic that is facing South Africa and the world at large. Prof. Helen Rees is a member of the team advising the Health Minister on COVID-19 (MAC). She is part of the Clinicians Group, the Research ...group and the Incident Management Team (IMT). Prof. Rees is Co-Chair of the South African arm of the Solidarity study
This is a World Health Organisation (WHO) coordinated trial that will generate high quality evidence on COVID-19 treatment options. Prof Helen is also the International Coordinator for the global Crown Coronation study. This study is aimed at looking at strategies to protect healthcare workers.
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This report challenges policy-makers and political leaders to tackle fossil fuel production and consumption as a health control issue, in the same way that smoking has been reduced and regulated. Fossil fuel combustion is a major source of toxic air pollution that kills 7 million people every year, ...almost the same as the number of deaths caused by tobacco smoking.
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognised air pollution as a major health risk factor. There is widespread public discussion about the effects of fossil fuel combustion and emissions on climate change… but what about the effect on our health? Climate change poses a threat not only to the health of the planet, but also to humans.
The case studies evaluated in this report offer examples of mechanisms that can be used to restrict the production and consumption of unhealthy commodities, so that the health, air pollution and climate communities can learn from one another, using shared approaches and language. These case studies show that the connection with health is a strong argument to support sustainable change.
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Virtually all (99.9 percent) of Southeast Asia’s 656.1 million people live in areas where particulate pollution exceeds the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 μg/m³. Despite the lockdowns of the pandemic, pollution continued to rise in much of Southeast Asia in 2020. This pollution c...uts short the life expectancy of the average Southeast Asian person by 1.5 years, relative to what it would be if the WHO guideline was met. That’s a total of 959.8 million person-years lost to pollution in the eleven countries that make up this region. Some countries in the region experience greater impacts from pollution.
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The EU's air quality directives (2008/50/EC Directive on Ambient Air Quality and Cleaner Air for Europe and 2004/107/EC Directive on heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in ambient air) set pollutant concentrations thresholds that shall not be exceeded in a given period of time. In case... of exceedances, authorities must develop and implement air quality management plans. These plans should aim to bring concentrations of air pollutants to levels below the limit and target values.
Selected EU standards and the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines are summarised in the table below. These apply over differing periods of time because the observed health impacts associated with the various pollutants occur over different exposure times.
The WHO guideline values are set for the protection of health, and are generally stricter than the comparable politically agreed EU standards.
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The article outlines the prioritized research agenda for the prevention and control of chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) as part of the World Health Organization's (WHO) action plan on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) from 2008 to 2013. It highlights the significant global impact of CRDs, including... asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other related conditions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The document stresses the need for effective prevention strategies and better surveillance, as well as enhanced healthcare infrastructure and resources in LMICs. It calls for research into CRD risk factors, effective interventions, and integrated care approaches that align with broader NCD prevention programs. The article emphasizes the importance of public health initiatives and cross-sector collaborations to reduce the disease burden and improve patient outcomes.
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Health Policy and Planning, Volume 35, Issue 1, February 2020, Pages 47–57, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czz122
Colombia has an underreporting of 30% of the total cases, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimations. In 2016, successful tuberculosis (TB) treatment rate was 70%, and t...he mortality rate ranged between 3.5% and 10%. In 2015, Colombia adopted and adapted the End TB strategy and set a target of 50% reduction in incidence and mortality by 2035 compared with 2015.
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ADI is the international federation of Alzheimer associations around the world, in official relations with the World Health Organization. Each member is the Alzheimer association in their country who support people with dementia and their families. ADI's vision is prevention, care and inclusion toda...y, and cure tomorrow
Here you can find import guidelines, case studies worldwide, dementia friendly plans, training material, IEC Material, etc.
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The pharmaceutical sector of any nation is responsible for providing society with quality medicines and other pharmaceutical services. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Pharmaceuticals may constitute as much as 40% of the national health budget in developing countries, yet portions o...f the population may lack access to the most essential medicines; while the limited funds available for health are spent on unnecessary, ineffective and even dangerous medications.
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Patients with retreatment tuberculosis (TB) represent those
who have been treated previously for onemonth ormorewith
anti-TB drugs and who have been diagnosed once again with
the disease.These patientsmainly include relapses, treatment
after failure, or loss to follow-up on a first-line treatmen...t
regimen [1]. The number of these patients is not negligible.
In 2014, of the 6.3 million TB cases that were notified
by National TB Programmes (NTPs) to the World Health
Organization (WHO), approximately 700,000 patients were
already previously treated
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Burns are a global public health problem, accounting for close to 200,000 deaths annually. The majority of these occur in low- and middle-income countries, where a number of constraints complicate the public health task of addressing burns. While the primary prevention of burns in low- and middle-in...come countries is a pressing need, the World Health Organization (WHO) also actively encourages further development of burn-care systems, including the training of health-care providers in the appropriate triage and management of people with burns.
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Heart failure (HF) is a leading global public health problem with >64 million prevalent cases globally. Patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) from low- and middle-income countries experience a 22% to 58% higher 1-year mortality rate than those in high-income countries.1 Guideline-d...irected medical therapy (GDMT) consisting of ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors or ARB (angiotensin receptor blockers) or ARNI (angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitors), β-blockers, MRA (mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists), and SGLT2 (sodium-glucose cotransporter 2) inhibitors substantially reduces mortality among patients with HFrEF. These medicines are among the most cost-effective interventions and are thus included as the highest priority health system interventions recommended by the Disease Control Priorities Project.2 Despite this high-quality evidence, GDMT remains widely underutilized in low- and middle-income countries resulting in widespread undertreatment of patients with HFrEF due to health system-, provider-, and patient-level barriers.1 National essential medicines lists (EMLs) promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) guide countries on which medications to purchase in the setting of limited resources and have resulted in higher procurement and availability of essential medicines in the public sector.3 We provide a cross-sectional analysis of national EMLs in 53 low- and middle-income countries, and availability, price, and affordability of GDMT in select countries to identify potential barriers to access to these essential medicines for patients with HFrEF.
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Lymphatic filariasis (LF) is a parasitic disease that is a major cause of chronic disability in the developing world. According to the 2021–2030 road map for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the global goal for LF is elimination as a public healt...h problem by 2030 through repeated rounds of mass drug administration (MDA). Critical components of any elimination program are monitoring and surveillance. Appropriate assessment tools and methods are needed for each stage of an elimination program; mapping to identify which areas require intervention, monitoring to assess the impact of interventions, and post-intervention surveillance to validate elimination or detect recrudescence.
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Trachoma is an eye infection affecting both eyes. It is the world’s leading cause of infectious blindness. A bacterium called Chlamydia trachomatis causes trachoma. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), trachoma has caused the visual impairment of 1.8 million people. Of those people, 4...50,000 are irreversibly blind.
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Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) has been an alarming global public health issue. The disease affects mainly poor and marginalized people in low-resource settings and is caused by two subspecies of haemoflagellate parasite, Trypanosoma brucei and transmitted by tsetse flies. Progress made in HAT ...control during the past decade has prompted increasing global dialogue on its elimination and eradication. The disease is targeted by the World Health Organization (WHO) for elimination as a public health problem by 2020 and to terminate its transmission globally by 2030, along-side other Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD). Several methods have been used to control tsetse flies and the disease transmitted by them. Old and new tools to control the disease are available with constraints.
Currently, there are no vaccines available. Efforts towards intervention to control the disease over the past decade have seen considerable progress and remarkable success with incidence dropping progressively, reversing the upward trend of reported cases. This gives credence in a real progress in its elimination. This study reviews various control measures, progress and a highlight of control issues, vector and parasite barriers that may have been hindering progress towards its elimination.
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Over half a billion children are living in areas with extremely high levels of floods and nearly 160 million children live in areas of high or extremely high droughts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 26% of the annual 6.6 million deaths of children under five are linked to environ...ment-related causes and conditions. Children are also disproportionately affected by pollution, not only in terms of death rates, but also in terms of cognitive and physical development. This report illustrates that environmental causes also have an impact on whether children are pushed to work and on the kind of work they engage in, the conditions of work, exposure to dangerous toxicants and the risk of exploitation. However, the report raises more questions than it answers as it is one of the first reports addressing the question, how environmental degradation and climate change affect the vulnerability of children towards exploitation.
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In 1988, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) launched the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Belgian Government.
The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of h...umanitarian action at national and international levels. The initiative aims to rationalise decision making for disaster preparedness, as well as provide an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting.
EM-DAT contains essential core data on the occurrence and effects of over 22,000 mass disasters in the world from 1900 to the present day. The database is compiled from various sources, including UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies.
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7 June 2021
The Africa Regulatory Taskforce is a joint effort established by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) coordinated African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) Initiative, and the World Health Organisat...ion’s (WHO) African Vaccine Regulatory Forum (AVAREF) to enable and provide support for an effective regulatory framework for COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa.
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Cholera is a transmissible diarrhoeal infection caused by Vibrio cholerae. Endemic and/or epidemic in over 40 countries (mainly in Africa and Asia), cholera continues to be a major global public health issue.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of cases reported worldwid...e represents in reality only 5 to 10% of actual cases.
This guide is intended for medical and non-medical staff responding to a cholera outbreak. It attempts to provide concrete answers to the questions and problems faced by staff, based on the recommendations of reference organisations, such as WHO and UNICEF, as well as Médecins Sans Frontières’ experience in the field.
It is divided into 8 chapters. Chapter 1, Cholera overview, outlines the epidemiological and clinical features of cholera. Chapter 2, Outbreak investigation, explains the method and stages of a field investigation, from the alert to implementation of initial activities. Chapter 3, Cholera control measures, details measures and tools to prevent and/or control cholera transmission and mortality in populations affected, or at risk of being affected, by an epidemic (curative care, prevention means and health promotion activities). Chapter 4, Strategies for epidemic response, addresses the roll-out strategies of the measures described in Chapter 3 which depend on context (e.g. urban, rural, endemic, non-endemic setting, etc.), resources and particular constraints. Chapter 5, Cholera case management, details the different stages of cholera treatment, from diagnosis through to cure.
Chapter 6, Setting up cholera treatment facilities, focuses on the installation of treatment facilities that vary in size and complexity according to operational requirements (treatment centres and units and oral rehydration points). Chapter 7, Organisation of cholera treatment facilities, describes the organisation of these specialized facilities in terms of human resources, supply, water, hygiene and sanitation, etc. Chapter 8, Monitoring and evaluation, presents the key data to be collected and analysed during an epidemic to facilitate a tailored response and evaluate its quality and effectiveness.
The guide includes various practical tools in the appendices to facilitate activities (e.g. water quality tests, job descriptions, documents, etc.). Moreover, the toolbox also contains additional tools in editable formats (individual patient file, cholera case register, pictograms).
Despite all efforts, it is possible that certain errors may have been overlooked in this guide. Please inform the authors of any errors detected.
To ensure that this guide continues to evolve while remaining adapted to field realities, please send any comments or suggestions.
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