The framework responds to the demand from Member States and partners for guidance on how the health sector and its operational basis in health systems can systematically and effectively address the challenges increasingly presented by climate variability and change. This framework has been designed ...in light of the increasing evidence of climate change and its associated health risks (1); global, regional and national policy mandates to protect population health (2); and a rapidly emerging body of practical experience in building health resilience to climate change (3).
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“2022 was an eventful year for the WHO Country Office in Ghana,” says Dr Francis Kasolo, WHO Representative to Ghana.
In 2022, WHO Ghana collaborated with partners to deliver interventions in support of the Government of Ghana's health sector agenda to ensure healthy lives for all towards ach...ieving Universal Health Coverage. This 2022 annual report highlights some of the achievements that were chalked in our efforts to help promote the health and wellbeing of Ghanaians
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Interagency Guidelines - This revised Interagency List of Essential Medicines for Reproductive Health presents
the current international consensus on rational selection of essential reproductive health medicines. The list is intended to support decisions regarding the production, quality assurance..., national procurement and reimbursement schemes of these medicines.
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A Focus on the Journey to Self-Reliance for Preventing Child and Maternal Deaths . June 2018
The 2018 Acting on the Call report focuses on 25 countries’ journeys to self-reliance for preventing child and maternal deaths. Self-reliance is a country’s ability to finance and implement solution...s to its own development challenges. Understanding where countries lie on this effort - known as the journey to self-reliance - helps USAID to best partner with countries and support their efforts.
The report looks at the health status of 25 priority countries as well as the current capacity of the health system to meet the needs of women and children. In the report, we recount progress since the 2012 Call to Action as well as identify gaps in order to inform future programming and areas that need strengthening during the journey to self-reliance. For the first time ever, we’ve calculated the return on our investment to eliminate bottlenecks to improving health services.
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At least half of the world’s population does not have full coverage of essential health services. Health expenses push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty each and every year, forcing them into terrible choices that no one should ever have to make: Buy medicine or food? Education or ...health care? These stark statistics make the case for universal health coverage compelling.
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PEPFAR Malawi’s Country Operational Plan 2022 (COP22) embodies joint priorities from national and subnational dialogues building on the 2020-2025 National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS. The interagency team has developed a person-centered, district-tailored and Malawi Population-Based HIV Impact Ass...essment (MPHIA)-informed strategy through extensive engagement with Government of Malawi (GoM) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to sustain HIV epidemic control. At the end of COP21, PEPFAR Malawi was commended for contributing to reaching epidemic control in strong collaboration with GoM and stakeholders including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund). This includes enrollment of 88% of recipients of care on three or more months of antiretroviral treatment (ART), better outcomes for Malawian children through remarkable efforts in Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programming and progress made towards reaching men with more intentional and focused programming.
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Evidence from a systematic review on antenatal zinc supplementation was evaluated as part of the World Health Organization (WHO) antenatal care (ANC) guideline development process in 2016, and the following recommendation on zinc supplementation was made: “Zinc supplementation for pregnant women i...s only recommended in the context of rigorous research.” The Guideline Development Group (GDG) made this recommendation because it felt that the evidence on the intervention was incomplete and that more research was necessary.
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The World Health Organization’s comprehensive antenatal care (ANC) guideline WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy experience was first published in 2016 with the objective of improving the quality of routine health care that all women and adolescent girls receive during p...regnancy. The overarching principle – to provide pregnant service users with a positive pregnancy experience – aims to encourage countries to expand their health-care agendas beyond survival, with a view to maximizing health, human rights and the potential of their populations. Recognizing that ANC provides a strategic platform for important health-care functions, including health promotion and disease prevention, 14 out of the 49 recommendations in the WHO 2016 ANC guideline relate to nutritional interventions in pregnancy.
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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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Published OnlineJuly 14, 2021https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00164-9. New Lancet research offers the first comprehensive analysis of the growing footprint of noncommunicable and injury-related neurological disorders to India’s overall disease burden.
Takeaways from 1990 to 2019 In terms ...of total disability adjusted life years:
• The share of noncommunicable neurological disorders doubled from 4% to 8.2%.
• Injury-related neurological disorders increased from 0.2% to 1.1%
• The contribution of communicable neurological disorders decreased from 4.1% to 1.1%
• Stroke, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and headache disorders were among the largest contributors to DALYs.
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This document is intended for a wide audience including national and local policymakers, implementers and managers of national and local maternal and child health programmes, non-governmental and other organizations and professional societies involved in the planning and management of maternal and c...hild health services, health professionals including obstetricians, midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners, academic staff involved in training health professionals, managers of maternal and child health programmes and public health policymakers in all settings.
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Despite Pakistan's progress in reducing the number of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases to 8 in 2017 and 12 in 2018, 2019 has seen a significant rise in the number of WPV1 cases (41 cases as of July 8 2019). One of the most intractable challenges the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) is ...facing is refusals by parents and caregivers to immunise their children with the polio vaccine. In light of this challenge, the Pakistan programme has revisited its strategy and put forward this Extension of the National Emergency Action Plan 2018/2019 (NEAP), which will carry the programme forward from July to December 2019
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The module is currently available in English, French, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish
The results of the report clearly show that in 2020, a year dominated by the emergence of COVID-19 and its associated health and economic crises, governments around the world rose to the challenge. Sharp increases in government spending on health at all country income levels underpinned the rise in ...health spending to a new high of US $9 trillion (approximately 11% of global GDP). Government health spending generally increased and offset declines in out-of-pocket spending. Importantly, the rise in government health spending was part of a much broader fiscal response to the pandemic. In high income and upper-middle income countries social protection spending also increased sharply in as governments attempted to cushion populations from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In contrast to health and social protection, growth in education spending was relatively subdued. Countries face the further challenge of sustaining increased public spending on health and other social sectors in the face of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and rising debt servicing. This also includes the challenge of sustaining external support for low income countries, which is essential for reducing ensuring poverty, ensuring access to health services and strengthening pandemic preparedness.
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The Global Reference List of 100 Core Health Indicators is a standard set of core indicators prioritized by the global community to provide concise information on the health situation and trends, including responses at national and global levels.
This second (2018) edition builds on the previous ...work of the inter-agency working group that was commissioned by global health leaders to reduce reporting burden. The 2018 list of indicators contains modifications and additions to indicators and metadata elements to reflect the recommended health and health-related indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals, including universal health coverage.
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An estimated 59 000 people die from rabies each year. That’s one person every nine minutes of every day, 40% of whom are children living in Asia and Africa. As dog bites cause almost all human cases, we can prevent rabies deaths by increasing awareness, vaccinating dogs to prevent the disease at i...ts source and administering life-saving treatment after people have been bitten. We have the vaccines, medicines, tools and technologies to prevent people from dying from dog-mediated rabies. For a relatively low cost it is possible to break the disease cycle and save lives
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Healthy people, healthy animals and a healthy environment worldwide with the One Health approach.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically demonstrated just how close the link is between humans, animals, and the environment, and has highlighted and aggravated existing challenges. The destruction of na...tural habitats and displacement of species, trade in wild animals, resource-intensive lifestyles and conditions, non-sustainable food systems and, in particular, industrial agriculture and intensive livestock farming are the causes of the emergence of zoonoses as well as numerous other communicable and non-communicable, chronic diseases.
The One Health approach focuses precisely on such interaction between humans, animals, and the environment.
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The 2017 Global Nutrition Report focuses on 5 key areas and finds that improving nutrition can have a powerful multiplier effect across the SDGs. Indeed, it indicates that it will be a challenge to achieve any SDG without addressing nutrition. The report shows that there is an exciting opportunity t...o achieving global nutrition targets while catalysing other development goals through ‘double duty’ and ‘triple duty’ actions, which tackle malnutrition and other development challenges could yield multiple benefits across the SDGs.
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Technical Note on Antimicrobial Resistance
This document reflects UNICEF’s response to the growing global threat of AMR to child survival, growth and development. It identifies UNICEF’s AMR-specific and AMR-sensitive actions in reducing infections, promoting access to and optimal use of antimic...robials, and increasing AMR awareness and understanding. Of particular relevance to this group, UNICEF country offices are directed to provide technical support for development and implementation of national AMR action plans, linking them as appropriate to maternal, newborn and child health programmes and ensuring these are prioritized in both surveillance and policy changes. The guidance note on AMR is intended to inform UNICEF’s AMR-related internal initiatives, programming and activities, as well as external engagements with governments and other stakeholders.
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