This is the ninth paper in our series, “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. Community health workers (CHWs) are in an intermediary position between the health system and the community. While this position provides CHWs with a good platform to improve community health, a major cha...llenge in large-scale CHW programmes is the need for CHWs to establish and maintain benefcial relationships with both sets of actors, who may have diferent expectations and needs. This paper focuses on the quality of CHW relationships with actors at the local level of the national health system and with communities.
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Interim Assessement Report
The EMA review was started by the Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) to support decision-making by health authorities. This first interim report includes information on seven experimental medicines intended for the treatment of people infecte...d with the Ebola virus:
BCX4430 (Biocryst);
Brincidofovir (Chimerix);
Favipiravir (Fujifilm Corporation/Toyama);
TKM-100802 (Tekmira);
AVI-7537 (Sarepta);
ZMapp (Leafbio Inc.);
Anti-Ebola F(ab’)2 (Fab’entech).
The amount of information available for the seven treatments is highly variable. For some compounds there is no data from use in human subjects available. A small number of treatments have been administered to patients in the current Ebola outbreak as compassionate use. Finally, there are also medicines included in this review that have already been studied in humans, albeit for the treatment of other viral diseases.
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Effective Ebola risk communication requires respect and transparency and remains as vital
as ever. An assessment of changing communication needs and preferences in Beni, North Kivu.
In the second year of the current Ebola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), people at ris...k still don’t have clear answers to their questions about the disease in a language they understand. Many local health communicators are themselves confused about the disease prevention and treatment measures they promote. The language, content, and form of communication about Ebola affect how far people understand, trust and act upon it.
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Education in emergencies is a young area; the evidence of its impact is often anecdotal, and although its status as a humanitarian concern has gained legitimacy in recent years, it has yet to be accepted across the humanitarian community. Much more needs to be done to enhance our understanding of t...he links between education and child protection in emergency situations.
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Overview
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders globally. The WHO epilepsy technical brief aims to strengthen action for epilepsy and complements the Intersectoral global action plan on epilepsy and other neurological disorders 2022–2031.
The technical bri...ef presents the key information on epilepsy and recommends actions to policy makers and other stakeholders. Using the concept of levers for change introduced by the Operational Framework for Primary Health Care, it identifies actions on the policy and operational levels that stakeholders should take to strengthen services for people with epilepsy using a person-centered approach based on human rights and universal health coverage.
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Based on research by a team of Nepalese and international experts, this report carries an analysis of the five key elements in the sector - land, basic services, housing finance, building materials and construction technologies, and labour. It gives an assessment
of how these components are governe...d by policy, institutional and legal frameworks, and how they are linked with one another and other urban policies.
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This study has been produced jointly by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a federally owned enterprise, implementing development programmes on behalf of the German Government, and CBM, a non-governmental organisation. Accordingly, its aim is to offer guidance to those in bo...th governmental and non-governmental organisations on development cooperation. Given the wide and differing range of implementation procedures, levels of intervention and organisational cultures, it is not a ready-to-be-applied toolbox with concrete blueprints for action. Rather, it raises awareness on core human rights and disability – inclusive principles. It explains and illustrates the implications of applying these principles to development practice. Practitioners can therefore use the guidance to initiate a process of consideration of how to embed these principles within their programmes.
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Vol 5 No 27 | ISSN 2039-2117 (online) | ISSN 2039-9340 (print) | The rate of sexual victimization of mentally retarded children is alarming and it goes unnoticed because the perpetrators could be parents, step- parents, relatives, well-respected individuals by family members, neighbours and educator...s. Drawing from labelling theory that the mentally retarded have low IQ, majority of perpetrators tend not to get arrested because of lack of evidence. Research indicates that educators struggle to identify the psychological, behavioural and physical symptoms of sexual abuse owing to their limited training. Having employed systematic review as methodology, this research study found that mentally retarded children are prone to HIV/AIDS, PTSD and feelings of helplessness owing to uninvolvement of parents, dysfunctional communities, poverty and their inability to differentiate between abuse and affection. Based on the findings, the recommendations are that: (1) extensive training for professionals, families and community members be executed to protect children with intellectual disability. Furthermore, the rights of the mentally retarded children must be respected in the court of law when reporting sexual abuse.
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Key messages include Effective communication skills should be used for everyone seeking health care,
including people with MNS conditions and their carers; Effective communication skills enable health-care providers to build rapport and trust with people as well as enabling health-care providers to... understand the health and social needs of people with MNS conditions; Health-care providers have a responsibility to promote the rights and dignity of
people with MNS conditions and more
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This report sets out ways to make pre-hospital care and ambulance services operating in areas of armed violence safer. Written by the Norwegian Red Cross with support from the ICRC and the Mexican Red Cross, the report summarizes field experience in over 20 countries.
The Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis is one of the biggest external displacement crises in the world today. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded an already desperate situation for many refugees and migrants, as well as their hosts, sorely testing health and social welfare systems and the abilit...y of countries to assist the vulnerable population.
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A policy brief on the organization of prison health
This facilitators’ guide is part of a five-part Caregiver skills training for families of children with developmental delays or disabilities (CST) package providing guidance on caregiver skills training for families of children aged 2–9 years with developmental delays or disabilities.
This fa...cilitators’ guide provides information for leading group sessions 1–9. It is a reference manual to be used in conjunction with specific training and under supervision.
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mhGAP is based on evidence-based technical guidelines (4) and provides a set of tools and
training packages to extend service provision. The mhGAP Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG)
for MNS disorders in non-specialized health settings (8) is a clinical decision-making tool
for assessing and managing p...riority MNS conditions (depression, psychoses, epilepsy, child
and adolescent mental and behavioural disorders, dementia, disorders due to substance
use, self-harm and suicide).
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The State of the world’s nursing 2020 report provides the latest, most up-to-date evidence on and policy options for the global nursing workforce. It also presents a compelling case for considerable – yet feasible – investment in nursing education, jobs, and leadership.
The primary chapters... of the report outline the role and contributions of nurses with respect to the WHO “triple billion” targets; the health labour market and workforce policy levers to address the challenges to nurses working to their full potential; the findings from analysis of National Health Workforce Account (NHWA) data from 191 Member States and progress in relation to the projected shortfall of nurses by 2030; and forward-looking policy options for an agenda to strengthen the nursing workforce to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, improve health for all, and strengthen the primary health care workforce on our journey towards universal health coverage.
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This study primarily aims to understand how children living in areas of civil strife are denied their basic rights, especially the right to education and protection. For this study, eight districts affected by civil strife across the three states (Chhattisgarh: Dantewada, Bijapur, Bastar and Narayan...pur, Odisha: Gajapati and Kandhamal and Jharkhand: Khunti and Lohardagga) were chosen to understand the landscape of violence and the state of basic services such as education and protection. This study has attempts to explore the impact of long-term violence on children’s lives and learning.
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Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience a high disease burden for epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition.The authors evaluate the cost-effectiveness of community health workers (CHWs) to improve adherence to medication for epilepsy in South Africa. They found that utilizing CHWs to i...mprove medication adherence was cost-effective.
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