People with disabilities experience significant health inequalities. In Malawi, where most individuals live in low-income rural settings, many of these inequalities are exacerbated by restricted access to health care services. This qualitative study explores the barriers to health care access experi...enced by individuals with a mobility or sensory impairment, or both, living in rural villages in Dowa district, central Malawi. In addition, the impact of a chronic lung condition, alongside a mobility or sensory impairment, on health care accessibility is explored.
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Recovery from COVID-19 has been challenging in Guatemala. As a result of the prolonged socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the average poverty rate nationwide has increased by almost 5%. This rise in the poverty level further exacerbates preexisting vulnerabilities and erodes the limited safety n...ets available to vulnerable populations. Year after year, recurrent disasters and humanitarian crises aggravate the historic social gaps that result in high levels of vulnerability, multidimensional poverty, and overall deprivation of essential services among hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. According to the World Risk Report 2020, Guatemala is the tenth country with the highest level of exposure to disaster worldwide. Globally, it ranks 28th regarding vulnerability according to the 2021 INFORM’s risk index and 62nd in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021.
In 2020, Guatemala faced a record-breaking and devastating hurricane season with extreme rainfall, catastrophic winds, and deadly landslides, from which the country has not yet recovered. Unfortunately, recurrent extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Julia that hit Central America in early October 2022, progressively but deeply eroded a weak health infrastructure and local health systems.
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WBCSD Vision 2050 sets out the goal to achieve the highest attainable standard of health and wellbeing for everyone by 2050, calling for a world in which: people live healthy lives; societies promote and protect health; everyone has access to robust, resilient and sustainable healthcare services; an...d all workplaces promote health and wellbeing. Business has a significant role to play in realizing this vision, thereby creating healthier and happier societies and building business resilience.
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Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(23), 8849; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238849
The aim of building climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities is: (a) to enhance their capacity to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable... and changing climate; and (b) to empower them to optimize the use of resources and minimize the release of pollutants and waste into the environment. Such health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services and, by helping reduce facility costs, also ensure better affordability. They are an important component of universal health coverage.
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In many contexts, the safe delivery of health care services is challenged by the lack of respect for health care personnel who face insults, threats and violence. Consequences include the disruption of health services, high staff turnover in health facilities, high levels of stress impacting the qua...lity of the services and health care personnel being forced to flee. This manual intends to complement the existing training materials and is aimed at supporting staff in health care facilities to cope with stress and violent experiences, including how they can protect themselves by de-escalating potentially violent situations.
No publication year indicated
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Women and Health Initiative Working Paper No. 1. Women and Health Initiative
Improving maternal health in the context of the sub-Saharan African HIV epidemic requires greater understanding of the relationships between HIV disease and maternal morbidity and mortality, integrated and effective resp...onses by the health system, and a social context which promotes quality care and encourages use of MCH and HIV services. Advancing the proposed research agenda will make an invaluable contribution by generating needed evidence for policy and practice that improves the maternal health of women who are living with HIV, as well as those who are not. Bringing together maternal health and HIV researchers, policy-makers and program implementers to reduce HIV-related maternal morbidity and mortality and improve the HIV response for women represents an opportunity and a challenge.
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Policy Research Working Paper 6100 | Impact Evaluation Series No. 60 | This study examines the effect of performance incentives for health care providers to provide more and higher quality care in Rwanda on child health outcomes. The authors find that the incentives had a large and significant effec...t on the weight-for-age of children 0–11 months and on the height-for-age of children 24–49 months. They attribute this improvement to increases in the use and quality of prenatal and postnatal care. Consistent with theory, They find larger effects of incentives on services where monetary rewards and the marginal return to effort are higher. The also find that incentives reduced the gap between provider knowledge and practice of appropriate clinical procedures by 20 percent, implying a large gain in efficiency. Finally, they find evidence of a strong complementarity between performance incentives and provider skill .
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In order to maintain daily operations and patient care services, health care facilities need to develop an Emergency Water Supply Plan (EWSP) to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a total or partial interruption of the facilities’ normal water supply. Water supply interruption can be caused... by several types of events such as natural disaster, a failure of the community water system, construction damage or even an act of terrorism.
The planning guide provides a four step process for the development of an EWSP:
1. Assemble the appropriate EWSP Team and the necessary background documents for your facility;
2. Understand your water usage by performing a water use audit;
3. Analyze your emergency water supply alternatives; and
4. Develop and exercise your EWSP
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In 2006, the Special Session of African Union Health Ministers adopted the Maputo Plan of Action for implementing the Continental Policy Framework on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which expired at the end of 2015. The goal was for all stakeholders and partners to join forces and ...re-double efforts, so that together, the effective implementation of the Continental Policy framework including universal access to sexual and reproductive health by 2015 in all countries in Africa can be achieved. The Revised Maputo Plan of Action (MPoA) 2016 – 2030 was subsequently endorsed by the African Union Heads of State at the 27th AU Summit in July 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda. The plan reinforces the call for universal access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in Africa and lays foundation to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 3 and 5, as well as the African Union Agenda 2063.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a major impact on the mental health of populations in the Americas. Studies
show high rates of depression and anxiety, among other psychological symptoms, particularly among women, young
people, those with pre-existing mental health conditions, health workers, and p...ersons living in vulnerable condi-
tions. Mental health systems and services have also been severely disrupted. A lack of financial and human resource
investments in mental health services, limited implementation of the decentralized community-based care approach
and policies to address the mental health gap prior to the pandemic, have all contributed to the current crisis. Coun-
tries must urgently strengthen their mental health responses to COVID-19 by taking actions to scale up mental
health and psychosocial support services for all, reach marginalized and at-risk populations, and build back better
mental health systems and services for the future.
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Integrated community case management (ICCM) – an approach where community-based health workers are trained to identify, treat and refer children under-five with pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria – is increasingly being used across sub-Saharan Africa to supplement the gaps in basic healthcare prov...ision. ICCM programmes have been endorsed by major international organisations and donors, and many African Ministries of Health as a key strategy for reducing child mortality.
This learning paper describes Malaria Consortium’s approach to and experience of engaging local communities in integrated community case management (ICCM) in Uganda, Zambia and Mozambique.
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Annual and medium-term budget preparation processes are the platforms through which specific plans are transformed into actual resource allocation decisions. The aim of this Process Guide is to support key stakeholders involved in these processes (such as the Cabinet, Ministries of Finance and Healt...h, the Parliament, citizens, media, and civil society organizations) to reorient budgetary arrangements in order to facilitate the ability of national governments to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by delivering, therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccine services to their populations. Reorienting budgetary arrangements positions governments to sustain the capacity to mitigate and respond to COVID-19 while concurrently delivering other essential health services and working towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The reorientation process is an opportunity to better align budgetary arrangements to sustain systemic capacity to prevent emerging health threats over the short, medium, and long terms.
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Public health emergencies, including pandemics, highlight the need for health systems and services that are prepared, resilient and ready to respond to health security threats. Endorsed by Member States in 2023, the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) is designed to engage m...ultisectoral actors in health security, and to reflect the complex nature of current and future public health emergencies. The Framework presents six interconnected, multisectoral domains of work that together form a comprehensive, multi-hazard health security system — emphasizing the One Health approach. The Framework also supports progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and universal health coverage while meeting the responsibilities and obligations of the International Health Regulations (2005).
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As a global community of +750 representatives of the world’s civil society, the C20 official Engagement Group of the G20 is submitting a list of policy priorities for the upcoming G20 Finance Ministers & Central Bank Governors meeting on July 18th and the G20 Extraordinary Sherpa Meeting on July 2...4th. The proposed recommendations take into account complimentary policy areas at the intersection of health and finance policymaking; including funding gaps, systemic, fiscal and financial priorities to put global finances at the service of global health.
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The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG target 3.8) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has i...ncreased.
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What are the FP and CAC competencies?
Through the clear articulation of the family planning and comprehensive abortion care (FP and CAC) competencies for the primary health care workforce, the aim is to advance improvements in FP and CAC service delivery by aligning health worker education approach...es with population health needs and health system demands.
This document, which describes these competencies in detail, is intended to:
be a foundational tool to be adopted and adapted by educators and regulators for FP and CAC providers (students) with a pre-service training pathway of at least 12 months;
describe competencies that are relevant to current and future health practice;
enable widespread use of the competencies not only for curriculum development for pre-service education, but also for in-service education, regulation, qualifications, quality assurance, personal development, performance evaluation, recruitment, management and career progression;
focus on the core functions of FP and CAC providers within broader efforts towards achieving universal health coverage
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Primary health care, as outlined in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and again 40 years later in the 2018 WHO/UNICEF document A vision for primary health care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society a...pproach to health that combines the following three components: multisectoral policy and action; empowered people and communities; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services.(1) Primary health care-oriented health systems are health systems organized and operated so as to make the right to the highest attainable level of health the main goal, while maximizing equity and solidarity. They are composed of a core set of structural and functional elements that support achieving universal coverage and access to services that are acceptable to the population and that are equity enhancing. The term “primary care” refers to a key process in the health system that supports first-contact, accessible, continued, comprehensive and coordinated patient-focused care.
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The WHO/UNICEF JMP report, WASH in Health Care Facilities, is the first comprehensive global assessment of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health care facilities. It also finds that 1 in 5 health care facilities has no sanitation service*, impacting 1.5 billion people. The report further rev...eals that many health centres lack basic facilities for hand hygiene and safe segregation and disposal of health care waste.
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Biodiversity and healthy natural ecosystems, including protected areas in and around cities, provide ecosystem benefits and services that support human health, including reducing flood risk, filtering air pollutants, and providing a reliable supply of clean drinking water. These services help to red...uce the incidence of infectious diseases and respiratory disorders, and assist with adaptation to climate change. Access to nature offers many other direct health benefits, including opportunities for physical activity, reduction of developmental disorders and improved mental health.
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A new frontier for integrated care.
Until now, most efforts to promote integrated care have focused on bridging the gaps between health and social care or between primary and secondary care. But the NHS five year forward view has highlighted a third dimension – bringing together physical and ment...al health. This report makes a compelling case for this ‘new frontier’ for integration. It gives service users’ perspectives on what integrated care would look like and highlights ten areas that offer some of the biggest opportunities for improving quality and controlling costs.
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