The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents an exceptional and unprecedented challenge for competent authoritiesa with responsibilities for national food safety control systemsb to continue conducting routine functions and activities in accordance with national regulations... and international recommendations. In many countries, competent authority staff are largely working from home, teleworking being the normal practice, and all face-to-face meetings cancelled or rescheduled as teleconferences. It is challenging to maintain, without interruption, routine activities such as the inspection of food business operations, certifying exports, control of imported foods, monitoring and surveillance of the safety of the food supply chain, sampling and analysis of food, managing food incidents, providing advice on food safety and food regulations for the food industry, and communicating on food safety issues with the public.
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The growing burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including disability, violence and injuries, has devastating health consequences for individuals, families and communities and threatens to overwhelm health systems. It is recognized that failure to act on noncommunicable diseases in the short t...erm would lead to massive cumulative output losses.
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Este documento presenta una actualización de las recomendaciones interinas de la Organización Panamericana de la Salud para la gestión de los casos de COVID-19 en los servicios de salud. La lista de dispositivos médicos prioritarios en el contexto de la COVID-19 proporciona normas mínimas, desc...ripciones técnicas y especificaciones para el manejo de pacientes con sospecha o confirmación de infección por coronavirus en los distintos niveles del entramado asistencial y puntualmente para todas las etapas de atención.
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This learning report attempts to understand the drivers for, and barriers to, effective implementation as well as review the experiences of Start Fund members in responding to these outbreaks to support evidence-based decision-making within the Start Network at project, crisis, and system level. Spe...cifically, it analyses the effectiveness, efficiency, and relevance of Start Fund disease outbreak responses by reviewing and analysing funding, decision-making and response activities before ultimately exploring implications and recommendations.
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This note provides information and practical guidance to support gender-based violence (GBV) practitioners to integrate attention to disability into GBV prevention, risk mitigation and response efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. This document complements other resources relating to GBV and COVID-...19 and assumes that the user is already familiar with common GBV prevention, risk mitigation and response approaches.
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Disease outbreak news 30 October 2018
Zika and dengue viruses remain significant public health threats. These viruses share the same Aedes (Stegomyia) mosquito vectors and geographic distributions but infections cannot be readily distinguished clinically and need to be differentiated from each other, and from other circulating arboviral... and non-arboviral pathogens, using laboratory tests. This document provides guidance on current testing strategies for Zika and dengue virus infections with updates to the previous interim guidance for laboratory testing for ZIKV, addressing pregnant and non-pregnant patients respectively, and incorporates current guidance for dengue virus diagnostic testing. The choice of laboratory assays and interpretation of test results require careful consideration of epidemiology, patient history, and limitations of existing diagnostic tests.
This interim guidance is for use by staff of laboratories testing for Zika and dengue virus infections and for clinical practitioners and public health professionals providing clinical management or surveillance.
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All photos in this report were taken by Ahmad Baroudi/Save the Children
It is essential that all people, including people living with HIV, are able to access health services and ongoing treatment. If people living with HIV who are on ART stop abruptly because they cannot access new supplies they could rapidly become unwell, drug resistance may build and the chances of o...nward transmission of the virus would increase.
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