The Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected more than 30 million people in the world, having major impact on global health with collateral damage. In Mozambique, a public state of emergency was declared at the end of March 2020. This has limited people's movements and reduced public services, leading ...to a decrease in the number of people accessing health care facilities. An implementation research project, The Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital, has been promoting access to maternal and child health care, in Natikiri, Nampula, for the last four years. Nampula has the second highest incidence of Covid-19. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions on access to maternal and child healthcare services. We compared health centres in Nampula city with healthcare centres in our research catchment area. We wanted to see if our previous research interventions have led to a more resilient response from the community.
METHODS: Mixed-methods research, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, using a review of patient visit documentation. We compared maternal and child health care unit statistical indicators from March-May 2019 to the same time-period in 2020. We tested for significant changes in access to maternal and child health services, using KrushKall Wallis, One-way Anova and mean and standard deviation tests. We compared interviews with health professionals, traditional birth attendants and patients in the two areas. We gathered data from a comparable city health centre and the main city referral hospital. The Marrere health centre and Marrere General Hospital were the two Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital intervention sites.
RESULTS: Comparing 2019 quantitative maternal health services access indicators with those from 2020, showed decreases in most important indicators: family planning visits and elective C-sections dropped 28%; first antenatal visit occurring in the first trimester dropped 26%; hospital deliveries dropped a statistically significant 4% (p = 0.046), while home deliveries rose 74%; children vaccinated down 20%.
CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated the negative collateral effects of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions, on access to maternal and child healthcare services, and highlighted the need to improve the health information system in Mozambique.
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The Pharmacovigilance team in WHO aims to assure the safety of medicines and vaccines by ensuring reliable and timely exchange of information on safety issues, promoting pharmacovigilance activities throughout the Organization and encouraging participation in the WHO Programme for International Drug... Monitoring. This text was developed in consultation with the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring and the national pharmacovigilance centres participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring.
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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.
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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Overwhelming evidence shows that a range of health concerns—mental illness, substance dependence, HIV/AIDS, and noncommunicable diseases—affect prisoners disproportionately. But, while incarceration poses risks to health—including inadequate nutrition and exposure to violence—prisons also pr...esent important opportunities to promote health and risk reduction that need to be tapped.
Some recommended remedies:
Health ministries, not ministries of justice, should manage health care responsibilities
Ensure that testing is available, but not mandatory, for infectious diseases
Make prison health part of the broader public health agenda
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Stewardship is defined as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care”. It was originally applied in the health-care setting as a tool for optimizing antimicrobial use, termed “antimicrobial stewardship” (AMS). Stewardship has since be...en applied in the context of governance of the health sector as a whole, taking responsibility for the health and well-being of the population and guiding health systems at the national and global level.
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Version-1, June 2018
This document provides 3MDG stakeholders with essential information on SRHR indicators, derived from the 3MDG Logical Framework, Data Dictionary for Health Service Indicators (2014 June, DoPH, MoHA), A Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Adolescent Reproductive Health Progra...ms (MEASURE Evaluation, June 2000) and Monitoring National Cervical Cancer Prevention and Control Programmes (WHO, PAHO, 2013). Partners are strongly encouraged to integrate the SRHR indicators into their ongoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities.
These indicators are designed to help partners assess the current state of their activities, their progress towards achieving their targets, and contribution towards the national response. This guideline is designed to improve the quality and consistency of data collected at the township level, which will enhance the accuracy of conclusions drawn when the data are aggregated.
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Drinking-water quality regulations and standards developed or revised in accordance with this guidance will reflect the best practices identified in the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality to most effectively protect public health. Moreover, the regulations and standards will consider local ne...eds, priorities and capacities to ensure that they are realistic and appropriate. Topics covered include:
- Guiding principles
- Getting started
- Selecting parameters and parameter limits
- Setting out compliance monitoring requirements
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These ICRC guidelines outline the organization’s approach to mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) during and after armed conflict and other situations of violence. They provide a framework for harmonizing MHPSS programmes within the organization, and an insight into its strategic process...es and field practices.
This publication is not intended to serve as a training manual for specific MHPSS techniques. In sharing these guidelines with an external audience, the ICRC aims to raise awareness of its approach among professionals and other interested parties.
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This landscape analysis aims to:
1. Identify and document supportive policies and best practices in family planning program implementation
2. Assess the quality of family planning service provision
3. Propose recommendations for scaling up best family planning practices and new interv...entions to improve program effectiveness and increase utilization of contraception
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UNICEF analysis indicates that:
- Investments that increase access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions by poor groups have saved almost twice as many lives as equivalent investments in non-poor groups.
- Access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions has improved ra...pidly among poor groups in recent years, leading to substantial improvements in equity.
- During the period studied, absolute reductions in under-five mortality rates associated with improvements in intervention coverage were three times faster among poor groups than non-poor groups.
- Because birth rates were higher among the poor, the reduction in the under-five mortality rate translated into 4.2 times more lives saved for every 1 million people. Indeed, of the 1.1 million lives saved across the 51 countries during the final year studied for each country, nearly 85 per cent were among the poor.
- Intensified focus on equity-enhancing policies and investments can help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goal newborn and child mortality targets (SDG3.2).
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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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The overall goal of the programme, to reduce the malaria morbidity and mortality by 75% (using 2012 as baseline) by the year 2020, continued to be pursued in 2014. The following areas were identified as some of the priorities for the year: Malaria Case Management under which we have Malaria in Pregn...ancy (MIP), Home Based Care and Diagnostics.
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In this report a nutrition governance framework was applied to research and analyse the provincial experience with nutrition policy in Pakistan, looking both at chronic and acute malnutrition. Twenty-one in-depth interviews with key stakeholders were also conducted along with a review of published a...nd grey literature. Findings were validated and supplemented by consultative provincial roundtable meetings. Punjab’s nutritional puzzle is that it has high levels of chronic malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies despite a surplus production of food and a low poverty level. Under-nutrition is mainly linked to insufficient attention to preventive health strategies and to a lack of connection between relevant sectors such as Education, Health, Poverty, Safe Water and Sanitation, and Food. Strategic opportunities are recommended which include cross-party political support and ownership for nutrition, with steering by executive leadership; multi-sectoral action and functional integration of various departments and programmes with the creation of a central convening structure for effective cross-sectoral coordination; broadening of nutritional activities beyond salt iodization and vitamin A coverage; central co-ordination of monitoring and evaluation and effective partnerships between the state and non-state sector around data production, awareness, advocacy, and monitoring.
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This document aims to assist policy‑makers, health care providers and researchers to understand key concepts in health ethics and to identify basic ethical questions surrounding health and health care. It illustrates the challenges of applying ethical principles to global public health and outline...s practical strategies for dealing with those challenges.
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Full Report.
In response to a call by the United Nations Secretary-General and the Governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, an international team conducted an Ebola Recovery Assessment. The aim was to contribute towards laying the foundation for short-, medium- and long-term recovery while ...the medical emergency response continues to tackle the epidemic. This report is a contribution to ongoing efforts by the Governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to design their national Ebola virus disease recovery strategies
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In response to a call by the United Nations Secretary-General and the Governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, an international team conducted an Ebola Recovery Assessment.The aim was to contribute towards laying the foundation for short-, medium- and long-term recovery while the medical eme...rgency response continues to tackle the epidemic.
This summary report is based on a full report as well as three detailed reports submitted to each of the three governments as contributions to their national recovery planning processes.
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This Technical Brief focuses on current principles and approaches to Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) management, highlighting key constraints, gaps in knowledge and areas still lacking consensus. It is intended to inform ongoing debates among practitioners, national partners, donors and analysts o...n what information and evidence on best practices are currently available, where the gaps are, and priorities for going forward.
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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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The Access to Controlled Medications Programme identified the development of treatment guidelines that cover the treatment of all types of pain as one of the core areas of focus for improving access to opioid analgesics. Such guidelines are interesting both for health-care professionals and policy-...makers. They are also important in improving access to controlled medicines for determining when those opioid medicines and when non-opioid medicines are preferred.
Based on a Delphi study, WHO planned the development of three treatment guidelines, covering chronic pain in children, chronic pain in adults and acute pain.
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