Ocean plastic pollution has reached crisis level: every minute, more than an entire garbage truck of plastic makes its way into the world’s oceans—roughly 11 million metric tons annually. While plastic waste presents an immediate threat to marine wildlife and ecosystems, this global challenge al...so has implications for major industries such as fishing and tourism, impacting the livelihoods of millions of people. The drivers and impacts of ocean plastic pollution also contribute to global challenges in food security, human health, and climate change.
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MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report December 19, 2014 / 63(50);1205-1206
Three classess of tests are now recommended in the latest consolidated guideles on tests for tuberculosis infection. It includes for the first-time a new class of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen-based skin tests (TBSTs), and the two existing classes of tests: the tuberculin skin test (TST) and t...he interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs).
IGRAs and TBSTs use Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex specific antigens and represent a significant advancement to TST which has been used for over half a century.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on Buruli ulcer at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on 25 to 27 March 2019
This document describes the ethical values that are most important to the nursing profession in Ontario. It also provides scenarios of ethical situations in which there is a conflict of values. Nurses are encouraged to use these scenarios for reflection and discussion. No solutions are offered becau...se there is no one solution that is best in all situations. The behavioural directives are intended to help nurses work through ethical situations and provide information about the College of Nurses of Ontario’s (CNO’s) expectations for ethical conduct. These are taken into account when CNO Committees assess nurses’ practices. Nurses need to consider behavioural directives carefully when making decisions about ethical care as this process will strengthen their practice.
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The Practical manual on laboratory strengthening, 2022 update provides practical guidance on implementation of WHO recommendations and best practices for TB laboratory strengthening. It is an updated version of the GLI Practical Guide to Laboratory Strengthening published in 2017 and provides the la...test practical guidance on use of newly recommended diagnostics as well as guidance in key technical areas, including quality assurance and quality management systems, specimen collection and registration, procurement and supply-chain management, diagnostic connectivity, biosafety, data management, human resources, strategic planning, and model algorithms. The key changes are:
inclusion of recent or updated WHO recommendations for tests to diagnose TB and detect drug resistance;
alignment with the latest WHO critical concentrations for phenotypic drug-susceptibility testing (DST) and the new definitions of pre-XDR-TB and XDR-TB;
updated information on building quality-assured TB testing and management capacity using the Stepwise Laboratory Quality Improvement Process Towards Accreditation (SLIPTA) approach (Score-TB package1);
updated information on assessing, analysing and optimising TB diagnostic networks; and
updated information on the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect mutations associated with drug resistance for surveillance purposes.
The document also provides references to resources and tools relevant for work on laboratory strengthening.
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Report of the WHO/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Consultation. The Consultation was organized back-to-back with the first annual meeting of the International Coordinating Group of the BMGF-funded project for human and dog rabies elimination in developing countries, held at WHO headquarters, Geneva,... Switzerland, from 5 to 7 October 2009. This allowed the Consultation to benefit from the participation of the national coordinators and advisers of the BMGF-funded projects in the Philippines, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal) and the United Republic of Tanzania
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The World Health Organization (WHO) and the global community of countries, partners, donors, technical experts, scientists and field implementation teams continue to work towards the ultimate goal of a world free of the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholera. The infection primarily spreads through contaminated water and food. Symptoms include the onset of acute diarrhea and/or vomiting, muscle cramps, and body weakness. If untreated, the infection can result in rapid dehydration and ...death within hours.
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Groupe indépendant d’experts de la redevabilité de l’initiative Chaque femme, chaque enfant. (2020). Dans la tourmente de la pandémie de COVID-19: la santé de la femme, de l’enfant et de l’adolescent dans le contexte de la couverture sanitaire universelle et des objectifs de dével...oppement durable : rapport 2020 : résumé d'orientation.
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The publication of the of the Antimicrobial Treatment Guidelines represents the
culmination of the efforts of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program of ICMR to publish treatment guidelines for common syndromes in India. These guidelines are targeted for the health care settings. It aims to rationali...ze the usage of antibiotics on our Essential Medicines Formulary (EMF) and to establish consistency in the treatment of various infectious conditions.
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Hand hygiene is vital for safe health care delivery, yet practices at the point of care remain suboptimal worldwide. A comprehensive research agenda is therefore necessary to improve our understanding of factors influencing hand hygiene behaviour and to strengthen appropriate interventions. This age...nda will provide insightful ideas for researchers to focus their projects and funding proposals and will direct donors towards the areas of hand hygiene evidence that require urgent support and innovation. It will also guide decision-makers and stakeholders at the national and international level and support country efforts in updating and strengthening hand hygiene promotion programmes. Global collaboration and investment in hand hygiene research remain essential to promote safe and effective care worldwide.
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This document provides technical guidance on concepts, definitions, indicators, criteria, milestones and tools to assist leprosy programmes in their journey towards the goals of interruption of transmission and elimination of leprosy disease and through the post-elimination period. Importantly, it p...rovides criteria with benchmarks, where possible, for all key aspects of leprosy programmes and services. Not only those related to elimination efforts, but also those related to diagnosis and management of leprosy, leprosy-related disabilities, mental wellbeing, stigma and discrimination and inclusion and participation of persons affected by leprosy. The document emphasises that the elimination of leprosy is a long-term, continuous journey on the one hand, while, on the other, clear milestones can be recognised on the way and programme implementation can be assessed against benchmarks, guiding appropriate action to keep the programme on track.
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CATALYST DIALOGUE ON HEALTH FINANCING
Insights from a debate on how to increase funding for health and spend existing funds more effectively.
Catalyst Dialogue participants:
Christoph Benn, Director for Global Health Diplomacy, Joep Lange Institute • Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Univer...sity of Massachusetts at Amherst • Tom Hart, Research Fellow, ODI • Lesley-Anne Long, President & CEO, Global Business Coalition for Health • Riaz Tanoli, CEO, Social Health Protection Initiative, Health Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
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The majority of developing countries will fail to achieve their targets for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)1 and the health- and poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless they take urgent steps to strengthen their health financing. Just over a decade out from the SDG deadline of 20...30, 3.6 billion people do not receive the most essential health services they need, and 100 million are pushed into poverty from paying out-of-pocket for health services. The evidence is strong that progress towards UHC, core to SDG 3, will spur inclusive and sustainable economic growth, yet this will not happen unless countries achieve high-performance health financing, defined here as funding levels that are adequate and sustainable; pooling that is sufficient to spread the financial risks of ill-health; and spending that is efficient and equitable to assure desired levels of health service coverage, quality, and financial protection for all people— with resilience and sustainability.
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UNAIDS leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. It unites the efforts of 11 UN Cosponsor organizations- UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP,UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank- and a Secretari...at.
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Little is known about foreign aid provided by private donors. This paper contributes to closing this research gap by comparing the allocation of private humanitarian aid to that of official humanitarian aid awarded to 140 recipient countries over the 2000-2016 period. We construct a new database tha...t offers information on the country in which the headquarters of private donors are located to test whether private donors follow the aid allocation pattern of their home country. Our empirical results confirm that private aid “follows the flag.” This finding is robust against the inclusion of various fixed effects, estimating instrumental variables models, and disaggregating private aid into corporate aid and NGO aid. Donor country-specific estimations reveal that private aid from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “follow the flag.”
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The guide to implementing the One Health Joint Plan of Action (OH JPA) at national level provides practical guidance on how countries can adopt and adapt the OH JPA to strengthen and support national One Health action.
Building on the OH JPA theory of change, this guide describes three pathways a...nd five key steps to implement the OH JPA at national level:
Pathway 1 -- Governance, policy, legislation, financing and advocacy
Pathway 2 -- Organizational and institutional development, implementation and sectoral integration
Pathway 3 -- Data, evidence, information systems and knowledge exchange.
The stepwise approach comprises:
Situation analysis including stakeholder mapping and review of existing assessment results
Set-up/strengthening of a multisectoral, One Health coordination mechanism
Planning for implementation, including activity prioritization and leveraging of resources
Implementation of national One Health action plans
Review, sharing and incorporation of lessons learned.
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