WHO recommends artemisinin-based combination therapies for treating uncomplicated malaria, alongside studies to monitor treatment effectiveness. Given the threat of antimalarial resistance, including partial resistance in several African countries, molecular tools are vital for tracking resistance. ...In 2015, WHO launched the External Quality Assessment scheme for nucleic acid amplification testing to ensure reliable lab results. Coordinated by WHO and operated by the United Kingdom National External Quality Assessment Service for Parasitology, the scheme provides quality-controlled specimens and reports to help improve testing accuracy. Experts recently discussed expanding the scheme to include antimalarial resistance markers.
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2nd edition. The purpose of this document is to present updated standardized protocols that P. falciparum-endemic countries can use to determine the prevalence of parasites with pfhrp2/3 gene deletions causing negative HRP2 RDT results among symptomatic falciparum patients. The findings should be us...ed to guide RDT selection; more specifically when to shift away from exclusive use of HRP2 to detect P. falciparum infections.
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The Manual for Parasitological Surveillance in Prevention of Reintroduction or Re-establishment of Malaria in Sri Lanka (2019) provides guidelines to health professionals on how to conduct effective malaria surveillance to prevent the reintroduction of the disease in Sri Lanka, which was certified m...alaria-free in 2016.
The manual outlines strategies for active and passive case detection, laboratory diagnosis, case investigation, foci investigation, and follow-up measures. It emphasizes targeted screening of high-risk populations, including travelers and migrant workers, and explains the importance of prompt reporting, accurate parasitological confirmation, and coordination between healthcare levels. The overall goal is to maintain Sri Lanka’s malaria-free status by ensuring early detection and rapid response to any imported or locally suspected malaria cases.
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The National Strategic Plan on Malaria Prevention and Elimination Period 2021 – 2025 seeks to build on the previous national successes of the National Institute of Malariology, Parasitology, and Entomology (NIMPE) while addressing current challenges to reduce the overall burden of malaria in the S...outhern and Central provinces and to initiate elimination activities in remaining focal areas of transmission throughout the country. The overall targets proposed to be reached by 2025 are:
Reduce malaria morbidity rate to below 0.015/1,000 population
Reduce malaria mortality rate to below 0.002/100,000 population
Eliminate malaria in 55 provinces
Ensure no malaria outbreaks
To address the urgent threat of drug resistance, Viet Nam has committed to accelerate efforts to eliminate locally-acquired P. falciparum by 2023.
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This document provides countries with recommendations for structuring a public health entomology laboratory network. The document will help countries to identify their areas of need and determine how the entomology network can be strengthened, especially in the context of a decentralized health syst...em. The recommendations also consider the different degrees of development and different entomological research needed to support disease prevention and control activities.
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Plos Neglected Tropical Diseases 8(11): e3229 (20 November 2014)
L’ulcère de Buruli, une infection causée par Mycobacterium ulcerans, touche plus de 33 pays dans le monde, mais un peu moins de la moitié seulement de ces pays communiquent régulièrement des données sur la maladie à l’OMS.
The Health Sector Policy gives general orientations for the sector which are further developed in the various sub-sector policies guiding key health programs and departments. All health sub-sector policies will be updated in line with this new policy. The Health Sector Policy is the basis of nationa...l health planning and the first point of reference for all actors working in the health sector. The overall aim of this policy is to ensure universal accessibility (in geographical and financial terms) of equitable and affordable quality health services (preventative, curative, rehabilitative and promotional services) for all Rwandans. It sets the health sector’s objectives, identifies the priority health interventions for meeting these objectives, outlines the role of each level in the health system, and provides guidelines for improved planning and evaluation of activities in the health sector. A companion Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) elaborates the strategic directions defined in the Health Sector Policy in order to support and achieve the implementation of the policy, and more detailed annual operational plans describe the activities under each strategy.
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The aim of this study was to determine the impact of the domestic care environment on the prevalence of potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among orphaned and separated children in Uasin Gishu County, western Kenya.
PLos One March 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 3 |... e89937
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PLOS ONE 10(12): e0144040. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144040
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1
December 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 12 | e82027
School of Public Health, Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1, May 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 5 | e64915
(version 1.0): procedure: methods manual
Leptospirosis, a spirochaetal zoonosis, occurs in diverse epidemiological settings and affects vulnerable populations, such as rural subsistence farmers and urban slum dwellers. Although leptospirosis is a life-threatening disease and recognized as an important cause of pulmonary haemorrhage syndrom...e, the lack of global estimates for morbidity and mortality has contributed to its neglected disease status
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Histoplasmosis is a disease caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. This disease is highly endemic in some regions of North America, Central America, and South America and is also reported in certain countries of Asia and Africa. It often affects people with impaired immunity, including people ...living with HIV, among whom the most frequent clinical presentation is disseminated histoplasmosis. The symptoms of disseminated histoplasmosis are non-specific and may be indistinguishable from those of other infectious diseases, especially disseminated tuberculosis (TB), thus complicating diagnosis and treatment. Histoplasmosis is one of the most frequent opportunistic infections caused by fungal pathogens among people living with HIV in the Americas and may be responsible for 5–15% of AIDS-related deaths every year in this Region. These guidelines aim to provide recommendations for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of disseminated histoplasmosis in persons living with HIV
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Senegal has adopted the World Health Organization–Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS recommended 90-90-90 targets.5 The adoption of this strategy means that the country is expected, by 2020, to have 90% of its population living with HIV diagnosed, 90% of all those diagnosed receiving susta...ined HIV treatment, and 90% of those receiving antiretroviral therapy having suppressed viral load measures.5 To achieve these outcomes, having good clinical laboratory services for diagnosis and follow-up will be critical.6 More specifically, investments will be needed to improve laboratory infrastructure, and to facilitate the access and availability of routine viral load and early infant diagnosis (EID) measures through the implementation of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic platforms along with an efficient and sustainable quality assurance programme.
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Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that occurs mainly in the tropics and subtropics but has a high potential to spread to new areas. Dengue infections are climate sensitive, so it is important to better understand how changing climate factors affect the potential for geographic spread and futu...re dengue epidemics. Vectorial capacity (VC) describes a vector's propensity to transmit dengue taking into account human, virus, and vector interactions. VC is highly temperature dependent, but most dengue models only take mean temperature values into account. Recent evidence shows that diurnal temperature range (DTR) plays an important role in influencing the behavior of the primary dengue vector Aedes aegypti. In this study, we used relative VC to estimate dengue epidemic potential (DEP) based on the temperature and DTR dependence of the parameters of A. aegypti. We found a strong temperature dependence of DEP; it peaked at a mean temperature of 29.3°C when DTR was 0°C and at 20°C when DTR was 20°C. Increasing average temperatures up to 29°C led to an increased DEP, but temperatures above 29°C reduced DEP. In tropical areas where the mean temperatures are close to 29°C, a small DTR increased DEP while a large DTR reduced it. In cold to temperate or extremely hot climates where the mean temperatures are far from 29°C, increasing DTR was associated with increasing DEP. Incorporating these findings using historical and predicted temperature and DTR over a two hundred year period (1901-2099), we found an increasing trend of global DEP in temperate regions. Small increases in DEP were observed over the last 100 years and large increases are expected by the end of this century in temperate Northern Hemisphere regions using climate change projections. These findings illustrate the importance of including DTR when mapping DEP based on VC.
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During the year 2022, COVID-19 continued to be a significant challenge in Eritrea as in many other countries across the world. As COVID-19 devastated communities around the world, WHO worked with the MoH to strengthen the National and Sub-National health systems in order to meet community needs and ...mitigate the devastation during the pandemic and beyond.
One of the major achievements in the year 2022 was the beginning of the journey towards validation of
the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B. This is the culmination of years
of commitment and determination by the political leadership, national and international partnerships to
reduce the associated indices to levels that qualify for elimination.
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Laboratory Safety Handbook. Global edition
Las pruebas de cultivo y sensibilidad a fármacos son necesarias especialmente para los pacientes con riesgo de tuberculosis resistente a los medicamentos y para vigilar su respuesta al tratamiento. Si bien el cultivo y las pruebas de sensibilidad son ca...da vez más accesibles, la infraestructura para realizarlos es compleja y requiere equipos especializados y costosos. Con vistas a garantizar que el personal de laboratorio realice su trabajo de forma correcta y segura, este manual ofrece una guía práctica mediante textos sencillos e ilustraciones claras que ayudan a comprender los problemas de seguridad conexos. De ahí la importancia de su publicación en español para la red de laboratorios nacionales y supranacionales que apoya la Organización Panamericana de la Salud en la Región de las Américas.
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