Ahead of World Malaria Day, the WHO Global Malaria Programme published a new operational strategy outlining its priorities and key activities up to 2030 to help change the trajectory of malaria trends, with a view to achieving the global malaria targets. The strategy outlines 4 strategic objectives ...where WHO will focus its efforts, including developing norms and standards, introducing new tools and innovation, promoting strategic information for impact, and providing technical leadership of the global malaria response.
In recent years, progress towards critical targets of the WHO Global technical strategy for malaria 2016-2030 has stalled, particularly in countries that carry a high burden of the disease. In 2022 there were an estimated 608 000 malaria-related deaths and 249 million new malaria cases globally, with young children in Africa bearing the brunt of the disease.
Millions of people continue to miss out on the services they need to prevent, detect, and treat malaria. Additionally, progress in global malaria control has been hampered by resource constraints, humanitarian crises, climate change and biological threats such as drug and insecticide resistance.
“A shift in the global malaria response is urgently needed across the entire malaria ecosystem to prevent avoidable deaths and achieve the targets of the WHO global malaria strategy,” notes Dr Daniel Ngamije, Director of the Global Malaria Programme. “This shift should seek to address the root causes of the disease and be centred around accessibility, efficiency, sustainability, equity and integration.”
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The intention of this handbook on integrated vector management (IVM) is to provide
guidance to the managers of vector-borne disease control programmes, including
comparable officials in health and other sectors involved in vector-borne disease control.
The target audience is managers and official...s at central, district and lower administrative
levels. The handbook provides background information to complement the Core structure
for training curricula on integrated vector management and associated training materials.
A separate document, Guidance on policy-making for integrated vector management,
was prepared for policy-makers
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The report aims to help policy-makers and programme managers identify the areas that need attention and to work towards effective implementation and enforcement of policies and legislations. The need for alcohol policy-specific infrastructures to support the alcohol policy process, including designa...ted responsible agency, policy and strategy, and law and regulation, is also required at the country level.
The report is presented in three sections. Section 1 gives an insight to the alcohol consumption situation in the WHO South-East Asia Region and cites the alcohol-related problems that the Region is facing. Section 2 illustrates the policy situation in the 10 areas of national action identified in the Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol and gives specific recommendations pertaining to these areas. Section 3 provides overall recommendations.
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A Provisional Document. The purpose of this manual is to provide guidance to public health professionals tasked with managing a response to viral hepatitis. As every country’s needs are different with respect to its epidemiology and the current level of response, people would use this manual in di...fferent ways
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With this World Health Day, WHO is drawing attention to a group of diseases that are spread by insects and other vectors, the heavy health and economic burdens they impose, and what needs to be done to reduce these burdens. Many of these diseases have been historically confined to distinct geographi...cal areas, but this situation has become more fluid due to a host of ills, including climate change, intensive farming, dams, irrigation, deforestation, population movements, rapid unplanned urbanization, and phenomenal increases in international travel and trade. The control of vector-borne diseases can make a major contribution to poverty reduction, as it precisely targets the poor
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Working document from an informal consultation of experts. A Protocol for risk assessment at the field level. The purpose of document is to provide guidance on the methodology to be used for assessing, at field level, the yellow fever virus circulation in areas at risk, and is primarily intended fo...r public health specialists
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As the culminating volume in the DCP3 series, volume 9 will provide an overview of DCP3 findings and methods, a summary of messages and substantive lessons to be taken from DCP3, and a further discussion of cross-cutting and synthesizing topics across the first eight volumes. The introductory chapte...rs (1-3) in this volume take as their starting point the elements of the Essential Packages presented in the overview chapters of each volume. First, the chapter on intersectoral policy priorities for health includes fiscal and intersectoral policies and assembles a subset of the population policies and applies strict criteria for a low-income setting in order to propose a "highest-priority" essential package. Second, the chapter on packages of care and delivery platforms for universal health coverage (UHC) includes health sector interventions, primarily clinical and public health services, and uses the same approach to propose a highest priority package of interventions and policies that meet similar criteria, provides cost estimates, and describes a pathway to UHC.
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The key to a lasting world free of all forms of poliovirus lies in rapidly interrupting all remaining endemic transmission of WPV in the endemic areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the only way to ensure that such strains do not re-emerge globally through international spread. It lays the cor...nerstone for the eventual cessation of all oral polio vaccine use, in order to eliminate the long-term risks associated with variant poliovirus strains, which is the GPEI’s top operational priority. The target for certifying the
world free of all WPV remains end-2026.
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Through technical consultations with countries and partners, WHO has led the development of Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics. Version 1.0. The Module, currently available as an advanced draft, builds on previous pandemic lessons a...nd guidance, and has the following new elements:
It presents an integrated and efficient respiratory pathogen pandemic planning approach covering both novel pathogens and those known to have pandemic potential;
It enables coherence in addressing pathogen-agnostic and pathogen-specific elements for better preparedness;
It gives an organizing framework including operational stages and triggers for escalation and de-escalation between pandemic preparedness and response periods;
It contextualizes 12 IHR (2005) core capacities within the five components of health emergency preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR), from the respiratory threats perspective; and
It describes the critical sectors for respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness to trigger multisectoral collaboration.
WHO will finalize and publish this Module after a global technical meeting that will be held on 24-26 April 2023.
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The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste has the highest TB incidence rate in the South East Asian Region - 498 per 100,000, which is the seventh highest in the world. In Timor-Leste TB is the eighth most common cause of death.
The salient observations are as follows:
In 2018, 487 (12.5%) of the... 3906 notified TB patients were tested for RR-TB and only 12 lab confirmed RR-TB patients were initiated on standard MDR-TB treatment of 20-months duration, (a 3-fold increase in RR-TB detection compared with 2017). This amounts to treatment coverage of only 17% of 72 estimated MDR/RR-TB among notified TB patients (3906) and 5% of 240 estimated incident MDR-TB patients as compared to 62% treatment coverage of 6300 incident drug sensitive TB patients estimated in TLS. The treatment success in the 2016 annual cohort of 6 MDR-TB patients has been reported at 83%. 80% of TB patients know their HIV Status with around 1% TB-HIV co-infection, 37/ 77 (48%) TB-HIV Co-infection Detected. Of the 387 PLHIV currently alive on ART, exact status on TB screening and testing is unknown. % of PLHIV newly enrolled in HIV care who received IPT is not known.
In 2018, the mortality rate for TB was 94 deaths per 100,000 people (1200 per annum) in TL with an increasing mortality trend (Figure 1), despite TB services being available for nearly two decades.
A survey of catastrophic costs due to TB (2016) highlights that 83% of TB patients are reported to be facing catastrophic costs due to the disease. This is the highest rate in the world.
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WHO has updated its guidelines for COVID-19 therapeutics, with revised recommendations for patients with non-severe COVID-19. This is the 13th update to these guidelines.
Updated risk rates for hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19
The guidance includes updated risk rates for... hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19.
The current COVID-19 virus variants tend to cause less severe disease while immunity levels are higher due to vaccination, leading to lower risks of severe illness and death for most patients.
This update includes new baseline risk estimates for hospital admission in patients with non-severe COVID-19. The new ‘moderate risk’ category now includes people previously considered to be high risk including older people and/or those with chronic conditions, disabilities, and comorbidities of chronic disease. The updated risk estimates will assist healthcare professionals to identify individuals at high, moderate or low risk of hospital admission, and to tailor treatment according to WHO guidelines:
**High: **People who are immunosuppressed remain at higher risk if they contract COVID-19, with an estimated hospitalization rate of 6%.
**Moderate: **People over 65 years old, those with conditions like obesity, diabetes and/or chronic conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney or liver disease, cancer, people with disabilities and those with comorbidities of chronic disease are at moderate risk, with an estimated hospitalization rate of 3%.
Low: Those who are not in the high or moderate risk categories are at low risk of hospitalization (0.5%). Most people are low risk.
Review of COVID-19 treatments for people with non-severe COVID-19
WHO continues to strongly recommend nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (also known by its brand name ‘Paxlovid’) for people at high-risk and moderate risk of hospitalization. The recommendations state that nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is considered the best choice for most eligible patients, given its therapeutic benefits, ease of administration and fewer concerns about potential harms. Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir was first recommended by WHO in April 2022.
If nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is not available to patients at high-risk of hospitalization, WHO suggests the use of molnupiravir or remdesivir instead.
WHO suggests against the use of molnupiravir and remdesivir for patients at moderate risk, judging the potential harms to outweigh the limited benefits in patients at moderate risk of hospital admission.
For people at low risk of hospitalization, WHO does not recommend any antiviral therapy. Symptoms like fever and pain can continue to be managed with analgesics like paracetamol.
WHO also recommends against use of a new antiviral (VV116) for patients, except in clinical trials.
The update also includes a strong recommendation against the use of ivermectin for patients with non-severe COVID-19. WHO continues to advise that in patients with severe or critical COVID-19, ivermectin should only be used in clinical trials.
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One of the many gender inequities in the health and care workforce that COVID-19 has exposed is around the fit and design of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The rapid onset and scale of COVID-19 led to shortages of PPE in most countries, causing preventable infection and mortality among healthc...are workers and others on the front lines. Even though most health workers are women, manufacturing specifications for medical PPE are usually drawn up based on the male body and there have been many reports of PPE not designed for women's bodies.
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A Global Inventory of Alternative Medical Waste Treatment Technologies