This document summarizes the results of the WHO-commissioned full value proposition for new tuberculosis (TB) vaccines. The assessment was commissioned to provide early evidence for national and global decision-makers involved in TB vaccine development and implementation, who include stakeholders in...volved in vaccine research, financing, regulation and policy-making, manufacturing, introduction and procurement. The goal is to accelerate development of effective vaccines against TB and their rapid introduction into countries.
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Based on the Vulnerability Index developed in this review, an estimated 22.7 million persons in Myanmar, or 44% of the population, were found to have some form of vulnerability related to human development and/or exposure to active conflict/violence. These people experience varying combinations of p...oor housing, lack of education, poor educational attainment, lack of access to safe sanitation and improved drinking water, and direct exposure to conflict.
Shan and Ayeyarwady have the largest populations of vulnerable persons, a function of both their size and relative vulnerability in comparison to other States and Regions. Yangon and Shan show the widest variation in vulnerability across townships (in terms of the number of vulnerable persons and their level of vulnerability), followed by Mandalay, Chin and Rakhine.
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Myanmar, as a country going through rapid socio-political transition and institutional development also suffers with a high burden of infectious disease. An ongoing challenge has been to effectively reach its 51 million population, most of whom battle tuberculosis, acute respiratory infections, diar...rhoea and malaria including amongst under-five children.
Limited research data on the occurrence of resistant organisms in the nation have, makes it hard to estimate the exact antimicrobial resistance (AMR) scenario. Limited peer reviewed evidence indicates significant divergence from the average resistance trends in APAC region. Nevertheless, several key steps by Government of Myanmar have been instrumental in paving the way for the country to join other nations in the South East Asia Region to speed up its plan on addressing the AMR crisis. Combating antimicrobial resistance would, however, require highest political commitment, multi-sectoral coordination, sustained investment and technical assistance.
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PEPFAR Malawi’s Country Operational Plan 2022 (COP22) embodies joint priorities from national and subnational dialogues building on the 2020-2025 National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS. The interagency team has developed a person-centered, district-tailored and Malawi Population-Based HIV Impact Ass...essment (MPHIA)-informed strategy through extensive engagement with Government of Malawi (GoM) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to sustain HIV epidemic control. At the end of COP21, PEPFAR Malawi was commended for contributing to reaching epidemic control in strong collaboration with GoM and stakeholders including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund). This includes enrollment of 88% of recipients of care on three or more months of antiretroviral treatment (ART), better outcomes for Malawian children through remarkable efforts in Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) programming and progress made towards reaching men with more intentional and focused programming.
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The purpose of this document is to provide guidance on the use of pooled sample testing strategy in coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
testing laboratories of the African Union Member States for scaling up SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid testing capacity with the available resources. The current document descr...ibes the effect of factors such as the prevalence of COVID-19 in the population to be tested, the homogeneity of pools, and the sensitivity of the molecular test in optimal pool size determination. It also highlights the importance of monitoring the prevalence of COVID-19 in a population to be tested and proper validation of the test, to limit the potential for false-negative results. Validation studies to determine the optimal pool size by testing laboratories are recommended as the optimum approach. A safe, simple ‘two-stage pooling’ option has been indicated in this guidance to be used by laboratories until such validation can be achieved.
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The Rwandan Ministry of Health recognizes the threat that Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) pose to health and development in Rwanda and in 2009 articulates strategies to respond to them in the Health Sector Strategic Plan 2012 - 2018 (HSSP3). Among other things, the plan calls for a national prevale...nce survey on NCD risk factors. This report responds to that call and summarizes the findings of the first NCD risk factor survey in Rwanda conducted from November 2012 to March 2013.
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Commitment objective
The Government of Myanmar views family planning as critical to saving lives, protecting mothers and children from death, ill health, disability, and under development. It views access to family planning information, commodities, and services as a fundamental right for every... woman and community if they are to develop to their full potential.
• Increase CPR from 41 percent to 50 percent by 2015 and above 60 percent by 2020
• Reduce unmet need to less than 10 percent by 2020 (from 12 percent in 2013)
• Increase demand satisfaction from 67 percent in 2013 to 80 percent by 2020
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Tax capacity—the policy, institutional, and technical capabilities to collect tax revenue—is part of a deeper process of state building that is essential for achieving the sustainable development goals. This Staff Discussion Note shows that developing countries have made some progress in revenue... mobilization during the past decades, but that much more is needed. It finds that a staggering 9 percentage-point increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio is feasible through a combination of tax system reform and institutional capacity building. Achieving this calls for a holistic and institution-based approach that focuses on improving policy, administration, and legal implementation of core taxes. The note offers practical lessons and guidance, based on IMF capacity-building experience in this area.
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The objective of Critical Considerations and Actions for Achieving Universal Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Context of Universal Health Coverage through a Primary Health Care Approach is to provide guidance to WHO Member States for ensuring progress towards universal access to compr...ehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in the context of primary health care (PHC)- and universal health coverage (UHC)-related policy and strategy reforms.
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This document is an output of a WHO cross-programme initiative aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and management of anaemia and thereby accelerate reduction in its prevalence. It comes at an important time, midway through the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, when progress in reduci...ng anaemia has stagnated. This framework is based on the core principles of primary health care: meeting people’s health needs through comprehensive promotive, protective, curative, and rehabilitative care along the life course; systematically addressing the broader determinants of health; and empowering individuals, families, and communities to optimize their health
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To support the achievement of health equity in the Region, the regional inter-agency movement Every Woman Every Child Latin America and the Caribbean (EWEC-LAC) advocates for and supports the use of equity and evidence-based policies, strategies and interventions to accelerate equitable progress in ...the health of women, children and adolescents. Although progress has been made, great inequities persist. Women from the LAC region’s poorest countries are almost four times more likely to die due to complications during childbirth than those living in the wealthiest countries. Through the years, several tools, instruments and methods (TIMs) have been developed by global, regional and country partners that can be used to conduct systematic equity-based analyses and/or re-designs of health systems, programs, strategies and interventions. The main purpose of this document is to present an overview of existing TIMs that can be used by policymakers, program managers, development partners, nongovernmental organizations, academia and civil society partners to strengthen systematic identification, analysis and responding to social inequities in the health of women, children and adolescents in LAC. The TIMs included were identified through a systematic search process
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More than 700 000 people lose their life to suicide every year. The world is not on track to reach the 2030 suicide reduction targets. WHO advocates for countries to take action to prevent suicide, ideally through a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. Governments and communities can ...contribute to suicide prevention by implementing LIVE LIFE – WHO’s approach to starting suicide prevention so that countries can build on it further to develop a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. The guide is for all countries, with or without a national suicide prevention strategy; national or local focal points for suicide prevention, mental health, alcohol or NCDs; and community stakeholders with a vested interest or who may already be engaged in implementing suicide prevention activities.
Excecutive Summary available in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanisch here:
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Cognitive deficits in schizophrenia can massively impact functionality and quality of life, furthering the importance of cognitive training. Despite the development of the field in Europe and in the United States, no programmes have been developed and tested in developing countries. Different cultur...al backgrounds, budget restrictions, and other difficulties may render treatment packages created in high income countries difficult for adoption by developing nations. We performed a pilot double-blind, randomized, controlled trial in order to investigate the efficacy and feasibility of an attention and memory training programme specially created in
a developing nation. The intervention used simple, widely available materials, required minimal infrastructure, and was conducted in groups.The sample included seventeen stable Brazilians with schizophrenia. Sessions were conducted weekly during five months. The cognitive training group showed significant improvements in inhibitory control and set-shifting over time. Both groups showed improvements in symptoms, processing speed, selective attention, executive function, and long-term visual memory. Improvements were found in the control group in long-term verbal memory and concentration. Our findings reinforce the idea that cognitive training in schizophrenia can be constructed using simple resources and infrastructure, facilitating its adoption by developing countries, and it may improve cognition.
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Recommendations to develop guidelines on community-based rehabilitation (CBR) were made during the International Consultation to Review Community-based Rehabilitation which was held in Helsinki, Finland in 2003. WHO; the International Labour Organization; the United Nations Educational, Scientific ...and Cultural Organization; and the International Disability and Development Consortium – notably CBM, Handicap International, the Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau, Light for the World, the Norwegian Association of Disabled and Sightsavers – have worked closely together to develop the Community-based rehabilitation guidelines. More than 180 individuals and representatives of nearly 300 organizations, mostly from low-income and middle-income countries around the world, have been involved in their development.
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is appealing for USD 158.9 million to respond to the urgent humanitarian needs of millions of Afghans and to support recovery and resilience within the country and the region.
IOM’s Comprehensive Action Plan for Afghanistan and Neighbouring Cou...ntries aims to help the most vulnerable populations by combining humanitarian, development and peace interventions, known as the HDP nexus.
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The main objectives of these guidelines are:
A. To create awareness among the CBM family (International Office, Member Associations, Regional Offices, Country Offices and partners) on the opportunity savings groups create to attain socio-economic empowerment of a significantly larger number of pers...ons with disabilities particularly among the poorest of the poor.
B. Lobbying mainstream savings group providers and donors to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in their programmes as a right as a catalyst of inclusive development.
C. To highlight and illustrate the key steps and procedures that are required to link persons with disabilities through CBR programmes with existing mainstream savings groups and/or promote development of disability specific savings groups.
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This National Food and Nutrition Policy developed in 2013 builds on several achievements that have improved the status of nutrition and household food security in Rwanda during the past six years. The outlines ambitious but necessary strategies needed to solve serious and
persistent problems includ...ing the high prevalence of child stunting and high levels of anaemia in children and women. The NFNP also takes into account major differences in the economic development environment and the higher national and international priority placed on improving nutrition and related household food security problems in the second decade of the new millennium compared to 2007 when the country’s first National Nutrition Policy was adopted.
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The main aim of these guidelines is to enable the central units of national TB and HIV/AIDS programmes to support districts to plan, coordinate and implement collaborative TB/HIV activities. These guidelines reinforce current medical understanding, that highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART)... has decreased TB incidence of people living with HIV/AIDS. They are comprehensive, giving an overview of the range of activities that could be undertaken in high burden TB/HIV countries or where a rising prevalence of HIV might fuel TB. Activities highlight the need for comprehensive care, prevention and support for adults living with HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive TB and HIV care and prevention rely on full implementation of the DOTS strategy as part of a wide ranging HIV/AIDS care and prevention programme as well as collaborative TB and HIV programme activities.
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As Uganda builds back from the COVID-19 shock, the Ugandan government is strengthening its commitment to a more gender-inclusive and sustainable economy. This report supports these efforts by describing the gendered impacts of COVID-19 and provides recommendations for Ugandan policy makers and World... Bank Group operations to ensure women’s participation in an inclusive and sustainable recovery. It presents gender-disaggregated data from three main sources: high-frequency phone surveys that track the impacts of the COVID-19 shock: one of Ugandan nationals conducted in June and one of refugees conducted in November 2020; interviews with 28 representatives of government institutions, development partners, and women’s organizations in Kampala and in rural areas; and a review of relevant policy and gray literature on climate change, the green economy, and women’s economic empowerment.
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Reference Guide Version 2. Revised. The Nutrition Program Design Assistant is a tool to help organizations design the nutrition component of their community-based maternal and child health, food security, or other development program. The tool focuses on prevention and also provides guidance on recu...perative approaches that are needed when there is a high prevalence of acute malnutrition
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