In collaboration with partners, the government of Ethiopia has successfully developed 10 years Hand Hygiene for All (HH4A) costed national roadmap- a country-wide approach to achieving sustainable and universal hand hygiene. On the occasion of the 2022 Global Hand Washing Day event ( Ethiopia is cel...ebrating the event for one month with different sessions), the national HH4A road map launched on the 4th of Nov 2022 in a high-level advocacy event in the presence of higher officials and partners. Action is set mainly on the need for a joint effort to mobilize resources for implementation, monitoring and documenting of lessons and best practices.
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First Global Patient Safety Challenge Clean Care is Safer Care
The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to impro...ve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants.
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3rd edition. Patient safety standards are critical for the establishment and assessment of patient safety programmes within hospitals. This third edition of the Patient safety assessment manual provides an updated set of standards and assessment criteria that reflect current best practice and WHO gu...idance. The manual will support the implementation of patient safety assessments and improvement programmes within hospitals as part of the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Framework to ensure that patient safety is prioritized and facilities and staff implement best practices. The manual is a key tool for use by professional associations regulatory accrediting or oversight bodies and ministries of health to improve patient safety.
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Patient safety standards are critical for the establishment and assessment of patient safety programmes within hospitals. This third edition of the Patient safety assessment manual provides an updated set of standards and assessment criteria that reflect current best practice and WHO guidance. The m...anual will support the implementation of patient safety assessments and improvement programmes within hospitals as part of the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Framework to ensure that patient safety is prioritized and facilities and staff implement best practices. The manual is a key tool for use by professional associations regulatory accrediting or oversight bodies and ministries of health to improve patient safety.
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2nd edition. The interagency field handbook on malaria control was developed to set out effective malaria control responses in humanitarian emergencies, particularly during the acute phase when reliance on international humanitarian assistance is greatest. This second edition represents a thorough u...pdating and revision of the first edition. The structure remains similar, but includes an additional chapter on humanitarian coordination. All chapters have been revised to reflect changes in best practices, improvements in technologies, availability of new tools, and changes in WHO recommendations.
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This guide provides a comprehensive overview of essential information related to immunization, including technical information about vaccines, a review of immunization program management best practices, guidance on the delivery of immunization services, monitoring and evaluation, disease surveillanc...e, and the role of behavior change.
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The LDHS provides an opportunity to inform policy and provide data for planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of national health programs. It is designed to provide up-to-date information on health indicators including fertility levels, sexual activity, fertility preferences, awaren...ess and use of family
planning methods, breastfeeding practices, nutritional status of children, early childhood and maternal mortality, maternal and child health, and awareness and behaviors regarding HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. The study also incorporated measurements of HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis Cprevalence along with seroprevalence of Ebola virus disease antibodies, the results of which will be included in future addendums. In addition to presenting national estimates, the report provides estimates of key indicators for both rural and urban areas, the country’s 15 counties, and the capital, Monrovia.
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In many countries neonatal tetanus is responsible for half of all neonatal deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases and for almost 14% of al¡ infant deaths. It is estimated that in the 1970s more than 10,000 newborns died annually from neonatal tetanus in the Americas. Neonatal tetanus is prevent...ed by immunization and/or assuring clean delivery and post-delivery practices.
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4th edition
The WHO Laboratory Biosafety Manual (LBM) has been in broad use at all levels of clinical and public health laboratories, and other biomedical sectors globally, serving as a de facto global standard that presents best practices and sets trends in biosafety.
LBM encouraged countries t...o accept and implement basic concepts in biological safety and to develop national codes of practice for the safe handling of biological agents in laboratories within their geographical borders.
This fourth edition of the manual builds on the risk assessment framework introduced in the third edition. A thorough, evidence-based and transparent assessment of the risks allows safety measures to be balanced with the actual risk of working with biological agents on a case-by-case basis.
This novel evidence- and risk-based approach will allow optimised resource use and sustainable laboratory biosafety and biosecurity policies and practices that are relevant to their individual circumstances and priorities, enabling equitable access to clinical and public health laboratory tests and biomedical research opportunities without compromising safety.
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Patient-centred care (PCC) is a pillar of quality health services, where decision-making power is shared between the clinician and the patient. Although, this approach could be adopted with easiness in high income settings or in countries with unified health systems, in settings such as Peru, where ...universal access and other structural problems remain a challenge, the practice of PCC is not a priority. In Peru, research on PCC has been conducted for almost two decades, but this has not generated a need for development in academia, decision makers, health personnel or patients. Here, we give an overview of the road that PCC research has taken in Peru and the challenges that remain to translate it into clinical practice.
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The toolkit provides guidance on where to get started, including the structures and resources that should be put in place at the national and health-care facility level, through a stepwise approach in low-resource settings. As the ultimate goal of an AMS programme is sustainable behaviour change in ...physicians’ antibiotic prescribing practices, the toolkit also provides detailed guidance on how to plan, perform and assess AMS interventions – including feedback on antibiotic use over time. Finally, the toolkit provides an overview of the competencies an AMS team needs to guide health-care professionals in changing their antibiotic prescribing behaviours.
Please note that this course is part of a training package, so please register for the complementary course WHO Policy Guidance on Integrated Antimicrobial Stewardship Activities so that you can complete your learning journey.
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The Participant’s manual contains summaries of information presented by the trainers, copies of worksheets and checklists for the clinical practice and practical sessions, and exercises that participants will do during the course. One manual should be provided for each participant, using the modul...es selected, for use during the course and can be used as a reference after the course. child feeding counselling. Course facilitators can decide which sessions to cover, depending on the specific learning needs of the health workers in your community.
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he WHO South-East Region in 2019 accounted for nearly a million missing TB patients from the estimated incidence. Active case-finding (ACF) or systematic screening for tuberculosis is an important tool to reach out to missing TB patients. When appropriately implemented, the activity is cost effectiv...e, helps to reduce diagnosis and treatment delays, and prevents the spread of the disease. This document presents an analysis of published ACF studies from the Region. It can be used by Member States for effective planning, implementation and monitoring of these activities.
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Tuberculosis continues to represent a severe public health problem in the Region of the Americas, even more so in the case of indigenous peoples, whose TB incidence is much higher than that of the general population. To achieve tuberculosis control in these communities, it is necessary to respond t...o communities’ diverse needs from an intercultural perspective that allows the application of a holistic approach—from a standpoint of equality and mutual respect—and considers the value of their cultural practices. In the Region of the Americas, although there has been progress toward recognizing the need for an intercultural approach to health services, obstacles rooted in discrimination, racism, and the exclusion of indigenous peoples and other ethnic groups persist. To respond to this situation, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) prepared this guidance which––based on an intercultural approach in accordance with the priority lines of the current PAHO Policy on Ethnicity and Health and its practical development in the Region’s indigenous populations––represent a support tool for implementing the End TB Strategy. This publication integrates PAHO’s accumulated experience and best practices developed by its Member States in recent years, including discussions and experiences shared in regional meetings on the issue, and emphasizes innovation and social inclusion. This requires an urgent shift away from traditional paradigms, taking specific actions that gradually reduce TB incidence and moving toward effective multisectoral actions that have proven effective in quickly containing the epidemic. This publication integrates PAHO’s accumulated experience and best practices developed by its Member States in recent years, including discussions and experiences shared in regional meetings on the issue, and emphasizes innovation and social inclusion. This requires an urgent shift away from traditional paradigms, taking specific actions that gradually reduce TB incidence and moving toward effective multisectoral actions that have proven effective in quickly containing the epidemic.
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Interim Guidance, 12 July 2021; This tool was developed to assess present and surge capacities for the treatment of COVID-19 in health facilities. It allows health facilities to assess the availability and status of stockout of critical COVID-19 medicines, equipment and supplies on site and to ident...ify areas that need further attention to enable the facility to respond effectively to the pandemic. The tool encompasses key components that are essential to managing COVID-19 in a hospital setting, including:
health workforce (numbers, absences, COVID-19 infections, staff vaccinated for COVID-19 health workforce management, training and support);
medicines and medical supplies for management of COVID-19;
IPC capacities (protocols, safety measures, guidelines) and the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff;
diagnostic testing, imaging and patient monitoring devices and supplies
medical equipment for management of COVID-19, including O2 administration;
COVID-19 vaccine readiness ;
beds and space capacity.
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3 June 2021. After 40 years of AIDS, charting a course to end the pandemic.
The report shows that countries with progressive laws and policies and strong and inclusive health systems have had the best outcomes against HIV. In those countries, people living with and affected by HIV are more likely t...o have access to effective HIV services, including HIV testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis (medicine to prevent HIV), harm reduction, multimonth supplies of HIV treatment and consistent, quality follow-up and care.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is, and should be, a curable disease; however, each year significant numbers of patients acquire or develop drug-resistant TB, which has a much lower cure rate. Patients with drug-resistant TB have a high prevalence of symptoms; hence, staff caring for these patients should h...ave some familiarity with palliative care, so that general palliative care principles are available to all patients. The timely identification, and addressing, of adverse events occurring during the treatment course is considered as general palliative care for those receiving curative treatment. This publication summarizes the general palliative care approach, which is recommended for use in settings and services that occasionally treat palliative care patients, but do not provide palliative care as the main focus of their work. The review focuses on 18 high TB priority countries of the WHO European Region.
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These guidelines provide new and updated recommendations on the use of point-of-care testing in children under 18 months of age and point-of-care tests to monitor treatment in people living with HIV; the treatment monitoring algorithm; and timing of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among people living w...ith HIV who are being treated for tuberculosis.
New recommendations launched today outline key new actions that countries can take to improve the delivery of HIV testing, treatment and care services by providing greater options for differentiated approaches such as, supporting HIV treatment start in the community, ensuring that children are diagnosed and treated early, and that viral load treatment monitoring is more accessible, focused and triggers clinical action
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n the countries of the Region of the Americas, there are different forms of organization of health services at the first level of care. Some countries include certain laboratory, dental and diagnostic imaging practices in the first level of care, while other countries centralize these practices in t...he second and third levels of care. Consequently, so that the List of Priority Medical Devices (LPMD) could be adapted to these different forms of organization of health systems in the region of the Americas, modular lists were developed that complement the main list. In this way, to use the LPMD, only those modules that are planned to be offered in a first-level care center are selected, and it is those lists that are analyzed.
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It has been over a year since Kenya identified the first case of COVID-19 in the country. The Government formed the National COVID-19 task force, which supported the country's response through multi-sectoral technical working groups on testing, case management, risk communication and community engag...ement among others. An earlier version of the COVID case management guideline was released in April 2020 and capacity building of health care workers on diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 was quickly carried out, even as counties prepared themselves by setting up isolation centres and supplies
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