• provide scientific information on the safety, efficacy, and quality control/ quality assurance of widely used medicinal plants, in order to facilitate their appropriate use in Member States;
• provide models to assist Member States in developing their own mono- graphs or formularies for these... or other herbal medicines; and
• facilitate information exchange among Member States.
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Not long ago, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Chagas disease, several campaigns denounced the scant progress has been made in diffrent spheres- medical, scientific and politcal- but major challanges still remain. This is an appropriate time to celebrate what has been ach...ieved and to take the next step.
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Trachoma causes more vision loss and blindness than any other infection in the world. This disease is caused by Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria. Other variants or strains of these bacteria can cause a sexually transmitted infection (chlamydia) and disease in lymph nodes.
This is photomicrograph ...of a conjunctival smear that revealed the presence of what are known as, intracytoplasmic inclusions Trachoma is easily spread through direct personal contact such as from fingers, through shared towels and clothes, and through flies that have been in contact with the eyes or nose of an infected person. When left untreated, repeated Chlamydia trachomatis infections in the eye can cause severe scarring on the inside of the eyelid. This can cause the eyelashes to scratch the cornea (trichiasis). In addition to causing pain, trichiasis permanently damages the cornea and can lead to irreversible blindness.
Chlamydia trachomatis infections spread in areas that lack access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation systems. Trachoma affects the most resource-limited communities in the world. Globally, almost 1.9 million people have vision loss because of trachoma, and it causes 1.4% of all blindness worldwide.1 In 2021, 136 million people lived in trachoma-endemic areas and were at risk of trachoma blindness.
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An Action Framework and annexe to Immunization Agenda 2030 (Draft version)
27 January 2021
This Trachoma Action Planning – a planning guide – is published by the
International Coalition for Trachoma Control at the request of the
World Health Organization Alliance for the Global Elimination of Trachoma
by 2020.
The HHFA Comprehensive guide serves as the main reference document for planning and implementing a country HHFA. This guide will promote understanding of:
What the HHFA is and the information it can and cannot provide.
The HHFA modules, questionnaires and CSPro electronic data collection tool.
Th...e HHFA indicators, indices and their organization within the HHFA indicator inventory platform.
The HHFA data analysis platform.
The HHFA sampling and data collection methodologies.
The detailed steps involved in planning and implementing an HHFA.
Key concepts in review, interpretation and communication of HHFA findings.
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One of the principles underpinning the delivery of all essential services and coordination of those services is the “survivor-centered approach”, which places the human rights, needs, and wishes of women and girl survivors at the centre of service delivery.
A key challenge faced by many entit...ies working to end violence against women is ensuring that survivors’ voices and inputs are incorporated into policies, practices, and procedures on response. Survivors have diverse needs and face different risks. Not all women and girls experience violence in the same way. An effective intervention takes into account the realities of their unique circumstances, addresses individual needs, and reduces the risk for further harm and suffering.
UN Women, together with Global Rights for Women, have developed “Safe consultations with survivors of violence against women and girls”, which is designed to provide practical steps, safety measures, and actions that government agencies, civil society and survivor organizations, and United Nations’ entities can take to incorporate survivors' voices into systemic reform efforts, through safe and meaningful consultations.
This guidance is intended to help policymakers develop survivor-centered programming on ending violence against women and girls that meets the needs of diverse groups of women and girls, including those who are at higher risk of experiencing violence and discrimination. It is applicable to programming across the health, justice and policing, and social services sectors, as well as coordination of these sectors, and will help improve the standard and delivery of essential services for women and girls who have experienced violence.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has raised profound ethical challenges on an unprecedented global scale. These challenges include how to allocate scarce resources (especially vaccines and therapeutics), both within and between countries, whether and when to mandate vaccines and/or masks, whether and how to co...nduct public health surveillance, whether to issue vaccine passports, and how to address stark international and intranational inequities. In addition, there have been ethical concerns about the conduct of COVID-19 research, such as the appropriateness of challenge studies.
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Practical guide intended for physicians, pharmacists, nurses and medical auxiliaries. This guide is not a dictionary of pharmacological agents. It is a practical manual intended for health professionals, physicians, pharmacists, nurses and health auxiliaries invoved in curative care and drug managem...ent. We have tried to provide simple, practical solutions to the questions and problems faced by field medical staff, using the accumulated field experience of Médecins Sans Frontières, the recommendations of reference organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and specialized documentation in each field. Also available in French, Spanish and Arabic
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These guidelines group all recommendations on TB care and support in one document and are complemented by an operational handbook. The guidelines are to be used primarily by national TB programmes, or their equivalents in Ministries of Health, stakeholders and technical organizations working on... TB care in the public and private sectors and in the community.
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Obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have been steadily increasing globally, and with them, a pressing need to implement effective responses to address the contributing factors. Among the available evidence-based policy options that enable healthier choices and improved diets is ...the implementation of taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).
This tax manual is a practical guide for policy-makers and others involved in SSB tax policy development to promote healthy diets and populations. It features summaries and case studies of SSB global taxation evidence, and provides support on the policy-cycle development process to implement SSB taxation — from problem identification and situation analysis through policy design, development and implementation to the monitoring and evaluation phase. Additionally, the manual identifies and debunks industry tactics designed to dissuade policy-makers from implementing these taxes.
SSB taxes can be a win-win-win strategy: a win for public health (and averted health-care costs), a win for government revenue, and a win for health equity.
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25 Nov 2022
The WHO Guidelines for malaria bring together the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for malaria in one user-friendly and easy-to-navigate online platform.
The WHO Guidelines for malaria supersedes 2 previous WHO publications: the Guidelines for the treatment of mala...ria, third edition and the Guidelines for malaria vector control. Recommendations on malaria will continue to be reviewed and, where appropriate, updated based on the latest available evidence. Any updated recommendations will always display the date of the most recent revision in the MAGICapp platform. With each update, a new PDF version of the consolidated guidelines will also be available for download on the WHO website.
This version of the Guidelines includes updates to the case management of malaria, specifically the addition of new molecules for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria and optimization of the dosage regimen for anti-relapse treatment, along with updates on the use of antimalarial medicines in special risk populations including pregnant women.
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This document, Programme and curriculum development guide, presents a systematic approach to developing programmes and curricula for implementation of the family planning (FP) and comprehensive abortion care (CAC) competencies,and the theory behind the approach. Specifically, the aim is for effectiv...e implementation of these competencies in the context of pre-service education and training, post-graduate studies and continuing professional development (CPD). This guide is designed for programme and curriculum developers who are preparing or revising formal education and training programmes and curricula for the FP and CAC workforce.
This guide proposes a new FP and CAC Educational Design Model for programme and curriculum development. This model can support competency-based education (CBE) for current and future FP and CAC services, with a pre-service training pathway of at least 12 months, and can also support in-service training. CBE provides the most effective means to orient educational programmes and curricula towards effective health services that meet population health needs, and this Educational Design Model provides a guide for linking the competencies required to provide a range of health services
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Maternal mortality has fallen significantly in recent years, especially in countries that have emphasized the prevention of its main causes, such as hemorrhagic and infectious complications and hypertension , including in the Region of the Americas. In its final report on the Plan of Action to Accel...erate the Reduction of Maternal Mortality and Severe Maternal Morbidity, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported a continuing downward trend in maternal mortality, with an 18.1% reduction in the maternal morbidity ratio during the period 2010-2015 . From a pathophysiological perspective, death events are a common end result of a wide spectrum of complications leading to multi-organ dysfunction. However, there is a group of women in this situation who survive, despite the seriousness of their condition. This high number of patients––who were in serious condition
but did not die––reflects the actual health conditions in an institution or a country. For this reason, there is a need to create indicators to estimate morbidity in women due to diseases and incidents that occur during pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium. To this end, we propose conducting epidemiological surveillance of an indicator that includes women who survived after presenting a potentially fatal complication during pregnancy, childbirth, or the puerperium, reflecting quality medical attention and care (5, 6). This indicator
is maternal near-miss (MNM), which refers to extremely severe maternal morbidity––cases of a severity that
brings women very close to the death event. After adjusting the definition to a specific population and time,
MNM is defined as a case in which a woman nearly died, but survived a complication that occurred during
pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a threat to global health and development and it contributes to millions of deaths worldwide each year. Inappropriate use and overuse of antibiotics are driving an increase in AMR and have a detrimental impact on the effectiveness of these critical medicines. Throug...h the Global Action Plan on AMR, WHO is working to improve the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and reduce inappropriate antibiotic consumption.
There is a recognized need for high-quality resources to improve antibiotic prescribing globally. To address this need, a pragmatic approach was taken by WHO to develop actionable guidance for empiric antibiotic use.
The WHO AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) antibiotic book provides concise, evidence-based guidance on the choice of antibiotic, dose, route of administration, and duration of treatment for more than 30 of the most common clinical infections in children and adults in both primary health care and hospital settings. The information included in the book supports the recommendations for antibiotics listed on the WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines and Essential Medicines Children and the WHO AWaRe classification of antibiotics.
The WHO AWaRe antibiotic book is accompanied by summary infographics for each infection for both adults and children that provide a quick-reference guide for health care workers at the point of care.
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This brief advocacy document highlights the burden, risks and prevention of injuries and violence, which took the lives of 4.4 million people in 2019 and constitute 8% of all deaths. Among the injury-related causes of death include road traffic crashes, drowning, falls, burns, poisoning and violence... against oneself or others. For people age 5-29 years, three of the top five causes of death are injury-related, including road traffic injuries, homicide, and suicide. Injuries and violence are not evenly distributed across or within countries – some people are more vulnerable than others depending on the conditions in which they are born, grow, work, live and age; in general, being young, male and of low socioeconomic status all increase the risk of injury. This document, aimed at public health professionals; injury prevention researchers, practitioners and advocates; and donors, draws attention to specific strategies based on sound scientific evidence that are effective and cost-effective at preventing injuries and violence; it is critical that these strategies are more widely implemented.
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The world is not on track to end the AIDS pandemic. New infections are rising and AIDS deaths are continuing in too many communities. This report reveals why: inequalities are holding us back. In frank terms, the report calls the world’s attention to the painful reality that dangerous inequalities... are undermining the AIDS response and jeopardising the health security of everyone. The report highlights three specific areas of inequality for which concrete action is immediately possible—gender
inequalities and harmful masculinities driving HIV; marginalisation and criminalisation of key populations, which our data show is resulting in starkly little progress for those populations and undermining the overall response; and
inequalities for children whose lives must matter more than their market share. But this is not a counsel of despair, it is a call to action. Through bold action to confront these inequalities, we can end AIDS.
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Manual for step-by-step risk management for safely managed sanitation systems. 2nd edition.
This Sanitation safety planning (SSP) manual provides practical, step-by-step guidance to assist in the implementation of the 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines on sanitation and health and the ...2006 WHO Guidelines for safe use of wastewater, excreta and greywater in agriculture and aquaculture. The approach and tools should be applied to all sanitary systems to ensure that they are managed to meet health objectives.
The SSP manual is targeted at a variety of users at different levels including; health authorities and regulators, local authorities, sanitation utility managers, sanitation enterprises and farmers, community-based organizations, farmers associations and nongovernmental organizations.
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