While there has been real progress in addressing the burden of disease in the WHO African region, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the link between health, economics and security, as the region saw decades of progress threatened, including positive trends in decreasing inequality. In the Africa...n Region the momentum towards achieving the 2030 SDG disease burden reduction targets (SDG targets 3.3, 3.4 and 3B) has stalled.
The COVID-19 pandemic was also a major threat to gains made, such as the eradication of polio in the region, declared in 2020; reduced numbers of new HIV infections in 2021 compared to 2010; and passing the 2020 milestone of the End TB Strategy, with a 22% reduction in new cases compared with 2015. However, the pandemic also disrupted essential health services in 92% of countries globally, 22.7 million children missed basic immunization, there was an increase in malaria and TB, and global deaths from TB rose for the first time since 2015.
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The evidence base for differentiated care for stable patients has grown in recent years. There has been less attention, however, to developing differentiated models of care for patients with advanced or unstable HIV disease. Current clinical guidelines and policies regarding optimal packages of care... for high-risk patients give few or no recommendations about how, by whom, or where they should be delivered for optimal impact.
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Outstanding child and adolescent TB priorities include the need to: find the missing children with active TB and link them to TB care; prevent TB in children who are in contact with infectious TB cases (through implementation of active contact investigation and provision of preventive treatment); an...d advance integration within general child health services, including maternal and child health/ reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, HIV, nutrition and other programmes.
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Protecting the fundamental rights of people affected by HIV
Under the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008), every citizen - including people living with HIV - has the right to work, access health care, and receive basic education.
However, stigma and discrimination r...emains, preventing people living with HIV (PLHIV) from accessing health services, maintaining employment and receiving education – denying them of the fundamental rights that all Myanmar citizens are entitled to under the law.
No publication year indicated.
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WHO recommends that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) be offered as an additional prevention choice for HIV-negative individuals at substantial risk of HIV infection as part of combination prevention approaches.
HIV drug resistance has been rarely reported among PrEP users who tested HIV positive i...n randomized controlled trials or open-label studies. However, PrEP-selected HIV drug resistance could potentially negatively impact the effectiveness of treatment options among PrEP users who acquire HIV, since there is a potential for overlapping resistance profiles between antiretroviral drugs used for both PrEP and first-line antiretroviral therapy.
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UNAIDS calls on governments to live up to their commitment to develop nationally owned and led social protection systems for all, including floors; and scale up and progressively enhance coverage, adequacy and comprehensiveness, thereby improving the responsiveness and quality of interventions to ad...dress the needs and vulnerabilities of people living with HIV.
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The consolidated guidelines are expected to provide the basis and rationale for the development of national guidelines for LTBI management, adapted to the national and local epidemiology of TB, the availability of resources, the health infrastructure and other national and local determinants. The gu...idelines are to be used primarily in national TB and HIV control programmes, or their equivalents in ministries of health, and for other policy-makers working on TB and HIV and infectious diseases. They are also appropriate for officials in other line ministries with work in the areas of health.
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An evaluation of WFP’s operation. Evaluation Report
The Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) main components include: relief assistance; food assistance for assets (FFA); nutrition support to women, children and HIV/TB patients; school feeding (SF) and capacity building. The evalua...tion scope covers the design phase and all activities up to this evaluation (January 2013-September 2016). Since the PRRO was extended through December 2017, the purpose is not as a final evaluation, but to provide results on achievements that can inform current and future operations
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Policy Brief, Updated in March 2017
Key messages
• Sex workers have the right to equal protection under the law, regardless of the legal status of sex work.
• Sex workers have the right to access HIV, sexually transmitted infection (STI) and other health services free from the thr...eat of violence, intimidation, incarceration, and stigma and discrimination.
• Justice and law enforcement sectors, together with the health sector and sex worker communities, should work in partnership to reform relevant legislation, policies and practices.
• Capacity development of all partners is critical to the success of the HIV response among sex workers.
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Fistula Care's implementing partner in Ethiopia, IntraHealth, has developed materials to train health workers on obstetric fistula prevention, identification, and pre-repair care. The course contains a participant handbook (PDF, 604 KB), a facilitator manual (PDF, 1.3 MB), ten modules, a variety of ...visual aids, and supplementary handouts
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WHO’s sentinel surveys of acquired HIV resistance to dolutegravir among people receiving dolutegravir-containing antiretroviral therapy is intended for easy and frequent implementation. Results from sentinel surveys provide insight into the prevalence and year-over-year trends of dolutegravir resi...stance in adults, children and adolescents receiving dolutegravir-based ART.
This sentinel method is implemented complementary to WHO-recommended methods for estimating nationally representative levels of acquired HIV drug resistance.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a universal antiretroviral therapy (ART) for all HIVinfected children before the age of two since 2010, but this implies an early identification of these infants. We described the Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) cascade, the ...staffing and the quality of infrastructures in pediatric HIV care facilities, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
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Afr J Tradit Complement Altern Med. (2016) 13(4):123-131
Out of 400 questionnaires distributed to the participants, 389 were returned with data acceptable for analysis. Ages of the participants ranged from 18 to 75 years (Mean=43 + 11.6). Out of the 272 (69.9%) participants who conceded that th...ey had used medicinal herbs at least once, 30 (7.7%) participants used medicinal herbs frequently while 242 (62.2 %) rarely used the herbs. At least 20 plant species belonging to 16 families were reportedly used by the participants. Asteraceae was the most common plant family reportedly used by the participants. Allium sativum and Dicoma anomala, reportedly used by 21.0% and 14.3% respectively, were the most commonly used medicinal herbs in this population. In addition, boosting the immune system and treating gastrointestinal ailments, apparently cited by 32% and 28% participants respectively, were the most commonly reported reasons for using medicinal herbs.
http://dx.doi.org/10.21010/ajtcam.v13i4.17
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The recommendations in these guidelines promote the use of simple, non-invasive diagnostic tests to assess the stage of liver disease and eligibility for treatment; prioritize treatment for those with most advanced liver disease and at greatest risk of mortality; and recommend the preferred use of n...ucleos(t)ide analogues with a high barrier to drug resistance (tenofovir and entecavir, and entecavir in children aged 2–11 years) for first- and second-line treatment. Recommendations for the treatment of HBV/HIV-coinfected persons are based on the WHO 2013 Consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection, which will be updated in 2015.
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In Kenya, the bacterial infections that contribute most to human disease are often those in which re-‐sistance is most evident. Examples are multidrug-‐resistant enteric bacterial pathogens such as typhoid, ... diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli and invasive non-‐typhi salmonella, penicillin-‐resistant Streptococcus pneu-‐moniae, vancomycin-‐resistant enterococci, methicillin-‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus and multidrug-‐re-‐sistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Resistance to medicines commonly used to treat malaria is of particu-‐lar concern, as is the emerging resistance to anti-‐HIV drugs. Often, more expensive medicines are required to treat these infections, and this becomes a major challenge in resource-‐poor settings.
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Information note.
This information note provides a strategic overview of key implementation considerations for diagnostic integration using these devices, and is primarily intended for use by national laboratory services and TB, HIV, and hepatitis programme managers.
It may also be of inte...rest to managers of maternal, newborn and child health programmes and sexual and reproductive health programmes, international and bilateral agencies, and organizations that provide financial and technical support to the relevant national health programmes.
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Technical Update
Areas of Africa endemic for Buruli ulcer (BU), caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, also have a high prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with adult prevalence rates between 1% and 5% (Maps). However, there is limited information on the prevalence of BU–HIV coinfection.... Preliminary
evidence suggests that HIV infection may increase the risk of BU disease (1–3). In the Médecins Sans Frontières project in Akonolinga, Cameroon, HIV prevalence was approximately 3–6 times higher among BU patients than the regional estimated HIV prevalence (2). Similarly in Benin and Ghana, BU
patients were 8 times and 3 times respectively more likely to have HIV infection than those without BU (1, 3). Further study is needed to clarify this association and enhance knowledge about the prevalence ofBU–HIV coinfection in endemic areas.
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The USAID | DELIVER PROJECT, Task Order 4, developed this guide for quantifying health commodities; it will assist technical advisors, program managers, warehouse managers, procurement officers, and service providers in (1) estimating the total commodity needs and costs for successful implementation... of national health program strategies and goals, (2) identifying the funding needs and gaps for procuring the required commodities, and (3) planning procurements and shipment delivery schedules to ensure a sustained and effective supply of health commodities.
The step-by-step approach to quantification presented in this guide is complemented by a set of product-specific companion pieces that include detailed instructions for forecasting consumption of antiretroviral drugs, HIV test kits, antimalarial drugs, and laboratory supplies.
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The revised guidelines present two major changes to existing guidelines: (A) there are now just 2 categories of pneumonia instead of 3 (“pneumonia” which is treated at home with oral amoxicillin and “severe pneumonia” which requires injectable antibiotics) and (B) oral amoxicillin replaces o...ral cotrimoxazole as first line treatment, preferably in 250mg dispersible tablet form, twice daily for five days which can be reduced to three days in low HIV settings.
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Constituting the second part of the World Drug Report 2022, the present booklet contains an overview of the global demand for and supply of drugs.
The first chapter of the booklet begins with the latest estimates of the number of people who use drugs, the distribution of those users by type of drug...s, age and sex, and recent trends in the use of drugs. The chapter also reviews the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on drug use patterns and service provision. Other issues examined in the chapter are the health consequences of drug use, including the number of people in treatment for drug use disorders and the extent of drug injecting and of HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs. The chapter concludes with a review of the extent to which strategies, policies and interventions are in place to respond to the drug use problem.
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