For many years, Community Health Care Workers (CHWs) in Tanzania and Africa in general have played significant role in community health promotion. Their specific roles have been changing from time to time. However, their key roles have over time included giving health education and dissemination of ...health information to communities, invariably moving on to include other services such as offering curative services and conducting community surveys. Deployment of CHWs has mainly been a response to the severe shortage of the human resource for health in most African countries due to brain drain for various reasons that include unattractive terms and conditions of employment. On the other hand the human resources for health (HRH) is a result of positive growing demand for health services, a situation confronted by inadequate supply of trained health personnel from training institutions to meet the demand.
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UNHCR’s Public Health Strategy 2021-2025 is based on the lessons learnt, and builds on the achievements, of the Global Strategy for Public Health 2014-2018.
Progress was made on policies favouring inclusion and integration into national systems3 with 92% of 48 operations surveyed reporting refuge...es having access to national primary health care facilities under the same conditions as nationals and 96% reporting refugees having access to all relevant vaccines under the same conditions as nationals. While many refugee hosting countries have policies that allow refugees to access national health services, many face partial access, prohibitive out-of-pocket expenditures and other barriers including distance to facilities, language and provider acceptance. Furthermore, more work is needed on strengthening these systems to be able to meet the needs of both host communities and refugees.
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Adolescence is a critical stage in life for physical, cognitive and emotional development, shaping future health and well-being. Comprehensive measurement of adolescent health is essential to prioritize health issues, guide interventions and track progress. However, global, regional and national ado...lescent health measurement has historically been inconsistent and incomplete.
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The "Primary Healthcare Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List" by the South African National Department of Health provides evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing and managing common medical conditions at the primary healthcare level. This document includes treatment protocols ...for various health issues, such as infections, chronic diseases, maternal and child health, mental health, and emergency care. It aims to standardize care, promote rational medicine use, and ensure equitable access to essential medications across South Africa. The guidelines emphasize prevention, accurate diagnosis, and efficient treatment strategies to improve patient outcomes.
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Introduction Community health workers (CHWs) are increasingly being tasked to prevent and manage cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors in underserved populations in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs); however, little is known about the required training necessary for them to ...accomplish their role. This review aimed to evaluate the training of CHWs for the prevention and management of CVD and its risk factors in LMICs.
Methods A search strategy was developed in line with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, and five electronic databases (Medline, Global Health, ERIC, EMBASE and CINAHL) were searched to identify peer-reviewed studies published until December 2016 on the training of CHWs for prevention or control of CVD and its risk factors in LMICs. Study characteristics were extracted using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and quality assessed using Effective Public Health Practice Project’s Quality Assessment Tool. The search, data extraction and quality assessment were performed independently by two researchers.
Results The search generated 928 articles of which 8 were included in the review. One study was a randomised controlled trial, while the remaining were before–after intervention studies. The training methods included classroom lectures, interactive lessons, e-learning and online support and group discussions or a mix of two or more. All the studies showed improved knowledge level post-training, and two studies demonstrated knowledge retention 6 months after the intervention.
Conclusion The results of the eight included studies suggest that CHWs can be trained effectively for CVD prevention and management. However, the effectiveness of CHW trainings would likely vary depending on context given the differences between studies (eg, CHW demographics, settings and training programmes) and the weak quality of six of the eight studies. Well-conducted mixed-methods studies are needed to provide reliable evidence about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of training programmes for CHWs.
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ABSTRACT
More than 500 million people worldwide live with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Health systems today face fundamental challenges in delivering optimal care due to ageing populations, healthcare workforce constraints, financing, availability and affordability of CVD medicine, and service del...ivery.
Digital health technologies can help address these challenges. They may be a tool
to reach Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 and reduce premature mortality from
non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by a third by 2030. Yet, a range of fundamental barriers prevents implementation and access to such technologies. Health system governance, health provider, patient and technological factors can prevent or distort their implementation.
World Heart Federation (WHF) roadmaps aim to identify essential roadblocks on the pathway to effective prevention, detection, and treatment of CVD. Further, they aim to provide actionable solutions and implementation frameworks for local adaptation. This WHF Roadmap for digital health in cardiology identifies barriers to implementing digital health technologies for CVD and provides recommendations for overcoming them.
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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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The waves of yellow fever transmission in the Region of the Americas in 2016–2018 involved the largest number of human and epizootic cases to be reported in several decades. Yellow fever is a serious viral hemorrhagic disease that poses a challenge for health professionals. It requires early recog...nition of signs and symptoms, which are often nonspecific, and it can mimic other acute febrile syndromes. Early detection of suspected or confirmed cases, monitoring of vital signs, life support measures, and treatment of acute kidney failure continue to be the recommended strategies for case management. This report is the result of discussions among experienced specialists in the Americas on the clinical management of yellow fever patients, especially during outbreaks and epidemics, in the context of current medical and scientific evidence and taking into account the technical guidelines already available in the countries of the Region. It includes flowcharts for initially addressing patients with clinical suspicion of yellow fever and proposes a minimum package of laboratory tests that may be useful in contexts where resources are limited. In addition, it considers aspects of health system organization for dealing with yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
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This report aims to outline the current available knowledge on the health and wellbeing of older persons in the Region of the Americas during the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030). It also seeks to guide political actions towards ensuring the human rights of older persons, and desc...ribes the negotiation and drafting process behind the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons. It reports on the doctrinal and legal developments that led the Region of the Americas to draft the Convention and describes its action areas and guaranteed rights, as well as the obligations assumed by the States Parties. The Convention is an essential tool to advance the strategies of the Decade of Healthy Ageing. This publication reflects on the importance of having a major legal instrument for this purpose at the international level. The demographic transition in Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to shape the ability of countries and health systems to respond to the needs of the population. Given this reality, international instruments will be needed to guarantee the full enjoyment of the human rights of older persons. In order to design inclusive and sustainable systems, accurate, updated, and effective information is required. The Decade of Healthy Ageing––the initiative that constitutes the framework for this document––is a strategic period in which to focus on data generation and monitoring.
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Geneva, 22 May 2023 – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance today published a roadmap* outlining critical actions needed to ensure supply of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) is able to meet growing demand from countries. Released against a backdrop of a recent wave of cholera outbreaks around the world, the roadma...p forecasts the short-, mid- and long-term outlook for global cholera vaccine supply. Developed in consultation with a range of key Alliance partners, including WHO, UNICEF, the Global Taskforce for Cholera Control (GTFCC), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), it describes how these organizations, manufacturers and countries can work together towards ensuring global OCV supply can support largescale preventive vaccination by 2026.
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This content is from the Advance Chapters of the NEW Where There Is No Doctor. You can download this chapter in Bangla, English, Haitian Kreyol, Lao, Nepali, Spanish, and Swahili
The revision of the SRHR Policy is based on the results of the analysis of the implementation process of the past policy, which has provided evidence to
ensure that the revised policy is relevant and effective. The revision has also been done with the participation of all national stakeholders who ...have
also international experience on SRHR issues. The Ministry urges all public and private institutions to use this policy as a guide in the implementation of
SRHR services in the country.
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The domestic regulation of public health emergencies (PHEs) is inextricably linked to the regulation of other types of disaster. PHEs are usually governed at least partly by general disaster and emergency laws. Moreover, there is significant overlap in the legal mechanisms used to respond to PHEs an...d other types of disaster, including the declaration of a state of disaster or emergency and the use of emergency powers. Even where PHEs are regulated by separate instruments, those instruments must surmount many of the same policy and practical challenges as general disaster laws, such as finely balancing competing considerations (e.g. speedy response versus due process), facilitating the coordination of a multitude of actors, and protecting the most vulnerable within society. Finally, many contemporary developments in disaster risk management (DRM), such as a greater emphasis on risk reduction and preparedness, are just as pertinent to PHEs as to other types of disaster.
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Antibiotics have been useful in fighting infectious diseases in our country for decades, but because of the overuse and misuse of these agents, an increasing number of organisms are now resistant to them. The Philippines, like other Southeast Asian countries, has already been encountering the many c...hallenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which include increasing social and economic costs and rising patient mortality. Although considered a global threat, it is already an emerging local health concern which calls for an urgent collaboration among different sectors to provide solutions addressing this growing problem.
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This Handbook is primarily for educators, to help them learn about mental health issues and better support them in educational environments. The Handbook aims to provide training to teachers, administrators, and people involved in the education of primary school children about the implementation of ...mental health literacy into daily school life. Such knowledge, skills and attitudes will equip all levels of educators with key tools to support student mental health, manage difficult classroom behavior, and promote students’ wellbeing and academic success.
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This bi-weekly brief details the latest developments in scientific knowledge and public health policy from around the world as well as updates to the COVID-19-related guidance from Africa CDC, WHO and other public health agencies.
The Lancet Planetary Health Published:May 17, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00090-0
Every year pollution causes 9 million deaths—1 in every 6 deaths worldwide, according to a Lancet Commission on pollution and health.
While the number of deaths caused by household air pollution a...nd water pollution decreased from 2015 to 2019, overall deaths remain roughly the same because of a 7% increase in deaths caused by air pollution and toxic chemical pollution.
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8 March 2022
A very large number of people from Ukraine are fleeing the country and entering the European Union (EU) countries bordering Ukraine (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) and the EU-neighbourhood country of the Republic of Moldova. Those fleeing Ukraine - mainly women and children - are ...currently dispersing into communities, but as more people congregate at border crossings it is likely that they will also need to be housed in reception centres.
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