West Africa is experiencing the largest, most severe, most complex outbreak of Ebola virus disease in history. On 11 August 2014, WHO convened a consultation where the participants concluded that in the particular context of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it is ethically acceptable to of...fer unproven interventions that have shown promising results in the laboratory and in animal models but have not yet been evaluat-
ed for safety and efficacy in humans as potential treatment or prevention
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Children continue to be exposed to powerful food marketing, which predominantly promotes foods high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or sodium and uses a wide variety of marketing strategies that are likely to appeal to children. Food marketing has a harmful impact on chi...ldren’s food choice and their dietary intake, affects their purchase requests to adults for marketed foods and influences the development of their norms about food consumption. Food marketing is also increasingly recognized as a children’s rights concern, given its negative impact on several of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.This WHO guideline provides Member States with recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, based on evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing. Guidelines on other policies to improve the food environment are currently under development.
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The Country Cooperation Strategy is the World Health Organization’s corporate framework developed in response to a country’s needs and priorities. The 2022–2025 CCS is the fourth for WHO in Sierra Leone. It is a medium-term strategic document that defines a broad framework for WHO’s work, at... all levels, with the Government of Sierra Leone and all health partners for the next four years. This document is guided by the country’s major policy and strategy documents including the 2020 National Health and Sanitation Policy (NHSP); the 2021–2025 National Health Sector Strategic Plan (NHSSP); and the 2019–2023 National Medium-term Development Plan (NMTDP). The current CCS also reflects the broad priorities of WHO as outlined in its Thirteenth General Programme of Work (2019–2023, extended to 2025) with a focus on improving access to universal health coverage, protecting people from health emergencies, and improving people’s health and well-being. The CCS priorities are also in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) in Sierra Leone and will contribute to attaining the country's SDG targets
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Primary health care, as outlined in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and again 40 years later in the 2018 WHO/UNICEF document A vision for primary health care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society a...pproach to health that combines the following three components: multisectoral policy and action; empowered people and communities; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services.(1) Primary health care-oriented health systems are health systems organized and operated so as to make the right to the highest attainable level of health the main goal, while maximizing equity and solidarity. They are composed of a core set of structural and functional elements that support achieving universal coverage and access to services that are acceptable to the population and that are equity enhancing. The term “primary care” refers to a key process in the health system that supports first-contact, accessible, continued, comprehensive and coordinated patient-focused care.
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Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) was declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, and Malawi declared its first case on 2 April. As of 30 April, there were 36 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 and 3 deaths. A State of Disaster was declared by President Arthur Peter Mutharika on 20 March and a 21...-day lockdown was implemented from 18 April to 9 May. The lockdown measures include: bans on public gatherings; closure of schools; and bans on international flights and cross-border passenger buses.
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This guide provides an overview of the major elements that must be considered before, during and after the implementation of antigen-detecting rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDTs) for SARS-CoV-2. This guide is complementary to policy guidance issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). The guide may ...appeal to a range of audiences including Ministries of Health, donors, public and private organizations/agencies acting as implementing partners and community based and civil society organizations with experience working on health, especially organizations familiar with similar testing campaigns for other disease programmes like HIV and malaria
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Almost 30 countries vulnerable to a new Ebola-style Epidemic, jeopardising the future of millions of Children. The report ranks the world’s poorest countries on the state of their public health systems, finding that 28 have weaker defences in place than Liberia where, alongside Sierra Leone and Gu...inea, the current Ebola crisis has already claimed 9,000 lives, and provoked an extraordinary international response to help contain it.
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WHO needs US$2.54 billion to provide life-saving assistance to millions of people around the world facing health emergencies. WHO’s Health Emergency Appeal is a consolidation of WHO’s priorities and financial requirements for 2023 to carry out health interventions in emergency and humanitarian r...esponses. The number of people in need of humanitarian relief has increased by almost a quarter compared to 2022, to a record 339 million. WHO is responding to an unprecedented number of intersecting health emergencies: climate change-related disasters such as flooding in Pakistan and food insecurity across the Sahel in the greater Horn of Africa; the war in Ukraine; and the health impact of conflict in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and north eastern Ethiopia – all of these emergencies overlapping with the health system disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and outbreaks of measles, cholera, and other killers. Contributions to the appeal can be fully flexible, flexible across a region, or flexible within a country appeal.
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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 is the final report of the six-year collaboration between the WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse and the Gulbenkian Global Mental Health Platform, an initiative of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation aimed at reducing the global burden of mental health through the development a...nd application of evidence and good practices to global mental health."
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The Report describes the evaluation of WHO's contribution to the Maternal Health Program in South-East Asia Region. This was an independent evaluation conducted in 2015 by Amaltas, a Delhi based organization. The evaluation highlights the progress in five countries, namely Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mya...nmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka and provides specific recommendations for Organizational Learning and Development. This report will be useful for all those interested in WHO's work on Maternal Health Program in the Region.
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The purpose of the PAS III is to guide Pakistan’s overall national response for HIV and AIDS through 2020, through focused interventions with set targets, costs, roles and responsibilities. The successful implementation of PAS III involves multiple stakeholders to achieve priority outcomes outline...d in the Strategy. The Strategy focuses on allocating limited resources to scale up high-impact, high-value interventions such as HTC and treatment to reduce AIDS related deaths and new HIV infections. Priorities in the PAS III have been identified to ensure maximum impact in reducing new infections, especially among key populations, improving treatment uptake and retention, and improving the quality of life of people living with HIV and AIDS in the context of limited financial and human resources.
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A lot has happened this year. While we continued to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, we were hit by disease outbreaks and
humanitarian crises. Yet, despite these challenges, we marched on, resolute in resolving critical health systems issues to increase
access to quality healthcare services. To furth...er our vision and bring concrete actions to reality, under
the leadership of the Government of South Sudan, we developed the Health Sector Strategic Plan to define the strategic
approaches, key interventions, mapping resource needs, and the implementation framework to strengthen the health system
to deliver essential quality health services equitably for 2023 to 2027. For WHO, this Plan will usher in a new reality -- access
to lifesaving or health-promoting interventions is doable and possible, making the health sector fairer, especially for those
unable to pay
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This Framework offers a coherent approach for eliminating tuberculosis (TB) in low-incidence countries. It is designed to guide national policy-makers and those responsible for technical aspects of the national TB response in accelerating efforts towards elimination. The document will also be inform...ative for public health surveillance officers, practitioners and nongovernmental and civil society partners working on natioal TB care and prevention and serving the populations most vulnerable to TB.
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National action plans on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) often overlook the critical intersection of gender, despite evidence that exposure and susceptibility to infection, health-seeking behaviours, as well as antimicrobial prescribing and use patterns are all influenced by gender.
2016-2018 Early implementation,
This report presents 2015 data on the consumption of systemic antibiotics from 65 countries and areas, contributing to our understanding of how antibiotics are used in these countries. In addition, the report documents early efforts of the World Health Organization (...WHO) and participating countries to monitor antimicrobial consumption, describes the WHO global methodology for data collection, and highlights the challenges and future steps in monitoring antimicrobial consumption.
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This casebook collects 64 case studies, each of which raises an important and difficult ethical issue connected with planning, reviewing, or conducting health-related research. The book’s purpose is to contribute to thoughtful analysis of these issues by researchers and members of research ethics ...committees (RECs, known in some places as ethical review committees or institutional review boards), particularly those involved with studies that are conducted or sponsored internationally.
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The WHO Quality Health Services: a planning guide focuses on actions required at the national, district and facility levels to enhance quality of health services, providing guidance on implementing key activities at each of these three levels. It highlights the need for a health systems approach to ...enhance quality of care, with a common understanding on the activities needed by all stakeholders. The guide articulates the key actions required to improve the quality of health services for the entire population. It recognizes that the path varies for each country, district and facility – stimulating the reader to consider multiple factors and entry points for action. This planning guide is for staff working at all levels of the health system (i.e. national, district and facility) who have a role in enhancing the quality of health services. It is also relevant to all stakeholders initiating and supporting action at facility, district and/or national levels both in the public and private sectors.
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The 2018 global health financing report presents health spending data for all WHO Member States between 2000 and 2016 based on the SHA 2011 methodology. It shows a transformation trajectory for the global spending on health, with increasing domestic public funding and declining external financing. T...his report also presents, for the first time, spending on primary health care and specific diseases and looks closely at the relationship between spending and service coverage
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The review’s objectives are to review progress in TB control with emphasis on DOTS strategy implementation, summarize the experience, lessons learnt and methods of work and to make recommendations for international donors, technical agencies and the Ministry of Health.