Covid-19 Social Policy Response Series / No.14
This report examines Ecuador’s social policy response to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects and protect
vulnerable populations. It chronologically traces containment, closure policies, social policies and programmes
put in place following t...he announcement of Covid-19 as a global pandemic. A combination of external con-
straints and domestic structures, i.e. informality and weak coordination, led to truncated efforts in the healthcare
response, while persistent inequalities in access to technology and high levels of informality led to fragmented
education, labour policies and social protection responses. The report zooms into the Family Protection Grant
(Bono de Protección Familiar or BPF), a new social protection programme that covers informal workers, which
captures the difficulties in reaching unregistered populations amid lockdown and containment measures.
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WHO Guideline. Since 2010, countries in the meningitis belt have started to introduce a new serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine conferring individual protection and herd immunity. Following the successful roll-out of this vaccine, epidemics due to Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A (NmA) are... disappearing, but other serogroups (e.g. NmW, NmX and NmC) still cause epidemics, albeit at a lower frequency and of a smaller size. Due to these changes, WHO organized the review of the evidence to provide recommendations for epidemic control, related to operational thresholds for investigation and response to outbreaks, the use of rapid diagnostic tests, antibiotic regimens in epidemics, and prophylaxis for household contacts of cases
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Bull World Health Organ 2022;100:50–59 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.21.286689
Exposure to air pollution causes 7 million deaths worldwide every year and costs an estimated US$ 5.11 trillion in welfare losses globally. In the 15 countries that emit the most greenhouse gas emissions, the health impacts of air pollution are estimated to cost more than 4% of their GDP. Actions to... meet the Paris goals would cost around 1% of global GDP. The report provides recommendations for governments on how to maximize the health benefits of tackling climate change and avoid the worst health impacts of this global challenge.
It describes how countries around the world are now taking action to protect lives from the impacts of climate change – but that the scale of support remains woefully inadequate, particularly for the small island developing states, and least developed countries. Only approximately 0.5% of multilateral climate funds dispersed for climate change adaptation have been allocated to health projects
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WHO Model Formulary for children based on the Second Model List of Essential Medicines for Children 2009.
In 2007, the World Health Assembly passed a Resolution titled ‘Better Medicines for Children’. This resolution recognized the need for research and development into medicines for children,... including better dosage forms, better evidence and better information about how to ensure that medicines for treating the common childhood diseases are given at the right dose for children of all ages.
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The report provides a brief introduction to patents and licences and their effect on the market for antiretroviral (ARV) medicines. It gives an overview of the patent landscape with respect to a select number of ARV medicines in developing countries as of April 2014. The focus is primarily on those ...ARVs that are recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as new ARVs that have either recently obtained regulatory approval or are in phase III clinical trials.
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Environment International Volume 146, January 2021, 106245.
We use soils to provide 98.8% of our food, but we must ensure that the pressure we place on soils to provide this food in the short-term does not inadvertently push the Earth into a less hospitable state in the long-term. Using the planeta...ry boundaries framework, we show that soils are a master variable for regulating critical Earth-system processes. Indeed, of the seven Earth-systems that have been quantified, soils play a critical and substantial role in changing the Earth-systems in at least two, either directly or indirectly, as well as smaller contributions for a further three.
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This report is not a country scorecard. Rather, its purpose is to act as a compass to guide progress towards health in the SDGs.
There has been a significant improvement in the state of health in the region with healthy life expectancy - time spent in full health - in the region increasing from 50....9 years to 53.8 between 2012 and 2015 - the most marked increase of any region in the world.
What is making Africans sick is changing. The top killers are still lower respiratory infections, HIV and diarrhoeal disease and countries have routinely focused on preventing and treating this trio, often through specialized programmes. The payoff has been significant declines in deaths due to these diseases. There has been a 50% reduction in the burden of disease caused by what have been the top 10 killers since 2000 and death rates have dropped from 87.7 to 51.1 deaths per 100,000 persons between 2000 and 2015...
Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer are now claiming more lives with a person aged 30 to 70 in the region having a one in five chance of dying from a noncommunicable disease (NCDs).
Countries are specifically failing to provide essential services to two critical age groups – adolescents and the elderly...
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