23 December 2020 This document summarizes WHO recommendations for the rational use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in health care settings and temporary strategies during acute supply shortages. This document also contains 2 Annex sections describing updated PPE use recommendations for health... workers based on the transmission scenario, setting, and activity in the context of COVID-19 (Annex 1), and updated considerations for the decontamination or reprocessing of PPE (Annex 2). This guidance is intended for public health authorities, organizations, and focal persons involved in decisions regarding PPE distribution, management, and use by health workers.
Available in Arabic, French, English, Spanish and Russian
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Interium guidance, 25 June 2021Timely and accurate diagnostic testing is an essential tool in preventing and controlling the spread of COVID-19. This document describes recommendations for national testing strategies and the use of PCR and rapid antigen tests in different transmission scenarios of t...he COVID-19 outbreak, including how testing might be rationalized in low resource settings. All testing should be followed by a strong public health response including isolating those who test positive and providing them care, contact tracing and quarantine of contacts.
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Due to high routine vaccination coverage, overall counts of diphtheria case have significantly declined in the Western Pacific Region recently. However, diphtheria is still prevalent in several countries and areas of the Region and remains a public health issue due to its high case fatality rate.
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This Field Guide for Preparedness and Response to Diphtheria Outbreaks in the Western Pacific Region is a reference resource for Member States to develop national guidelines adapted to their local context. Countries may also use this Guide to facilitate outbreak preparedness and public health responses to reduce morbidity and mortality due to diphtheria.
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This document is a guide defining requirements for quality and safety for malaria rapid diagnostic testing services to safeguard the quality of the results, the safety of the operators and patients and that of the environment for use by national malaria control programmes, regulators, implementers a...nd rapid diagnostic providers.
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The pandemic has emphasized the high risk of avoidable harm to patients, health workers, and the general public, and has identified a range of safety gaps across all core components of health systems at all levels.
The rapid review ‘Implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for patient safety’ ex...plores impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic did have on patient safety in terms of risks and avoidable harm, specifically in terms of diagnostic, treatment and care management related issues as well as highlights the main patterns of these implications within the broader health system context.
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Three classess of tests are now recommended in the latest consolidated guideles on tests for tuberculosis infection. It includes for the first-time a new class of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen-based skin tests (TBSTs), and the two existing classes of tests: the tuberculin skin test (TST) and t...he interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs).
IGRAs and TBSTs use Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex specific antigens and represent a significant advancement to TST which has been used for over half a century.
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This guide has been written for managers of national and district trachoma control programmes. It sets out, step-by-step, what is needed to assess the magnitude and extent of the trachoma problem in the area and how to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate a programme to control, and ultimately elim...inate, trachoma.
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Prepared as an outcome of ICMR Subcommittee on Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (High Grade) | This consensus document on management of non- hodgkin’s lymphoma – high grade summarizes the modalities of treatment including the site-specific anti-cancer therapies, supportive and palliative care and molec...ular markers and research questions. It also interweaves clinical, biochemical and epidemiological studies.
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Updated to Reflect the 2009 Medical Eligibility Criteria of the World Health Organization
In the mid-1980s, recognizing the limitations of traditional training and that the knowledge and skills acquired are not necessarily applied back in the workplace, MSH developed the Monitoring‐Training-Planning (MTP) approach to assist the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health to implement its Child Survi...val Program. Using the MTP approach, staff me
mbers learn to mobilize their own resources and to improve, incrementally, the management of medicines and other pharmaceuticals at their own facility.
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Under-diagnosis of asthma in ‘under-fives’ may be alleviated by improved inquiry into disease history. We assessed a questionnaire-based screening tool for asthma among 614 ‘under-fives’ with severe respiratory illness in Uganda. The questionnaire responses were compared to post hoc consensu...s diagnoses by three pediatricians who were guided by study definitions that were based on medical history, physical examination findings, laboratory and radiological tests, and response to bronchodilators. Children with asthma or bronchiolitis were categorized as “asthma syndrome”. Using this approach, 253 (41.2%) had asthma syndrome. History of and present breathing difficulties and present cough and wheezing was the best performing combination of four questionnaire items [sensitivity 80.8% (95% CI 77.6–84.0); specificity 84.7% (95% CI 81.8–87.6)]. The screening tool for asthma syndrome in ‘under-fives’ may provide a simple, cheap and quick method of identifying children with possible asthma. The validity and reliability of this tool in primary care settings should be tested.
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