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.
Maternal mortality has fallen significantly in recent years, especially in countries that have emphasized the prevention of its main causes, such as hemorrhagic and infectious complications and hypertension , including in the Region of the Americas. In its final report on the Plan of Action to Accel...erate the Reduction of Maternal Mortality and Severe Maternal Morbidity, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported a continuing downward trend in maternal mortality, with an 18.1% reduction in the maternal morbidity ratio during the period 2010-2015 . From a pathophysiological perspective, death events are a common end result of a wide spectrum of complications leading to multi-organ dysfunction. However, there is a group of women in this situation who survive, despite the seriousness of their condition. This high number of patients––who were in serious condition
but did not die––reflects the actual health conditions in an institution or a country. For this reason, there is a need to create indicators to estimate morbidity in women due to diseases and incidents that occur during pregnancy, childbirth, and the puerperium. To this end, we propose conducting epidemiological surveillance of an indicator that includes women who survived after presenting a potentially fatal complication during pregnancy, childbirth, or the puerperium, reflecting quality medical attention and care (5, 6). This indicator
is maternal near-miss (MNM), which refers to extremely severe maternal morbidity––cases of a severity that
brings women very close to the death event. After adjusting the definition to a specific population and time,
MNM is defined as a case in which a woman nearly died, but survived a complication that occurred during
pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy
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Child Survival working Group
Accessed: 18.10.2019
Designed for trainers of health workers, this manual offers skills-building sessions on developing more “male-friendly” health services. Utilizing participatory and experiential activities, the manual examines attitudinal and structural barriers that inhibit men from seeking HIV and AIDS service...s (both from the client and the provider perspectives), as well as strategies for overcoming such barriers. The manual is designed for all workers in a health care system—frontline staff, clinicians, and administrative, operational, and outreach workers.
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This guidebook for people in school settings is intended to offer strategies for use and adaptation with children and families to re-establish routines of hygiene with basic access to water and sanitation services through an approach that visibly shows that the school is WASHfriendly, inclusive - so... that all children, including those with disabilities have "ownership of the information and activities", and sustainable, repeating messages "over time to encourage lasting behaviour change"
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Technical Series on Safer Primary Care
DHS Working Papers No. 91
2nd edition.This updated publication provides programme managers with a user-friendly tool that can: (i) analyse and draw conclusions from historic dengue datasets; (ii) identify appropriate alarm indicators that can predict forthcoming outbreaks at smaller spatial scales; and (iii) use these result...s and analyses to build an early warning system to detect dengue outbreaks in real time and respond accordingly. This web-based tool can ensure enhanced, fast and secured communication between national and subnational levels, and standardized utilization of surveillance data.
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The ICOPE guidance for person-centred assessment and pathways in primary care (ICOPE Handbook) helps community health and care workers put the recommendations outlined in the ICOPE Guidelines into practice. The Handbook assists with setting person-centred goals, screening for loss in a range of doma...ins of intrinsic capacity and assessing health and social care needs to develop a personalised care plan. The care plan may include multiple interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity, provide social care and support, support self-management and support caregivers. The domains of intrinsic capacity include cognitive decline, limited mobility, malnutrition, visual impairment, hearing loss and depressive symptoms.
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At present at least 2.2 billion people around the world have a vision impairment, of whom at least 1 billion have a vision impairment that could have been prevented or is yet to be addressed. The world faces considerable challenges in terms of eye care, including inequalities in the coverage and qua...lity of prevention, treatment and rehabilitation services; a shortage of trained eye care service providers; and poor integration of eye care services into health systems, among others. The World report on vision aims to address these challenges and galvanize action.
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