Mental health issues are usually given very low priority in health service policies. Although this is changing, African countries are still confronted with so many problems caused by communicable diseases and malnutrition that they have not woken up to the impact of mental disorders. Every country m...ust formulate a mental health policy based on its own social and cultural realities. Such policies must take into account the scope of mental health problems, provide proven and affordable interventions, safeguard patients’ rights, and ensure equity.
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Addressing TB comorbidities and risk factors is central to the World Health Organization (WHO) End TB Strategy. These guidelines consolidate the latest WHO recommendations on TB and key comorbidities. The guidelines are a living document and will include dedicated sections for each key TB comorbidit...y or health-related risk factor. The first edition focused on HIV-associated TB, updating the WHO policy on collaborative TB/HIV activities. This second edition expands on the previous edition and consolidates new and existing recommendations on interventions to address undernutrition in people with TB, to provide food assistance to households of people with TB in food-insecure settings, and to screen for TB among those who are undernourished or food insecure.
HIV and undernutrition are leading health-related drivers of TB globally, both negatively impacting on TB treatment outcomes. TB remains the top cause of death among people with HIV, and nearly half of people with TB are undernourished, which in turn increases their risk of early mortality.
These guidelines are intended for use by ministries of health, particularly TB programmes and departments addressing related health conditions and risk factors, by implementing partners, technical and funding agencies, civil society, affected communities, clinicians, and by public health practitioners.
The guidelines are complemented by an operational handbook, that provides practical advice on how to implement the recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact.
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[Preface]. For more than forty years Primary Health Care (PHC) has been recognized as the cornerstone of an effective and responsive health system. The Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 reaffirmed the right to the highest attainable level of health, with equity, solidarity and the right to health as its ...core values. It stressed the need for comprehensive health services, not only curative but services that addressed needs in terms of health promotion, prevention, rehabilitation and treatment of common conditions. A strong resolutive first level of care is the basis for health system development [...] The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) has supported the countries in the establishment of interprofessional PHC teams, in the transformation of health education and in building capacity in the strategic planning, and management of human resources for health. Nursing can play a critical role in advancing PHC. New profiles such as the advanced practice nurses, as discussed in this document, can be fundamental in this effort, and in particular, in health promotion, disease prevention and care, especially in rural and underserved areas.
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Policy Brief.
Our understanding of how to diagnose and manage Long COVID is still evolving but the condition can be very debilitating. It is associated with a range of overlapping symptoms including generalized chest and muscle pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive dysfunction, and the ...mechanisms involved affect multiple system and include persisting inflammation, thrombosis, and autoimmunity. It can affect anyone, but women and health care workers seem to be at greater risk.
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The Monitoring Report, which covers the first two months of the response from 25 August to 31 October, highlights the work of the Government of Bangladesh, in cooperation with humanitarian partners who are working to provide relief services for the refugee population and Bangladeshi host communities.... Of the 1.2 million people in need, around half have been reached with assistance. The Report also explains the challenges and gaps that remain. The risk of disease outbreak is high, and the impact of a cyclone or heavy rain would be massive. There is not enough land to provide adequate living conditions for the more than 830,000 refugees that now crowd Cox’s Bazar.
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J Glob Health Sci. 2020 Jun;2(1):e3. A group of enzootic and zoonotic protozoan infections, the leishmaniases constitute among the most severely neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and are found in all continents except Oceania. Representing the most common infectious diseases, NTDs comprise an open-...ended list of some 20 parasitic, bacterial, viral, protozoan and helminthic infections. Called “diseases of the poor,” because of their characteristic prevalence in poor populations regardless of a country's income status, they infect over one billion people in over 140 countries, with about 90% of the global burden in Africa. While NTDs do not contribute significantly to global deaths, they are debilitating and remain the most common infections among the poor worldwide, preventing them from escaping poverty by impacting livelihoods such as agriculture and livestock, and affecting cognitive, developmental and education outcomes.
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June 2021. Shock-responsive social protection (SRSP) operates in contexts where rapid on-set disasters mean needs for assistance are acute and urgent. Monitoring and identifying problems in programme design and delivery are therefore critical. However, there is limited existing guidance on how to mo...nitor shockresponsive social protection in these contexts.
This Brief aims to help fill this gap. It does not provide a blueprint for developing monitoring indicators, but it presents a guiding framework with key questions and key issues to consider when monitoring SRSP to understand how the intervention contributes to broader crisis response.
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Rebuilding Liberia’s health system is crucial for improving the country’s overall health outcomes. This annual report highlights key achievements, challenges,and lessons learned in implementing programmes of technical cooperation with the Government of Liberia from January to December 2022. T...he key achievements are summarized under the thematic areas of Universal Health Coverage, Health Emergencies and Corporate and Enabling Support.
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The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH, developed in
2018, built on UNU-IIGH’s strategic advantage and
position vis-à-vis the UN and global health ecosystem.
The Strategy set a goal to advance evidencebased policy on key issues related to sustainable
development and health and shifted the Instit...ute’s
body of work from investigator-driven global health
projects to three priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars
of work, each reflecting UNU-IIGH’s unique value
position.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the
Institute adapted and reprioritised its areas of work
while continuing to deliver on the main strategic
objectives of translating evidence to policy, generating
policy-relevant analyses on gender and health, and
strengthening capacity for local decision making
especially in the Global South.
The new strategic plan encompasses four work packages:
1. Gender Equality and Intersectionality: through this work, we will aim to improve the quality of health care through a human-centred approach, by ensuring the health system is responsive to the needs of structurally excluded individuals and communities; and by advancing a positive and enabling environment for the frontline health workforce—e.g. addressing the experience of gender-based violence.
2. Power and Accountability: through this work, we will catalyse equitable shifts in power and address key accountability deficits that prevent the equitable and effective functioning of the global health system and prevent adequate responsiveness to the needs of states and populations in the Global South.
3. Digital Health Governance: through this work, we will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that negatively impact robust digital health governance, identify ways to strengthen health data governance with a particular focus on SRHR and promote diversity in technology design and development.
4. Climate Justice and Determinants of Health: through this work we will leverage UNU-IIGH's position within the UN and network of UNU institutes, network experts, practitioners, policy-makers, and academics to advance evidence-based policy on the different dimensions of the climate emergency and its impact on health.
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The report reveals weak national mental health services overburdened by the demands placed on them by the Syria crisis. Health facilities which previously provided integrated mental health services in Syria have themselves become casualties of war, with most either destroyed, damaged or not function...ing. The shortage of trained mental health care providers is viewed as critical, both in Syria and in the neighboring countries where refugees now reside. Strengthening and expanding these services is crucial for Syria’s longer term recovery because the need for treatment will last for years after the war ends.
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A lack of knowledge about the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases, risks and benefits of vaccines, mistrust of government and health workers, poor service delivery and alternative health or religious beliefs play a role in lower uptake of some vaccines. These challenges underscore the importance ...of early integration and investment in a thoughtful communication plan for immunization programmes. This World Health Organization (WHO) report presents communication guidance and specific considerations for countries that plan to introduce human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into their national immunisation programme as part of an effort to prevent cervical cancer.
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Following a radiation incident such as an improvised nuclear device (IND) detonation, state and local response authorities will need to establish one or more population monitoring and decontamination facilities to assess
people for radioactive exposure, contamination, and the need for
decontamin...ation or other medical follow-up. These facilities are known as community reception centers (CRCs). The basic services offered at a CRC include the following: screening people for radioactive contamination, assisting people with washing or decontamination, registering people for subsequent follow-up, and prioritizing people for further care. This guide
describes the function of each station of a CRC and provides a question bank and other information to guide data collection at each station. A question bank format was chosen to provide the user the ability to tai
lor the data collection tool to fit a particular incident and/or locality.
The CRC data collection tool is designed for CRC staff to fill out the information collected from the individual being assessed.
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The purpose of the toolkit is to bring together existing learning and guidance as a starting point for stakeholders to begin SRH preparedness work. Within the SRH sector the field of preparedness is relatively new and growing. More collective effort is required to further evaluate the impact of prep...aredness efforts and push the field forward. This effort is a first attempt at a draft guidance for SRH preparedness, and is intended for field testing. The toolkit recognizes the longstanding work of the field of emergency and disaster risk management, and endeavors to bridge that work with the human rights-oriented and peoplecentered field of sexual and reproductive health.
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The Facilitator's Guide provides instruction and suggestions for teaching the training modules for the Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response in the Africa Region, 2nd edition. This training is intended for district level health officers who conduct IDSR activities. Th...e course is laid out in 7 modules that walk participants through the Technical Guidelines (TGs) chapter by chapter. By the end of the course, participants will be familiar with the TGs and capable of utilizing them appropriately in their position
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The World Health Organization’s comprehensive antenatal care (ANC) guideline WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy experience was published in 2016 with the objective of improving the quality of routine health care that all women and adolescent girls receive during pregnan...cy. The overarching principle – to provide pregnant service users with a positive pregnancy experience – aims to encourage countries to expand their health-care agendas beyond survival, with a view to maximizing health, human rights and the potential of their populations. Recognizing that ANC provides a strategic platform for important health-care functions, including health promotion and disease prevention, 14 out of the 49 recommendations in the WHO 2016 ANC guideline relate to nutrition in pregnancy.
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Context and impact of the crisis
A year after the signing of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS),1 the ceasefire holds in most parts of the country. Armed conflict between State security forces and opposition armed groups has been contained to a sma...ll number of areas in the Equatorias where Government forces continue to clash with non-signatories to the agreement. Many areas are seeing intra- and inter-communal violence, enabled by small-arms proliferation and weak rule of law. This is often driven by resource scarcity in areas that have experienced years of severe food insecurity.
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The Mental Health Atlas 2024 is the seventh in a series that began in 2001, and draws on data from 144 countries to assess mental health policies, laws, information systems, financing, workforce and services. It shows little change in investment: mental health accounts for only 2% of health budgets..., unchanged since 2017. Spending disparities are wide, ranging from US$ 65 per person in high-income countries to US$ 0.04 in low-income countries. Workforce shortages remain critical, with a global median of just 13 workers per 100,000 people, and extreme shortages in low- and middle-income countries
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This Eye health strategic plan presents the Ministry of Health’s five
year proposed strategies for eye care in Kenya. It sets the strategic
direction for the National Eye Health Care System and presents
information on the priorities, objectives and indicators that the
Ministry has adopted espe...cially with regard to the main eye diseases
and conditions in the country and health system strengthening.
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The Guidance on global monitoring for diabetes prevention and control by WHO provides a comprehensive framework to support countries in tracking and managing diabetes prevention, care, and outcomes. This document outlines indicators across 4 domains: health system determinants, service delivery, ris...k factors, and outcomes/impacts. The guidance helps countries align their monitoring efforts with WHO’s global diabetes targets, Global Diabetes Compact, and relevant global NCD targets.
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If you are fleeing the war in Ukraine and coming to the European Union, you will find key information about your rights with regard to crossing the border into an EU country, eligibility for temporary protection and applying for international protection, as well as the rights of travel inside the Eu...ropean Union.
Available in English, Russian and Ukrainian
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