Building on our decades of commitment to human rights in medicine and healthcare, we have published a new report on emerging threats in health-related human rights both globally and in the UK.
'Health and human rights in the new world (dis)order' outlines a shifting rights landscape in which new ...technologies, environmental change and geopolitical reconfigurations are putting renewed and at times intense stress on human rights, both in medicine and healthcare more broadly.
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Africa is off track to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and lags behind in building resilient health systems
and health security, against a backdrop of limited resources. The world envisaged a significant role for governments
in funding the Sustainable Development Agenda, but inadeq...uate funding for health in African countries is
persistent, despite additional continental commitments to address the problem. When commitments to global health
targets and available fiscal space do not align, innovation is warranted.
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Today there are Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in a large number of countries. In many countries, the CBR approach is a part of the national rehabilitation services. However, there is a lack of reliable data about persons with disabilities who benefit from CBR and the kind of benefi...ts they receive. This article reviews the disability data collection systems and presents some case studies to understand the influence of operational factors on data collection in the CBR programmes. The review shows that most CBR programmes use a variable number of broad functional categories to collect information about persons with disabilities, combined occasionally with more specific diagnostic categories. This categorisation is influenced by local contexts and operational factors, including the limitations of human and material resources available for its implementation, making it difficult to have comparable CBR data. Therefore, any strategies to strengthen the data collection in CBR programmes must take these operational factors into account.
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This is the first global report on epilepsy summarizing the available evidence on the burden of epilepsy and the public health response required at global, regional and national levels.
The reports highlights major gaps in awareness, diagnosis, treatment, and health policies through a series of a...ppalling numbers. With around 50 million people affected worldwide, epilepsy is one of the most common and serious brain disorders. Nearly 80% of people with epilepsy live in low-income and middle-income countries
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At least half of the world’s population does not have full coverage of essential health services. Health expenses push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty each and every year, forcing them into terrible choices that no one should ever have to make: Buy medicine or food? Education or ...health care? These stark statistics make the case for universal health coverage compelling.
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This publication presents the Agenda for the Americas on Health, Environment, and Climate Change 2021–2030 (the Agenda). The Agenda is a call to action to the health sector to lead the charge to address environmental determinants of health in the Americas. The Pan American Health Organization (PAH...O) will work with Member States to achieve its goal and objective to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages using a sustainable and equitable approach that places a priority on reducing health inequity. The Agenda has been developed under the umbrella of the WHO Global Strategy on Health, Environment, and Climate Change, and builds upon the commitments set forth in the Sustainable Health Agenda for the Americas 2018–2030 and the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025. The Agenda was developed in consultation with the Technical Advisory Group and through a consensus-driven decision-making process with Member States during the 2019–2020 period. Looking toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3, the Agenda focuses on: improving the performance of environmental public health programs and institutions; fostering environmentally resilient and sustainable health systems; and promoting environmentally healthy and resilient cities and communities. Its implementation will be context-specific, based on the needs and realities of the countries. It will benefit countries and territories by promoting good governance practices, strengthening the leadership and coordination roles of the health sector, fostering cross-sectoral action, focusing on primary prevention, and enhancing evidence and communication. It will facilitate access to human, technical, and financial resources necessary to address environmental determinants of health and ensure that the Region is fully engaged in global health, environment, and climate change processes and agreements. The objective of the Agenda is to strengthen the capacity of health actors in the health and non-health sectors to address and adapt to environmental determinants of health (EDHs), prioritizing populations living in conditions of vulnerability, in order to meet Outcome 18 of the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025 directly and several other outcomes of the Plan indirectly. To address and adapt to the challenges of EDHs in the Region, an integrated and evidence-informed approach within the health sector and across sectors will be needed, one enabled, and supported by good governance practices, adequate management mechanisms, high-level political will, and adequate human, technical, technological, and financial resources.
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The increasing amounts of official development assistance (ODA) for health have been aimed primarily at fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Neglected tropical diseases (NTD), one of the most serious public health burdens among the most deprived communities, have only recently drawn the atte...ntion of major donors. While frequently stated, the low share
of funding for NTD control projects has not been calculated empirically. Our analysis of ODA commitments for infectious disease control for the years 2003 to 2007 confirms that Development Assistance Committee (DAC)-countries and multilateral donors have largely ignored funding NTD control projects. On average, only 0.6% of total annual health ODA was dedicated
to the fight against NTDs while the average share of control projects for HIV/AIDS was 36.3%, for malaria 3.6%, and for tuberculosis 2.2%. This allocation of health ODA does not reflect the diseases’ respective health burdens.
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Guidelines approved by the WHO Guidelines -Review Committee; second edition
Including a Tool to Assess the Adolescent Health and Development Component in Pre-Service Education of Health-Care Providers
People younger than 20 years comprise 35% of the global population and 40% of the global population of least-developed nations. The number of children - neonates, infants, children, and adolescents up to 19 years of age - who need pediatric palliative care (PPC) each year may be as high as 21 millio...n. Another study found that almost 2.5 million children die each year with serious health related suffering and that more than 98% of these children are in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (3). While estimates differ, there is no doubt that there is an enormous need for prevention and relief of suffering among children - for PPC.
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Childhood obesity is a major public health problem globally, which could undermine progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Prevention is recognized as the most efficient means of curbing the epidemic; however, given the scale of the problem and the many children who need profes...sional support due to the severity of the disease and/or obesity-related complications, health systems all over Europe must take steps to develop obesity management systems. The aim of this project was to assess the response of health care delivery systems in 19 countries in the WHO European Region to the childhood obesity epidemic.
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This report presents further analysis of the 2015 Nepal Health Facility Survey. Data analysis is based on the Donabedian framework for assessing quality of care in health services, which divides the indicators into three groups: structure, process, and outcome. The World Health Organization Service ...Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) indicator guideline was used to assess facility service readiness, service quality and client satisfaction with maternal health services. The study performed both bivariate and multivariate regression analysis to examine the association of maternal health service readiness and quality indicators with client satisfaction.
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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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WHO's Health in the Green Economy sector briefings examine the health impacts of climate change mitigation strategies considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their Fourth Assessment Report.
The Lancet Planetary Health, Vol.5 Issue 2, Feb. 1,2021.
Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) serve to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement of staying “well below 2°C”, which could also yield substantial health co-benefits in the process. However, existing NDC commitments are inadequa...te to achieve this goal. Placing health as a key focus of the NDCs could present an opportunity to increase ambition and realise health co-benefits. We modelled scenarios to analyse the health co-benefits of NDCs for the year 2040 for nine representative countries (ie, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the USA) that were selected for their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and their global or regional influence.
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Government of Nepal has an obligation to ensure availability of affordable and high quality basic health care services to its population