The Transformation Agenda (TA) ushered in an ambitious reform process intended to transform the World Health Organization (WHO) into an organization that is proactive, results-driven, accountable and which meets stakeholder expectations, towards transforming and improving public health services in t...he African Region. It aimed to achieve a WHO that is pro-results, which optimally and creatively targets technical work as well as make operations more responsive, with greater effectiveness in both communications and partnerships. The Africa Region has been the epicentre of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic and it’s one of the leading causes of disease and death on the continent. The WHO, with partners, has worked tirelessly for many years to control the threat and reduce the negative impact of the disease. Since the early 2000s, significant progress has been made in the global fight against the scourge of HIV. However, the WCA subregion was falling concerningly behind ESA on several key indicators of progress. In 2016, the WHO joined UNAIDS, UNICEF and other partners in a call for a strong and urgent response to support WCA countries to develop catch-up plans to triple and fast-track ART coverage, to enable the region to catch up with ESA by the end of 2020. Implementation of a widespread test-and-treat strategy, coupled with the scale-up of differentiated service delivery (DSD) and mobilization of requisite funding, accelerated WCA’s progress towards this goal. The HIV treatment catch-up and fast-track plan has achieved its target of seeing the West and Central African region (WCA) catch up with the Eastern and Southern African region’s (ESA) antiretroviral coverage rate of 78% in 2021, albeit later than the 2020 target time frame. A 33% improvement was achieved in WCA, against 21% in ESA, between 2015–2020. WCA achieved a significant 42% increase, compared to ESA’s 23%, between 2015 and 2021, to see WCA draw level with ESA at 78%. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) alone, progress of up to 47% was observed between 2015 and 2020, for example. In addition, 1.6 million more People Living with HIV (PLHIV) were enrolled on antiretroviral treatment (ART) between 2015 and 2020.
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Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change pp 47–66
This chapter reviews the emerging importance of pollen allergies in relation to ongoing climate change. Allergic diseases have been increasing in prevalence over the last decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. ...Increased sensitisation rates and more severe symptoms have been the partial outcome of: increased pollen production of wind-pollinated plants resulting in long-term increased abundance of pollen in the air we breathe; earlier shifts of airborne pollen seasons making occurrence of allergic symptoms harder to predict and deal with efficiently; increased allergenicity of pollen causing more severe health effects in allergic individuals; introduction of new, invasive allergenic plant species causing new sensitisations; environment-environment interactions, such as plants and hosted microorganisms, i.e. fungi and bacteria, which comprise a complex and dynamic system, with additive, presently unforeseeable influences on human health; environment-human interactions, as the consequence of a combination of environmental factors, like air pollution, global warming, urbanisation and microclimatic variability, which create a multi-resolution spatiotemporal system that requires new processing technologies and huge data inflow in order to be thoroughly investigated. We suggest that novel, real-time, personalised pollen information services, like mobile-app risk alerts, must be developed to provide the optimum first line of allergy management.
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A publication about girls escaping natural disasters and violent conflict in Eastern Africa
Children are on the move. In East Africa region, it is estimated that over 5 million children have migrated across borders or been forcibly displaced in their own country.
Forcable displacement is p...ushing more and more children out of their homes and communities, escaping the violence of war and conflict, only to fall vulnerable to other forms of violence. Girls are particularly vulnerable and need extra protection.
Every day, girls on the move in East Africa face a variety of rights violations, including:
• Exploitation and violence
• Being separated from their families
• Deprivation of essential services
• Use and recruitment by armed groups
• Sexual abuse
• Child marriage
This report highlights concerns that girls in eastern Africa face and calls on international and national decision makers to prevent and end violence that children face when they are forced to flee their homes.
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External quality assessment (EQA) is an important component of quality systems for blood transfusion services. Establishing external quality assessment programmes for screening of donated blood for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTI): implementation guide aims to support WHO member States in ...establishing and operating EQA programmes for screening donated blood for TTI. The guides has been designed for use by national health authorities and EQA organizing institutions in the development of EQA programme. It will also give participating laboratories an insight into the organization of EQA programmes for TTI screening and an understanding of the benefits of participation.
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3 February 2021
Vaccine- and vaccination-related crises require a communication response that is different from the communication strategies used to promote the benefits and importance of vaccines in general. This document presents the technical guidance needed to develop a communication plan that ...is appropriate for managing crises related to vaccine safety. This guidance will be useful for managers in the areas of immunization and vaccine and vaccination safety. They will also help preparedness and response teams working in safety crises to optimize their communication plans in order to regain, maintain, or strengthen trust in vaccines, vaccination, and immunization programs in general.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been the biggest disaster in living memory, on almost any measure. More than 6.5 million people are confirmed to have died in less than three years, and the pandemic’s indirect impacts have touched the lives of virtually every community on the planet.
Our World Disasters... Report 2022 focuses on the coronavirus pandemic and preparedness: both the ways preparedness ahead of COVID-19 was inadequate, and how the world can prepare more effectively for future public health emergencies.
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Cette mission menée conjointement par la représentante du Ministère de la Santé en charge du projet, la
responsable EVIPNet de l’OMS à Genève et le directeur de la fondation Winds of Hope visait à établir le lien entre
le Ministère de la Santé et les différentes parties prenantes du B...urkina Faso en charge de la prévention et de
prise en charge du noma, notamment les ONG : Sentinelles, Persis et Hymne aux Enfants. En effet, le Ministère
de la Santé du Burkina Faso a décidé d’écrire une note de politique (policy brief) sur cette maladie négligée non
transmissible qu’est le noma pour provoquer un dialogue politique (forum délibératif) devant déboucher sur des
actions politiques concrètes. Cette maladie, symbole des ravages de l’extrême pauvreté, affecte les zones les
plus isolées et pauvres du Burkina Faso. Cette initiative du Ministère de la Santé du Burkina Faso qui a acquis
maintenant une grande expérience dans l’écriture de notes de politique et dans l’organisation de dialogues
politiques est une démarche concrète et significative pour adresser les inégalités sociales et l’extrême pauvreté.
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During this work, a survey on essential medicines availability was conducted. This article was first written on this subject for sharing the poor financial availability of the essential medicines in the hospital and secondly, a call for an action to be taken in improving hospital pharmacies developm...ent in each hospital in Burkina Faso.
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This technical report presents the results of a cross-sectional survey conducted in Banja Luka, the Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, between July and August 2017, as part of the FEEDcities Project (Food Environment Description in cities – eastern Europe and central Asia). The aim of the r...eport is to describe the city’s local street food and takeaway food environment, exploring the characteristics of food vending sites, the industrially produced and homemade foods they typically offer, and the nutritional composition of these foods. Finally, the report provides guidance on how to address its findings through policy action.
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Background: Community health worker (CHW) programmes are a valuable component of primary care in resource-poor settings. The evidence supporting their effectiveness generally shows improvements in disease-specific outcomes relative to the absence of a CHW programme. In this study, we evaluated expan...ding an existing HIV and tuberculosis (TB) disease-specific CHW programme into a polyvalent, household-based model that subsequently included non-communicable diseases (NCDs), malnutrition and TB screening, as well as family planning and antenatal care (ANC).
Methods: We conducted a stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial in Neno District, Malawi. Six clusters of approximately 20 000 residents were formed from the catchment areas of 11 healthcare facilities. The intervention roll-out was staggered every 3 months over 18 months, with CHWs receiving a 5-day foundational training for their new tasks and assigned 20–40 households for monthly (or more frequent) visits.
Findings: The intervention resulted in a decrease of approximately 20% in the rate of patients defaulting from chronic NCD care each month (−0.8 percentage points (pp) (95% credible interval: −2.5 to 0.5)) while maintaining the already low default rates for HIV patients (0.0 pp, 95% CI: −0.6 to 0.5). First trimester ANC attendance increased by approximately 30% (6.5pp (−0.3, 15.8)) and paediatric malnutrition case finding declined by 10% (−0.6 per 1000 (95% CI −2.5 to 0.8)). There were no changes in TB programme outcomes, potentially due to data challenges.
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Note d’orientation | 16 March 2020
Ne pas causer de dommages, égalité, transparence et humanité - Les valeurs directrices pour guider la réponse de la justice pénale au Coronavirus
Au moment de la publication de cette note d’orientation, plus de 164’000 cas* de COVID-19, cette nouvell...e forme du coronavirus, avaient été enregistrés dans 100 pays, avec plus de 6’470 décès. Le présent document examine la situation en ce qui concerne les foyers d’infection au COVID-19 et les mesures de prévention dans les prisons**, ainsi que l’impact des réponses générales apportées par des gouvernements pour lutter contre la pandémie sur les personnes dans le système de justice pénale. Cette note d’orientation plaide pour une action immédiate au vu des risques auxquels sont exposés les personnes en milieu carcéral, y compris le personnel pénitentiaire.
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e rapport conjoint de l’Organisation mondiale de la Santé(OMS) et du Programme des Nations unies pour lesétablissements humains (ONU-Habitat), intitulé La Face cachéedes villes : Mettre au jour et vaincre les inégalités en santé enmilieu urbain, montre que certains habitants des villes sont...particulièrement exposés à une multitude de maladies et deproblèmes de santé. Ce rapport propose des informations et des outils dont lespouvoirs publics et les responsables locaux peuvent se servirpour lutter contre les inégalités en santé dans leur ville. Il n’apas pour objectif de comparer les inégalités en santé entrepopulations rurales et citadines. De fait, étant différentes depar leur ampleur et leur distribution, les inégalités en santédans les zones urbaines appellent des actions spécifiques.
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his guidance provides interim guidance for the integration of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza virologic and genomic surveillance, from sentinel site case enrolment and sampling to the eventual sharing of the virus sequence data, a process known as end-to-end surveillance. This guidance builds on experience...s and lessons learned as countries adapted their influenza surveillance systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and reviews new evidence to provide guidance on end-to-end surveillance. The guidance includes new algorithms and strategies to adapt sentinel systems to make them resilient and agile for addressing global and national surveillance needs for influenza and COVID-19.covid-
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This report documents the secondary humanitarian problems and impacts of large-scale Ebola outbreak on the different humanitarian sectors, to provide a non-exhaustive plan to help future responders. A large scale Ebola outbreak, in this document, refers to an epidemic with an unprecedented scale, ge...ographical spread and duration.
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July 2018
This fourth edition of the Unitaid/WHO market and technology landscape: HIV rapid diagnostic tests for self-testing report summarizes the current HIV testing gap; the challenges facing efforts to scale up; and the potential role HIV self-testing (HIVST) could play to achieve the United... Nation’s 90-90-90 targets. In particular, the report synthesises the existing and emerging market demand and supply of kits.
The information in this report is intended for manufacturers, donors, national programmes, researchers and other global health stakeholders who are exploring the potential role of HIVST.
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The Facilitator Training Manual on Workplace Pandemic Preparedness is a guide developed by GIZ and the Ministry of Health to help organizations prepare for and respond to pandemics while ensuring business continuity. It provides structured guidance on training, risk assessment, prevention, and respo...nse strategies for both medical and non-medical personnel.
Key topics include pandemic preparedness and response, covering diseases like Influenza, Cholera, Yellow Fever, and Meningitis, as well as personal hygiene, risk communication, and business continuity planning. The manual emphasizes participatory learning, practical training, and leadership in crisis management, aiming to enhance institutional resilience and ensure workplaces remain safe and operational during health crises.
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The second edition of the Women and Trachoma: Achieving Gender Equity in the Implementation of SAFE manual provides an updated resource for realistically increasing, improving, and supporting gender representation within trachoma elimination efforts at all levels. From the trachoma workforce to the ...patients, from trichiasis surgeons to schoolteachers, and from national to international managers and coordinators, the manual breaks down the various levels of trachoma elimination programming to highlight the areas where women and girls can have a greater impact in elimination effort
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The guide seeks to address questions about how we can face local communication challenges presented by the pandemic, and how communicators respond effectively to the situation through supporting our communities to cope and to protect themselves. This guide aims to provide insights for a wide range o...f local communicators on the community level. It covers the need for knowing and communicating the facts coronavirus, understanding the pandemics’ timeline and accompanying communication phases, and accessing resources and materials; it also contains information about what needs communicating and key messages, and consideration about communication design options for appropriate communication routes and methods and essential communication planning
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Emergency Capacitiy Building Project agencies, led by CARE, have developed the Shelter Accountability Resources for project managers and decision-makers in humanitarian shelter programs.
As a guide it is also intended to be useful for Shelter Cluster coordinators, and other staff who would like t...o monitor the accountability of particular projects and programs. The tools and examples included here should help humanitarians to plan, implement and monitor shelter projects and programs in a way that is accountable to disaster-affected populations.
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The world is facing a sustainable development crisis. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing for Development at a Crossroads finds that financing challenges are at the heart of the crisis and imperil the SDGs and climate action. The window to rescue the SDGs and prevent a c...limate catastrophe is still open but closing rapidly. Financing gaps for sustainable development are large and growing – the estimates by international organizations and others are coalescing around $4 trillion additional investment needed annually for developing countries. This represents a more than 50% increase over the pre-pandemic estimates. Meanwhile, the finance divide has not been bridged, with developing countries paying around twice as much on average in interest on their total sovereign debt stock as developed countries. Many countries lack access to affordable finance or are in debt distress. Weak enabling environments are preventing progress. Average global growth has declined, while policy and regulatory frameworks still do not set appropriate incentives. Public budgets and spending is not fully aligned with SDGs. Private investors are not incentivised to invest enough in SDGs and climate action. The world is at a crossroads. This is the last chance to correct course if we want to achieve the SDGs by the 2030 deadline. Only an urgent, large-scale and sustainable investment push can help us achieve our global goals. Next year’s Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025 will be a once in 80-year opportunity to support coherent transformation of financing.
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