This practical guidance is designed to assist programme specialists to implement COVID19 RCCE activities for and with refugees, IDPs, migrants and host communities vulnerable to the pandemic. The guidance highlights key challenges and barriers faced by these people in accessing COVID19 health-relate...d information and presents key considerations and recommendations for planning and implementing RCCE activities. The document can be adapted to countries’ specific context and aligned with national response plans for COVID-19 and national RCCE plans.
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This guide is designed to assist UNICEF staff and partners, in establishing and
operating Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) in an emergency. It attempts to provide
readers with the main principles of a CFS and the processes on how to establish
one.
The overall aim is to improve the standards and capac...ity of field staff, by providing
the required knowledge to support the design and operations of child friendly
spaces.
It will facilitate an understanding of how to develop a CFS in contexts in which
children’s well-being are threatened or damaged as a result of conflict or natural
disasters. More specifically, this guide attempts to broaden and strengthen the
knowledge, skills and attitudes of protection officers/field staff so that they are able
to respond to the multi-faceted needs of children.
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This implementation brief addresses integration of HIV testing services into family planning (FP) services. It is intended as a practical resource for national health programmes seeking to introduce or scale up HIV testing and linkage to HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infection, and antiretrov...iral therapy services in FP.
This document highlights emerging good practices and country experiences of integrated HIV prevention and testing services within FP and advocates for increased linkage for FP clients to HIV services according to their needs. It also brings together information on models of integration of HIV testing into FP services, programme examples from east and southern Africa and guidance on the implementation monitoring process.
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Kenya has great potential for enhancing education for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The fact that it has recognized the need to care for learners with special needs is commendable. In comparison to many African countries, Kenya and Nigeria are ahead in developing programs for special e...ducation in institutions of higher learning, and in starting schools and units for special education. However, a legal mandate is still required as it would seal many loopholes that currently exist. Without it, the assessment of individual with intellectual disabilities cannot be administered correctly and professionally. In this article, the authors present a coherent account on various aspects related to learners with intellectual disabilities in Kenya. No doubt, the issues and challenges identified call for attention by not only the government of Kenya but also those interested in improving the status of learners with intellectual disabilities.
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The purpose of adding the books to the website of MCAI for download, is to make this life-saving, up-to-date information available to all who need it. Fill in a short registration field and you can download the pdf-files.
If you work in a hospital in a low income country - providing free care - y...ou are probably intitled to FREE copies of these books. MCAI will send them to you, all you have to do is to read our Flyer and fill in the request form.
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The Report describes the evaluation of WHO's contribution to the Maternal Health Program in South-East Asia Region. This was an independent evaluation conducted in 2015 by Amaltas, a Delhi based organization. The evaluation highlights the progress in five countries, namely Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mya...nmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka and provides specific recommendations for Organizational Learning and Development. This report will be useful for all those interested in WHO's work on Maternal Health Program in the Region.
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Training manual that outlines the training of smallholder farmers to improve biosecurity and practices in their farms to prevent infectious diseases and thus the need for use of veterinary drugs. Describes training sessions and includes exercises and handouts.
The Information Management Unit of the Assistance Coordination Unit issued a Panoramic Report on Busra Esh-Sham City located in Dar’a Governorate. The report reflects the living conditions in the city during November and December 2017. The report covers in analysis several sections: Active Civilia...n actors, Demography, Health, Food Security, Education, and the Infrastructure, which incorporates Water sector, Sewage System, Solid Waste, Electricity, and Public Roads Network. This report aims at drawing the attention of the decision-makers to the civil actors in the city of Busra Esh-Sham and to enable them to manage the community and provide necessary infrastructure needs and services to the community people.
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The humanitarian-development-peace nexus (HDPNX) is a new way of working that offers a framework for coherent joined-up planning and implementation of shared priorities between humanitarian development and peacebuilding actors in emergency settings. To advance the HDPNx in a given country a sh...ared foundational understanding of the current situation is needed. However it can be challenging to find such a resource perpetuating poor understanding planning and operationalization. This is one of a series of country profiles that have been developed by WHO to address that need. Each profile provides an overview of health-related nexus efforts in the country and will be updated regularly.
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Little is known about foreign aid provided by private donors. This paper contributes to closing this research gap by comparing the allocation of private humanitarian aid to that of official humanitarian aid awarded to 140 recipient countries over the 2000-2016 period. We construct a new database tha...t offers information on the country in which the headquarters of private donors are located to test whether private donors follow the aid allocation pattern of their home country. Our empirical results confirm that private aid “follows the flag.” This finding is robust against the inclusion of various fixed effects, estimating instrumental variables models, and disaggregating private aid into corporate aid and NGO aid. Donor country-specific estimations reveal that private aid from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “follow the flag.”
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The Indigenous tribe called the Wiwa lives retracted in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Little is known about their health status and whether the health care system in place covers their needs.
Preferred product characteristics” (PPCs) are key tools to incentivize and guide the development of urgently needed health products. The PPC published here describes the characteristics of new types of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to control malaria transmission in areas with insecticide-resist...ant mosquito populations. The document was developed to address the public health need caused by the evolution and spread of insecticide resistance, particularly to pyrethroids. Such resistance threatens the effectiveness of the current standard of malaria vector control in many countries, namely pyrethroid-only long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs).
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The international community sits at the tipping pointof a post-‐antibiotic era, where common bacterial infections are no longer treatable with the antibiotic armamentarium that exists. In South Africa, t...he identification of the first case of pan-‐resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae(Brink et al, J Clin Microbiol. 2013;51(1):369-‐72) marks a watershed moment and highlights ourtip of the antibiotic resistance ‘iceberg’ in this country. Multi-‐drug resistant (MDR)-‐bacterial infections, predominantly in Gram-‐negative bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosaand Acinetobacter baumanniiare now commonplace in South African hospitals. Whilst a number of expensive new antibiotics for Gram-‐positive bacterial infections have been manufactured recently (some of which are licenced for usein South Africa), no new antibiotics active against Gram-‐negative infections are expected in the next 10-‐15years. Hence what we have now, needs conserving
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The aim of the pandemic preparedness checklist is primarily to provide an outline of the essential minimum elements of preparedness, as well as elements of preparedness that are considered desirable. It is recommended that responsible authorities or institutes in countries that are in the process of... planning should consider the specific aspects of the checklist for which they are responsible. The Checkllist is available in English, Japanese, Russian and Arabic from the website http://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/checklist/en/
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A major problem facing the world is how to build peace following the ravages of increasingly protracted armed conflict. Armed conflicts leave behind shattered, divided societies that are at risk of repeating cycles of violence, and therefore need concerted peacebuilding efforts. Conflicts also take ...a heavy toll on people’s mental health and psychosocial well-being. One in five people who live in a war zone will likely develop a mental disorder, and many others suffer from painful everyday stresses associated with multiple losses, family separation, gender-based violence (GBV), disability, climate change and ongoing insecurity, among other issues.
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WHO today released its first roadmap to tackle postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) – defined as excessive bleeding after childbirth - which affects millions of women annually and is the world’s leading cause of maternal deaths.
Despite being preventable and treatable, PPH results in around 70 000 de...aths every year. For those who survive, it can cause disabilities and psychological trauma that last for years.
“Severe bleeding in childbirth is one of the most common causes of maternal mortality, yet it is highly preventable and treatable,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This new roadmap charts a path forward to a world in which more women have a safe birth and a healthy future with their families.”
The Roadmap aims to help countries address stark differences in survival outcomes from PPH, which reflect major inequities in access to essential health services. Over 85% of deaths from PPH happen in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Risk factors include anaemia, placental abnormalities, and other complications in pregnancy such as infections and pre-eclampsia.
Many risk factors can be managed if there is quality antenatal care, including access to ultrasound, alongside effective monitoring in the hours after birth. If bleeding starts, it also needs to be detected and treated extremely quickly. Too often, however, health facilities lack necessary healthcare workers or resources, including lifesaving commodities such as oxytocin, tranexamic acid or blood for transfusions.
“Addressing postpartum haemorrhage needs a multipronged approach focusing on both prevention and response - preventing risk factors and providing immediate access to treatments when needed - alongside broader efforts to strengthen women’s rights,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, WHO Director for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HRP, the UN’s special programme on research development and training in human reproduction. “Every woman, no matter where she lives, should have access to timely, high quality maternity care, with trained health workers, essential equipment and shelves stocked with appropriate and effective commodities – this is crucial for treating postpartum bleeding and reducing maternal deaths.”
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This guidance document has been produced by WHO to assist blood services in the development of national plans to respond to any emerging infectious threats to the sufficiency or safety of the blood supply, whether from an existing infectious agent that is changing in incidence and spread, or from a ...newly identified infectious agent. It is intended that this document be followed to guide the national blood service through the process of planning how to respond in a timely, controlled and appropriate way to any specific infectious threat that may subsequently emerge. It is acknowledged that it is not only the blood supply that may be affected by such emerging infectious threats; in those countries undertaking transplantation, the supply of cell, tissues and organs may also be threatened. Increasingly, blood services are taking overall national responsibility for transplantation in their capacity as the organization responsible for the collection, processing, storage and supply of cells, tissues and organs. This approach is both sensible and appropriate, as the overall donor selection and screening processes are the same or very similar. This guidance document can therefore also be used to assist those bodies responsible for the provision of cells, tissues and organs to prepare for an emerging infectious threat.
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The Adult Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List for Hospital Level provide a platform for transparency to enable equitable access to safe, effective, and affordable treatment options at hospital level taking into consideration the changing clinical needs of our population and th...e pragmatic implications of the introducing a new health technology.
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Parasites & Vectors volume 11, Article number: 264 (2018)
Dengue creates a staggering epidemiological and economic burden for endemic countries. Without a specific therapy and with a commercial vaccine that presents some problems relative to its full effectiveness, initiatives to improve vector... control strategies, early disease diagnostics and the development of vaccines and antiviral drugs are priorities. In this study, we present the probable origins of dengue in America and the trajectories of its spread. Overall, dengue diagnostics are costly, making the monitoring of dengue epidemiology more difficult and affecting physicians’ therapeutic decisions regarding dengue patients, especially in developing countries. This review also highlights some recent and important findings regarding dengue in Brazil and the Americas. We also summarize the existing DENV polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic tests to provide an improved reference since these tests are useful and accurate at discriminating DENV from other flaviviruses that co-circulate in the Americas. Additionally, these DENV PCR assays ensure virus serotyping, enabling epidemiologic monitoring.
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Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 117: e200460, 2022
Integrating the multiple dimensions of the problem into a coherent approach adapted to field realities and needs represents an immense challenge, but the payoff is more effective and sustainable experiences, with higher social awareness..., increased case detection and follow-up, improved adherence to care, and integrated participation of various actors from multiple action levels. Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) initiatives have great potential for impact in the implementation of multidimensional programs of prevention and control successfully customised to the diverse and complex contexts where Chagas disease persists.
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