Robust clinical research capacity in low- and middle-income countries is key to stemming the spread of epidemics, according to a new report from the International Vaccines Task Force (IVTF). The report lays out how to develop the political support, financing and coordination required to build this c...apacity as a crucial component of global epidemic preparedness. The IVTF was convened by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in October 2017.
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This document builds on the Background document prepared for the September 4-5, 2014 Consultation. It includes proposed elements to consider during the development of a framework to assist decision-making at global and national level.
The aim of the document is to assist Member States and releva...nt partners in their discussions to identify the best approaches to ensure the accelerated evaluation and use of available or near-term therapies and vaccines for the treatment and prevention of EVD. The document calls for a coordinated effort by the international community to remove unnecessary obstacles towards this goal.
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There is an expanding market of no- and low-alcohol beverages (NoLos). However, their effects on global ethanol consumption and public health are still questioned. Policies and regulations about NoLos’ availability, acceptability and affordability are lacking and evidence about their benefits is l...imited. Concerns have been raised about the impact of NoLos in reducing alcohol consumption and its associated harm and the possible drawbacks and implications, such as misleading minors, pregnant women, abstainers or those seeking to stop drinking about their actual ethanol content. Further, there are concerns about the implications of NoLo branded products being displayed close to the brand’s main alcoholic beverages and their potential to subtly lead to new occasions of drinking. There is a need to monitor their consumption and impact on aggregated alcohol consumption to understand the public health implications of NoLos. The alcohol by volume content of NoLos must be defined, harmonised and clearly labelled. NoLo marketing needs to be regulated to protect children, pregnant women and those seeking to stop drinking. Fiscal and pricing policies to reduce the affordability of products with higher strengths of ethanol may favour a shift towards lower alcohol strength beverages.
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Scientists have known for more than half a century that patients could develop resistance to the drugs used to treat them. Alexander Fleming, who is credited with creating the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928, cautioned of the impending crisis while accepting his Nobel prize in 1945: “There ...is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.” Since then antibiotics have proved one of the most effective interventions in human medicine. Sadly, the overuse and misuse of this precious resource have brought us to a global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). To address this crisis nearly seven decades after Fleming’s lecture the first UN general assembly meeting on drug resistance bacteria was convened in September 2017.
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6 July 2021. Three new nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) classes are endorsed by WHO and included.
The latest operational handbook includes the new classes recommended by WHO. It aims at facilitating the implementation of the WHO recommendations by the Member States, technical partners, and ot...hers involved in managing patients with TB and DR-TB. The operational handbook provides practical information on existing and new tests recommended by WHO, step-by-step advice on implementing and scale-up testing to achieve local and national impact and lastly, model diagnostic algorithms, which are updated to incorporate the latest recommendations. An overview of budgetary considerations and information sheets on each of the newly recommended tests is provided.
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Mothers, newborns, young children and adolescents are losing 20 percent of their health and social services due to the COVID-19 pandemic says a Panel of senior global health experts.
The purpose of the report is to present some first recommendation for the development of Myanmar ecological quality criteria using the system of the EU Water Framework Directive (EU WFD) as baseline, with main focus on the characterization and classification processes. As background for the recommen...dations we first give an overview of the main water use categories in Myanmar. We then provide preliminary suggestions for typology criteria and indices for assessing ecological status in lakes and rivers in Myanmar. The typology factors and physico-chemical parameters are based on common used factors in the EU countries. The biological elements include phytoplankton and aquatic macrophytes for lakes, and benthic invertebrates for rivers.
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Policy Brief November 2021 Available in English, Spanish and Portuguese
The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled the ongoing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) global crisis due to the increase in the use of antibiotics to treat COVID-19 patients, disruptions to infection prevention and control practices in o...verwhelmed health systems, and diversion of human and financial resources away from monitoring and responding to AMR threats. Moreover, AMR is likely to have caused more COVID-19 deaths, as secondary bacterial infections can worsen the outcome of severe and critical COVID-19 illness. Therefore, it is more urgent than ever to prioritize efforts towards AMR containment and support countries to improve the detection, characterization and rapid response to emerging AMR.
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The toolkit is a collection of assessment tools and checklists that describe the key considerations to be taken into account when transitioning to Option B/B+. The toolkit provides a roadmap to support the planning and implementation of Option B/B+, and to help countries scale up more effective inte...rventions and programs to achieve the goals of the Global Plan Towards the Elimination of New HIV Infections among Children by 2015 and Keeping their Mothers Alive.
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This document has been developed as a guide to allinstitutions producing health care waste in planning and implementation of interventions that will reduce mismanagement of hazardous waste in Zambia.The National Health-Care Waste Management Plan for 2015 to 2019 provides an overv...iew of the situation analysis, the proposed activities and the health care facility waste generating processes in Zambia and presents options for minimizing health-care waste generation through source reduction. The hazardous wastes generated by health care facilities are a challenge in Zambia as handling, storage, transportation and final disposal leaves much to be desired.
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Over the period 2015 to 2019, scaling up a package of selected nutrition-specific and nutrition sensitive interventions to cover 90 per cent of Sudan would:
- Reduce the under-five mortality rate to 49/1,000 live births
- Reduce the prevalence of stunting to 25 per cent
- Reduce the ...prevalence of wasting (global acute malnutrition – GAM) to 6 per cent
- Increase exclusive breastfeeding to 63 per cent
- Reduce iron deficiency anaemia among pregnant women to 26 per cent.
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he National Department of Health (NDOH) presents this Malaria Elimination Strategic
Plan 2019-2023 for the Republic of South Africa. The strategy comes at an important time
as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state have recently
renewed the commitment to eliminate malari...a in Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia and South
Africa by 2020 and in the whole SADC region by 2030, with the target of zero local malaria
cases and deaths. South Africa has made steady progress towards this elimination goal
through the implementation of evidence-based malaria policies aligned to the World Health
Organization’s (WHO) Global Technical Strategy.
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Accessed Online June 2018 | When assessing potential opportunities for family planning, it is important to consider a wide range of areas related to demand for contraception, availability and access to services, quality and equity, and the enabling environment. This opportunity brief brings together... a range of data sources to allow for exploration of these key areas. This brief is meant to provide an overview of key data and population segmentations to spark conversations about prioritization and potential impact. Further analysis, including additional segmentation by residence or region may reveal additional nuances.
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Issue Brief 31: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can occur when viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi change over time. There is no longer a response to medicines, and the infection treatment gets really difficult which increases the risk of a disesase spread, which can lead to severe health problems.... AMR is an increasing threat to global public health worldwide that requires cross-sectional and cross-disciplinary action. It is present in every country and is spurred by several human-made factors, including over- and/or inadequate use of antibiotics, poor hygiene and infection prevention control, and excessive usage of antibiotics outside the health care sector e.g. in life stock production.
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This updated implementation guidance is intended for all those who set policy for, or offer care to, pregnant women, families and infants: governments; national managers of maternal and child health programmes in general, and of breastfeeding- and BFHI-related programmes in particular; and health-f...acility managers at different levels (facility directors, medical directors, chiefs of maternity and neonatal wards). The document presents the first revision of the Ten Steps since 1989. The topic of each step is unchanged, but the wording of each one has been updated in line with the evidence-based guidelines and global public health policy.
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The Ethiopia Cholera Outbreak - Flash Update #8 reports a worsening cholera crisis, with 11,407 cases and 156 deaths as of June 20, 2023. The outbreak, ongoing since August 2022, has spread across 79 districts in Oromia, Somali, SNNP, and Sidama regions, increasing by 85% since May.
Key challenges ...include contaminated water, insecurity, floods, and a global vaccine shortage, leaving 7.7 million people at risk. Only 15% of affected areas have contained the disease. A vaccination campaign has reached 1.9 million people, and 81 Cholera Treatment Centers (CTCs) have been set up, but funding remains critically low.
The United Nations (OCHA) warns that the upcoming rainy season may worsen the outbreak, requiring urgent intervention.
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Together for One Health. Building on the momentum of increased collaboration, the WHO, FAO, OIE and UNEP have developed a Strategic Framework for collaboration on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This Framework reflects the joint work of the four organizations to advance a One Health response to AMR ...at the global, regional and country level. It broadly supports the implementation of the five pillars of the Global Action Plan on AMR, as well as strengthening global AMR governance.
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Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a growing public health problem in Ghana and other African countries. Strokes and other CVDs have become a leading cause of death due to increasing risk factors such as hypertension. According to the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD), ischaemic heart disease was... the fourth leading cause of death in Ghana in 2016. The prevalence of hyper-
tension, a major risk factor for CVDs, is increasing rapidly and ranges from 19% to 48%, according to the Ghana Health Service Annual Report, 2017, due to rising life expectancy and the increasing prevalence of contributing factors such as overweight/obesity. Early diagnosis and adequate management of the risk factors can reduce the fatal consequences of CVDs.
At the heart of improving risk assessment and management of CVDs are nationally approved guidelines, which facilitate standardisation of care approaches.
These guidelines developed by experts from all levels of health care and stakeholders capture all recommended approaches and necessary information for clinicians and other healthcare workers on CVDs. They also serve as a practical guide for assessing and managing the most important CVDs prevalent in Ghana and can be used at all levels of care namely health facilities without a doctor; with a general practitioner and with a physician specialist.
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Effective implementation of WHO PEN, combined with other very cost effective population-wide interventions, will help even resource constrained settings to attain the global voluntary targets related to reduction of premature mortality and preventionof heart attacks and strokes.
The aim of this paper is to map and critically analyse evidence of good practice in prevention and response to gender-based violence (GBV) in humanitarian contexts which can support humanitarian practitioners and policy makers to improve the quality of GBV programming in the field. The paper is stru...ctured as follows. Following a brief discussion of key concepts and definitions in relation to GBV, Chapter 2 presents an overview of the extent of GBV in emergencies, and some of the challenges in responding to the problem. Chapter 3 then analyses some of the literature on the evidence of GBV programming effects in humanitarian settings, and draws out key lessons with regard to good practice. Chapter 4 discusses some of the key issues emerging from this review, and Chapter 5 concludes the paper with a discussion of the implications of the findings for research, policy and programming on GBV.
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