Geneva, 22 May 2023 – Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance today published a roadmap* outlining critical actions needed to ensure supply of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) is able to meet growing demand from countries. Released against a backdrop of a recent wave of cholera outbreaks around the world, the roadma...p forecasts the short-, mid- and long-term outlook for global cholera vaccine supply. Developed in consultation with a range of key Alliance partners, including WHO, UNICEF, the Global Taskforce for Cholera Control (GTFCC), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), it describes how these organizations, manufacturers and countries can work together towards ensuring global OCV supply can support largescale preventive vaccination by 2026.
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A Technical Brief for Breakthrough ACTION Field Teams
Global UNIDO Project: Strengthening the local production of essential generic drugs in the least developed and developing countries
Beat the heat: child health amid heatwaves in Europe and Central Asia finds that half of these children died from heat-related illnesses in their first year of life. Most children died during the summer months.
"Around half of children across Europe and Central Asia – or 92 million children –... are already exposed to frequent heatwaves in a region where temperatures are rising at the fastest rate globally. The increasingly high temperatures can have serious health complications for children, especially the youngest children, even in a short space of time. Without care, these complications can be life-threatening,” said Regina De Dominicis UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Heat exposure has acute effects on children, even before they are born, and can result in pre-term births, low birth weight, stillbirth, and congenital anomalies. Heat stress is a direct cause of infant mortality, can affect infant growth and cause a range of paediatric diseases. The report also notes that extreme heat caused the loss of more than 32,000 years of healthy life among children and teenagers in the region.
As the temperatures continue to rise, UNICEF urges governments across Europe and Central Asia to:
- Integrate strategies to reduce the impact of heatwaves including through National Determined Contributions (NDC), National Adaptation Plans (NAP), and disaster risk reduction and disaster management policies with children at the centre of these plans
Invest in heat health action plans and primary health care to more adequately support heat-related illness among children
- Invest in early warning systems, including heat alert systems
- Adapt education facilities to reduce the temperatures in the areas children play in and equip teachers with skills to respond to heat stress
- Adapt urban design and infrastructure including ensuring buildings, particularly those housing the most vulnerable communities are equipped to minimize heat exposure
- Secure the provision of safe water, particularly in countries with deteriorating water quality and availability.
UNICEF works with governments, partners and communities across the region to build resilience against heatwaves. This includes equipping teachers, community health workers and families with the skills and knowledge to respond to heat stress.
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This document presents the World Health Organization Operational framework for building climate resilient and low carbon health systems*. ***The framework's goal is to increase the climate resilience of health systems to protect and improve the health of communities in an unstable and changing clima...te, while optimizing the use of resources and implementing strategies to reduce GHG emissions. It aims to contribute to the design of transformative health systems that can provide safe and quality care in a changing climate.
Implementation of the framework's ten components would help health organizations, authorities, and programmes to be better able to anticipate, prevent, prepare for, and manage climate-related health risks and therefore decrease the burden of associated climate-sensitive health outcomes. Implementing low carbon health practices would contribute to climate change mitigation while also improving health outcomes. Achieving these aims is an important contribution to universal health coverage (UHC), global health security, and specific targets within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The document is a useful resource for decision-makers in health systems, including public health agencies, and other specialized institutions, and for decision-makers in health-determining sectors.
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The "WHO Package of Essential Noncommunicable (PEN) Disease Interventions for Primary Health Care" provides a set of cost-effective, evidence-based interventions to address noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancers. Designed ...for implementation in primary healthcare settings, especially in low-resource environments, the package includes protocols for screening, diagnosis, treatment, and management of these diseases. The document emphasizes an integrated approach, supporting universal health coverage by empowering healthcare workers with practical tools to improve NCD care. It aims to reduce premature mortality from NCDs and enhance global health equity.
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Today, the world is facing a learning crisis: While millions of children have entered education systems for the first time, many of them cannot read, write or do basic mathematics, even after several years of primary school.1 This global learning crisis has its roots in children’s earliest years, ...when failure to invest in quality early childhood education (ECE)results in children starting school already behind in a host of critical skills they need to succeed in primary school.2Investing in the foundations of learning during the child’s early years benefits children,3 families, education systems and societies at large.4 Participation in quality ECE sets in motion a positive learning cycle and is a proven strategy to address the global learning crisis at its roots by closing early learning gaps, strengthening the efficiency of education systems and providing a solid foundation for human capital development and economic grow
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Specific action sheets offer useful guidance on mental health and psychosocial support and cover the following areas coordination assessment monitoring and evaluation protection and human rights standards human resources community mobilisation and support health services education dissemination of i...nformation food security and nutrition shelter and site planning and water and sanitationthe guidelines include a matrix with guidance for emergency planning actions to be taken in the early stages of an emergency and comprehensive responses needed in the recovery and rehabilitation phases
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This second edition of the “living paper” contributes to the global knowledge on how countries are responding to the pandemic by documenting real-time actions in a key area of response – that is, social protection measures planned or implemented by governments.
For the purpose of this revie...w, we organized interventions by social assistance, social insurance and labor market programs. For the latter measures, we deliberately focused on supply-side programs (e.g., mostly wage subsidies and other activation programs). In most cases, data sources include official information published in government websites, while in many cases we reported information from global and national news outlets. In some cases, information was provided directly by country-based experts, while the full database was validated and integrated by regional and country social protection teams at the World Bank. Overall, findings should be considered preliminary and interpreted with caution.
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In this era, grand challenges lies in biodiversity loss, climate change, and global noncommunicable diseases signify that planet and humanity are in crisis. Scholarly evidence from human and animal kingdom suggest that there is an optimism in planetary health which can provide a unique and novel con...cept where efforts toward survival and remediation can be made. With accurate navigation, the current challenges can be mitigated leading to a new reality, one in which the core value is the well‐being of all. This paper discusses the drivers of planetary health and the role of community health workers (CHWs) in making health‐care system more resilient that can produce multiple benefits to community and overall planetary health. A web‐based international database such as Google, Google Scholar, SCOPUS/MEDLINE/PubMed, and JSTOR was searched relevant to a planetary health framework. The study findings suggest that CHWs can offer health care interventions through environmental health cobenefits across the spectrum of health effects of climate change cause and effects. These actions have been divided into four major categories (i. health care promotion and prevention, ii. health care strengthening, iii. advocacy, and iv. education and research) that CHWs perform through a variety of roles and functions they are engaged in protecting planetary health. CHWs contribute toward achieving sustainable development goals such as planetary health and focus on environment sustainability and well‐being of entire mankind.
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Global concerns: Implications for the future
Child Mental Health Atlas
FAO’s component of the Global COVID-19 Humanitarian Response Plan
18.5.2020
The global COVID-19 outbreak is leading to an acute and drastic shortage of essential supplies, including personal protective equipment, diagnostics and clinical management. At the request of the UN Secretary-General and in support of the UN Crisis Management Team, a Supply Chain Tas...k Force has been convened to establish the COVID-19 Supply Chain System (CSCS).
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This third booklet of the World Drug Report 2022 has a dual focus: opioids and cannabis.
The first chapter of the booklet provides an overview of opioids as a group of substances and their patterns of non-medical use at the global level. It also reviews the latest trends in the global supply of opi...ates and synthetic opioids and the availability of pharmaceutical opioids for medical consumption. Issues specific to regional patterns and trends in opioid markets are also analysed, including the opioid crisis in North America and in Africa and the Middle East. The chapter also includes a discussion of the potential impact, in the region and worldwide, of changes in opium poppy cultivation and opium production in Afghanistan. reireg
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Report of the Global Thematic Consultation on Population Dynamics
The document, "Progress on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases," reports on global efforts to reduce the impact of NCDs, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases, following the commitments made at high-level United Nations meetings. It highlights ...the inadequate progress in meeting the targets set under the Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 to reduce premature NCD mortality by one-third by 2030. Key challenges include insufficient funding, limited implementation of effective interventions, and political and economic barriers, especially in low-income countries. The report calls for strengthened international cooperation, policy reform, and innovative approaches to meet global health targets.
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Global UNIDO Project: Strengthening the local production of essential medicines in least developed and developing countries
The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH) was established by World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in January 2000 to assess the place of health in global economic development. Although health is widely understood to be both a central goal and an important outcome ...of development, the importance of investing in health to promote economic development and poverty reduction has been much less appreciated. We have found that extending the coverage of crucial health services, including a relatively small number of specific interventions, to the world’s poor could save millions of lives each year, reduce poverty, spur economic development, and promote global security.
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Global Plan to end TB 2016-2020
The document, "Progress on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases," reports on global efforts to reduce the impact of NCDs, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases, following the commitments made at high-level United Nations meetings. It highlights ...the inadequate progress in meeting the targets set under the Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 to reduce premature NCD mortality by one-third by 2030. Key challenges include insufficient funding, limited implementation of effective interventions, and political and economic barriers, especially in low-income countries. The report calls for strengthened international cooperation, policy reform, and innovative approaches to meet global health targets.
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