Exposure to air pollution causes 7 million deaths worldwide every year and costs an estimated US$ 5.11 trillion in welfare losses globally. In the 15 countries that emit the most greenhouse gas emissions, the health impacts of air pollution are estimated to cost more than 4% of their GDP. Actions to... meet the Paris goals would cost around 1% of global GDP. The report provides recommendations for governments on how to maximize the health benefits of tackling climate change and avoid the worst health impacts of this global challenge.
It describes how countries around the world are now taking action to protect lives from the impacts of climate change – but that the scale of support remains woefully inadequate, particularly for the small island developing states, and least developed countries. Only approximately 0.5% of multilateral climate funds dispersed for climate change adaptation have been allocated to health projects
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The majority of developing countries will fail to achieve their targets for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)1 and the health- and poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unless they take urgent steps to strengthen their health financing. Just over a decade out from the SDG deadline of 20...30, 3.6 billion people do not receive the most essential health services they need, and 100 million are pushed into poverty from paying out-of-pocket for health services. The evidence is strong that progress towards UHC, core to SDG 3, will spur inclusive and sustainable economic growth, yet this will not happen unless countries achieve high-performance health financing, defined here as funding levels that are adequate and sustainable; pooling that is sufficient to spread the financial risks of ill-health; and spending that is efficient and equitable to assure desired levels of health service coverage, quality, and financial protection for all people— with resilience and sustainability.
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As countries aim to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieving universal health coverage, health inequities driven by racial discrimination and intersecting factors remain pervasive. Inequities experienced by indigenous peoples as well as people of African descent, Roma ...and other ethnic minorities are of concern globally; they are unjust, preventable and remediable.
Health systems themselves are important determinants of health and health equity. They can perpetuate health inequities by reflecting structural racism and discriminatory practices of wider society. For instance, systemic racism, implicit bias, misinformed clinical practice, or discrimination by health professionals contributes to health inequities. However, health systems can also be a leading force for tackling the inequities faced by populations experiencing racial discrimination.
Primary health care (PHC) is the essential strategy for reorientating health systems and societies to become healthier, equitable, effective and sustainable. In 2018, on the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Alma-Ata, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) renewed the emphasis on PHC with their strategy,
WHO outlines 14 strategic and operational levers for policy-makers to strengthen PHC. Within each lever, there are multiple potential entry points for targeted actions to address racial discrimination, foster intercultural care, and reduce health inequities experienced by indigenous peoples as well as people of African descent, Roma and other ethnic minorities.
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Oral health is defined as the absence of disease and a status that ensures optimal functioning of the mouth and its tissues in a manner preserving the highest level of function and self-esteem. Oral health enables an individual to eat, speak and socialise having no active disease, discomfort or disc...ouragement thus contributing to the general well-being. Good oral health is an essential component of general health and a right of every person1. Poor oral health has a negative impact on general health, work productivity, educational performance and adversely affects growth and development.
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The National Health Plan (NHP) aims to strengthen the country’s health system and pave the way towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC),choosing a path that is explicitly pro-poor. The main goal of NHP 2017-2021 is to extend access to a Basic Essential Package of Health Services (EPHS) to the entir...e population by 2020 while increasing financial protection.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging health systems across the world. Rapidly increasing demand for care of people with COVID-19 is compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on the movement of people and supplies that disrupt the delivery of frontline health care for all people...
This g...uidance addresses the specific role of community-based health care in the pandemic context and outlines the adaptations needed to keep people safe, maintain continuity of essential services and ensure an effective response to COVID-19. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels and complements a range of other guidance, including that on priority public health interventions, facility-based care, and risk communication and community engagement in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This report presents a framework to link science, policy and practice for a comprehensive assessment of climate mitigation and adaptation investments and their impact on human health.The framework proposes to use weather and climate data to forecast health impacts over time, as well as biophysical a...nd economic models to quantify the outcomes of investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation for relevant sectoral indicators and health co-benefits. It provides guidance on the economic valuation of health co-benefits of climate action, for inclusion in sector-specific cost–benefit analysis (CBA), including the spatial allocation of such costs and benefits.
The framework developed and presented in this study is comprehensive, and provides various entry points for different audiences, including decision-makers in the public and private sectors, researchers and scientists, working in the health sector as well as in other thematic areas and related sectors affected by climate action.
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This report aims to support countries in the necessary transition toward healthier, more sustainable diets by integrating biodiversity in food-based interventions to support nutrition and health. It is intended to help guide decision-makers in the health, nutrition and other sectors, to:
Consider... the important role of biodiversity in food systems for the development of integrated interventions to support healthy, diverse and sustainable diets;
To focus investments and country support for more comprehensive, coordinated and cross-cutting public health and nutrition projects and policies; and
To strengthen the resilience of food systems, health systems, and societies, each of which are each increasingly compromised by widespread ecological degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.
Biodiversity at every level (genetic, species and ecosystem level) is a foundational pillar for food security, nutrition, and dietary quality. It is the basic source of variety in essential foods, nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and medicines, and underpins life-sustaining ecosystem services. It is a core environmental determinant of health, often a vital ingredient of healthy nutritional outcomes and livelihoods, gender equality, social equity, and other health determinants.
Biodiversity can play a more prominent role in planning for nutritional outcomes in various ways, e.g. by facilitating the production of nutritious fruits and plant products, sustaining livelihoods through more efficient production and increasing the diversity of products available in markets. This Guidance presents and expands on six core building blocks for mainstreaming biodiversity for nutrition and health:
Cross-sectoral knowledge development and knowledge co-production;
Enabling environments;
Integration;
Conservation and the wider use of biodiversity;
Education and awareness-raising;
Monitoring and evaluation;
This WHO report builds on an unprecedented opportunity to mainstream biodiversity in order to support healthy and sustainable diets, and offers the necessary technical guidance to catalyze and support a transformation of the global food system and transition to healthier, more sustainable diets.
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The substantial burden of death and disability that results from interpersonal violence, road traffic injuries, unintentional injuries, occupational health risks, air pollution, climate change, and inadequate water and sanitation falls disproportionally on low- and middle-income countries. Injury Pr...evention and Environmental Health addresses the risk factors and presents updated data on the burden, as well as economic analyses of platforms and packages for delivering cost-effective and feasible interventions in these settings. The volume's contributors demonstrate that implementation of a range of prevention strategies-presented in an essential package of interventions and policies-could achieve a convergence in death and disability rates that would avert more than 7.5 million deaths a year.
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The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused a deterioration in the level of access to health-care services and medicines in the country, particularly for people living in regions close to the front line and areas that are not partially or fully controlled by the Government of Ukraine, and for peop...le who have been internally displaced. Cost and time constraints involved in getting to and from health facilities, as well as limited transportation options were the main barriers to accessing essential health-care services. At the same time, the findings show that the country’s health system remains resilient and that overall access to health services is fairly high.This report is based on data collected through a quantitative cross-sectional survey of self-reported health needs of the general population in Ukraine. It presents results of the first round survey conducted in September 2022 and could help to address the specific health-care needs of the population groups concerned.
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PlosOne https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165797; Food production is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water and land use, and dietary risk factors are contributors to non-communicable diseases. Shifts in dietary patterns can therefore potentially provide benefits for both the en...vironment and health. However, there is uncertainty about the magnitude of these impacts, and the dietary changes necessary to achieve them.
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Annual and medium-term budget preparation processes are the platforms through which specific plans are transformed into actual resource allocation decisions. The aim of this Process Guide is to support key stakeholders involved in these processes (such as the Cabinet, Ministries of Finance and Healt...h, the Parliament, citizens, media, and civil society organizations) to reorient budgetary arrangements in order to facilitate the ability of national governments to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by delivering, therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccine services to their populations. Reorienting budgetary arrangements positions governments to sustain the capacity to mitigate and respond to COVID-19 while concurrently delivering other essential health services and working towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The reorientation process is an opportunity to better align budgetary arrangements to sustain systemic capacity to prevent emerging health threats over the short, medium, and long terms.
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Healthy communities rely on well-functioning ecosystems. They provide clean air, fresh water, medicines and food security. They also limit disease and stabilize the climate. But biodiversity loss is happening at unprecedented rates, impacting human health worldwide, according to a new state of knowl...edge review of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and WHO.
The report synthesizes the available information on the most important inter-linkages between biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and epidemic infectious diseases such as the Ebola virus; and the connection between biodiversity, nutritional diversity and health. It also covers the potential benefits of closer partnerships between conservation and health, from improved surveillance of infectious diseases in wildlife and human populations, to promoting access to green spaces to promote physical activity and mental health. It also highlights the many areas in which further research is needed.
The Joint report hopes to provide a useful reference for the Sustainable Development Goals and post-2015 development agenda, which represents an unique opportunity to promote integrated approaches to biodiversity and health by highlighting that biodiversity contributes to human well-being, and highlighting that biodiversity needs protection for development to be sustainable.
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Despite the considerable improvement in global health, millions of people still lack access to quality health services, including access to effective antimicrobial medicines, or are impoverished as a result of health spending. At the same time, antimicrobial resistance – a consequence of overuse a...nd misuse of antimicrobials – is increasingly a barrier to accessing effective care. The declining effectiveness of antibiotics is driven by multiple factors, many of which can be addressed through well functioning primary health care. However, primary health care has not always had much attention in national health sector responses to
antimicrobial resistance, which often focus on tertiary care, laboratory detection and surveillance. The three pillars of primary health care (community engagement, front-line health services including primary care and essential public health, and multisectoral action on wider health determinants) are central not just to Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, but also to an effective response to antimicrobial resistance.
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An estimated 1.3 billion people globally experience significant disability. This figure has grown over the last decade and will continue to rise due to demographic and epidemiological changes. In 2022, the World Health Organization launched the Global report on health equity for persons with disabil...ities. This report demonstrated that many persons with disabilities are still being left behind. Experiencing persistent health inequities, persons with disabilities die earlier, they have poorer health and functioning, and they are more affected by health emergencies than the general population. These differences are largely associated with unjust factors both inside and beyond the health sector and are avoidable. The Global Report called upon Member States to take actions to make health sector more inclusive for persons with disabilities through the primary health care approach. This will be essential for countries to make health coverage truly universal and to progress towards other health-related targets in the sustainable development goals.
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The report identifies major global gaps in WASH services: one third of health care facilities do not have what is needed to clean hands where care is provided; one in four facilities have no water services, and 10% have no sanitation services. This means that 1.8 billion people use facilities that l...ack basic water services and 800 million use facilities with no toilets. Across the world’s 47 least-developed countries, the problem is even greater: half of health care facilities lack basic water services. Furthermore, the extent of the problem remains hidden because major gaps in data persist, especially on environmental cleaning.
This report also describes the global and national responses to the 2019 World Health Assembly resolution on WASH in health care facilities. More than 70% of countries have conducted related situation analyses, 86% have updated and are implementing standards and 60% are working to incrementally improve infrastructure and operation and maintenance of WASH services. Case studies from 30 countries demonstrate that progress is being propelled by strong national leadership and coordination, use of data to direct resources and action, and the mutual benefits of empowering health workers and communities to develop solutions together.
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The Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) has been coordinating sector wide reforms that aim to improve equity and quality of maternal and child health services. As part of these efforts, the ministry is also exerting concerted efforts to improve availability and use of quality... RMNCH pharmaceuticals. Management of RMNCH pharmaceuticals has had significant challenges such as poor availability of essential pharmaceuticals and wastages of valuable resources as pharmacy professionals were not demonstrating the required knowledge, skill and attitude towards availing the pharmaceuticals and ensuring their rational medicine use.
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Adolescence is a critical stage in life for physical, cognitive and emotional development, shaping future health and well-being. Comprehensive measurement of adolescent health is essential to prioritize health issues, guide interventions and track progress. However, global, regional and national ado...lescent health measurement has historically been inconsistent and incomplete.
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Primary health care, as outlined in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and again 40 years later in the 2018 WHO/UNICEF document A vision for primary health care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society a...pproach to health that combines the following three components: multisectoral policy and action; empowered people and communities; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services.(1) Primary health care-oriented health systems are health systems organized and operated so as to make the right to the highest attainable level of health the main goal, while maximizing equity and solidarity. They are composed of a core set of structural and functional elements that support achieving universal coverage and access to services that are acceptable to the population and that are equity enhancing. The term “primary care” refers to a key process in the health system that supports first-contact, accessible, continued, comprehensive and coordinated patient-focused care.
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Full eHandbook under: http://www.msh.org/resources/health-systems-in-action-an-ehandbook-for-leaders-and-managers
Effective supply management has the potential to make a powerful contribution to the reliable availability of essential medicines, which are a crucial part of the delivery of highqualit...y health care services. Because medicines are costly and poor management so often results in waste, good supply management is also crucial to the cost-effectiveness of providing medicines.
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