Evidence shows that oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces the risk of contracting HIV during sexual intercourse by more than 90% when taken daily. It is for this reason the National HIV Prevention Strategy 2015-2020 (2018 Revision) emphasises the role of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in ...reducing new HIV infections in Malawi.
The Ministry of Health has prioritised PrEP use among the populations most at-risk of HIV infection in Malawi: young women ages 10 to 24 years, sero-discordant couples, female sex workers, men who have sex with men, and other priority populations (such as members of the uniformed services, prisoners, and mobile populations).
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Improving the survival chances and quality of life of women, newborns, and children remains an urgent global challenge. Since 2012, substantial progress has been made in reducing maternal and under-5 deaths, and a only handful of countries are on target to meet the SDG targets in 2030. Yet, 5 millio...n children still die each year under the age of 5, and nearly half of those are newborns less than a month old. Worse still, the global maternal mortality ratio is going in the wrong direction.
A Decade of Progress and Action for the Future will examine the tenacity and innovation that helped us make gains, the lessons learned through monitoring, country-led adaptation and leadership, analysis, and reflection, as well as the approaches we must take to reinvigorate the momentum and global commitment to improving maternal and child survival. Increasing coverage, strengthening the quality of care, and enhancing equity will be tantamount to our global progress.
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Pregnancy and childbirth during adolescence profoundly affects the lives of millions of girls worldwide, and is a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity, and infant and child mortality. Every year, an estimated 21 million girls aged 15–19 years old in low- and middle-income countries be...come pregnant, and approximately 12 million give birth.
For many adolescent girls, the ability to control their sexual lives remains limited. Long-standing gender inequalities and discrimination, marginalization, harmful social and gender norms, and denial of rights, compounded by poverty and violence, render them vulnerable to early pregnancy, HIV and other health threats. Lack of age-appropriate sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information and services create additional barriers to care and support; as a result, adolescent girls who become pregnant are much more likely to go on to have rapid repeated births.
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In low- and middle-income middle-income countries, reliable and disaggregated disability data on prevalence, participation and barriers are often unavailable. This study aimed to estimate disability prevalence, determine associated socio-demographic factors and compare access in the community betwee...n people with and without disability in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand, India, using the Rapid Assessment of Disability survey.
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The UNICEF-GAIN Partnership Project
The report notes that iodine deficiency is a leading cause of preventable brain damage worldwide. Insufficient iodine during pregnancy and infancy results in neurological and psychological deficits, reducing a child’s IQ by 8 to 10 points. This translates ...into major losses in the cognitive capital of entire nations and thus their socio-economic development.
The report outlines urgent steps to reduce the risk of mental impairment to babies’ growing brains:
• Integrate salt iodization into national plans to support children’s nutrition and brain development in early childhood;
• Align salt iodization and salt reduction agendas;
• Establish surveillance systems to identify unreached populations;
• Strengthen regulatory systems to enforce existing legislation on salt iodization;
• Recognize the growing importance of fortified foods as potential sources of iodized salt.
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Around the world, more than 2 billion people lack access to safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene services, with conflicts and climate change exacerbating the issue.
Unsafe and insufficient WASH facilities, especially in rural and remote areas, can lead to increased health complications fo...r older people, persons with disabilities and children. They also reinforce cycles of poverty, inequality and deprivation – particularly for women, children and marginalized groups, who are disproportionately impacted by a lack of equitable access to water and sanitation.
Launched on World Water Day, the guidelines address the knowledge gap on ways to practically implement inclusive approaches to WASH infrastructure development, particularly in developing countries and fragile contexts.
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Technical Note
Recently, the approach to hazardous events has undergone a considerable shift, away from reactive activities focused on managing and responding to events and towards a more proactive process of emergency and disaster risk management (DRM). The ultimate goal of this shift in focus is ...to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks, a process known as disaster risk reduction (DRR), while strengthening individual, community, societal and global resilience.
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Childhood obesity is a major public health problem globally, which could undermine progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Prevention is recognized as the most efficient means of curbing the epidemic; however, given the scale of the problem and the many children who need profes...sional support due to the severity of the disease and/or obesity-related complications, health systems all over Europe must take steps to develop obesity management systems. The aim of this project was to assess the response of health care delivery systems in 19 countries in the WHO European Region to the childhood obesity epidemic.
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The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture (MoEAC) has been implementing the Integrated School Health Programme in various forms since before the country attained political independence in 1990. School health goes beyond the physical health of the learner, in that it includes the holistic wellbeing... of the individual learner, meaning that the school environment should be safe and conducive to learning. The National Safe Schools Framework (NSSF) is an exciting dimension of the Integrated School Health Programme. The Programme focuses on promoting the health, safety and wellbeing of learners and other school stakeholders in Namibia, and the NSSF was developed to provide practical guidance to the schools and school stakeholders on how to systematically improve the standards of school safety, and how to develop a culture of care in any school.
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Since independence (1961) the Government through the Department of Social welfare has been providing services to people with disabilities without a comprehensive policy. The adoption of the National Policy on Disability (NPD) is the outcome of many years of consultations among disability stakeholder...s.
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Despite the increasing population of refugees stuck in protracted situations and our awareness of the vulnerability of children and adolescents growing in up these contexts, relatively little is known about community based child protection mechanisms (CBCPMs) in refugee communities. CBCPMs, defined ...broadly, include all groups or networks that respond to and prevent problems of child protection and vulnerable children. These mechanisms may include family supports, peer group supports, and community groups such as primary and secondary schools, non-formal education and vocational training structures, women’s groups, religious groups, and youth groups, as well as traditional community processes, government mechanisms, and mechanisms initiated by international or domestic non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In diverse contexts, CBCPMs represent front-line, day-to-day efforts to protect children from exploitation, abuse, violence, and neglect and to promote children’s well being. This study, together with a parallel study conducted among the urban refugee population in Uganda, is the first study of CBCPMs undertaken in refugee settings.
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Further analysis of the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey
At the threshold of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era, this document captures the remarkable achievements by Member States towards achieving MDGs 4 and 5. It acknowledges new opportunities in the post-2015 phase shaped by the SDGs and the Global Strategy for women’s, children’s and adoles...cents’ health and presents an advanced state of preparedness in the Region. This also highlights the region’s renewed commitment for a more inclusive and more dynamic flagship action for ending preventable maternal, newborn and child mortality as well as to improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing in the South-East Asia Region.
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This predominantly qualitative research on disability and development in Myanmar was conducted between August 2011 and February 2012, in three commercial centres of Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi. Stakeholders of service providers, persons with disabilities (PWDs) and families of disabled people were... interviewed in order to discover the needs and challenges that they face. Discoveries were made concerning independent living and adaptive education, vocational training and livelihoods challenges, community-based rehabilitation, organisational and human resource capacity, and information channels, networking and cooperation between organisations.
The study found that PWDS, especially those with intellectually disabilities, need training for independent living, adaptive special education, motor development programs and behaviour modification programs in special institutions. Effective services and programs are necessary in all of these areas of need.
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Experience from Save the Children and partners globally
demonstrates that improvements in education quality go hand-in-hand
with inclusion and access, Flexible, quality, responsive learning
environments will benefit all children and are fundamental to including
marginalised groups like disabled ...children in education.
These guidelines are primarily aimed at education staff trying to
develop inclusive education practices, focussing on including disabled
children in schools.While this book focuses on disabled children, we
hope it will be useful for developing general inclusive education
practices. Community groups and non-governmental organisations, as
well as people working in community-based rehabilitation(CBR) and
the wider disability context, could also use these guidelines to provide
input into inclusive education work.
While the guidelines focus primarily on schools, much of the
information is still relevant to readers working in out-of-school
situations.
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The development of this Operational Roadmap has been driven by a growing consensus in Ukraine on the need to prioritize activities that are urgently required to address the mental health and psychosocial needs of the country’s population and also the importance of basing the response on existing s...tructures, resources and innovations introduced in reforms in past years.
According to this consensus, new resources mobilized by and for Ukraine should complement existing ones, in line with the national vision and with best international standards, and should be planned in a way that further strengthens the country’s mental health system.
The Government of Ukraine is committed to urgently addressing the mental health and psychosocial needs of the population, under the auspices of the First Lady of Ukraine and the leadership of the recently established Intersectoral Coordination Council for Mental Health and Psychological Assistance to Victims of the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine (referred to in this document as the Intersectoral Coordination Council).
This Roadmap has been developed following a series of consultations with Ukrainian authorities and national and international agencies working in the area of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) and engaged in emergency response in Ukraine. The consultation process was organized by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine (MOH) and supported by WHO Ukraine, under the auspices of the First Lady of Ukraine and in collaboration with the MHPSS Technical Working Group of Ukraine (MHPSS TWG Ukraine) and the IASC MHPSS Reference Group (IASC MHPSS RG), and building on substantial advances in the mental health sector under existing programmes in the country.
The Roadmap is informed by international technical guidance and national policies and plans, including the IASC Guidelines on MHPSS in Emergency Settings, the Minimum Services Package for MHPSS in Emergencies (MHPSS MSP), the IASC Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013– 2030, the WHO European Framework for Action on Mental Health, the Concept for Development of Mental Health Care in Ukraine until 2030, the National Mental Health Action Plan for 2021–2023 and the National Recovery and Development Plan.
Informed by the overall goal of MHPSS assistance in Ukraine – to reduce suffering and improve the mental health and psychosocial well-being of the affected population – the Roadmap aims to provide a consolidated overview of envisioned MHPSS priorities, informed by the local context and the vision of the Government of Ukraine together with national and international partners, and with the best available evidence and resources, to all MHPSS stakeholders already engaged in or joining emergency response and recovery efforts in Ukraine.
As well as information on the context in Ukraine, the Roadmap includes:
• a list of evidence-based MHPSS interventions and services contextualized and introduced in Ukraine in recent years (described in Table 1) and
• a set of multisectoral actions to scale up MHPSS services in both the short and longer terms, informed by available evidence, international technical guidance and expert consensus (described in Table 2).
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UNHCR and its partners implement interventions focusing on adolescent girls and boys, including:
▪ Formation and capacity building of adolescent girls and boys’ clubs as peer groups for awareness raising, and SGBV prevention and response mechanisms.
▪ Community based protection activ...ities and training on child protection
▪ Provision of secondary education for secondary school-aged youth and recruitment of female teachers to encourage adolescent girls to continue education
▪ Introduction of community sharing/ parenting sessions and increasing the number of women support networks
▪ Establishing girls’ friendly spaces, which includes information sharing and psycho-social support
▪ Awareness raising campaigns with all members of the community, including community leaders
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The Global Sexual and Reproductive Health Service Package for Men and Adolescent Boys has been developed to support providers of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to increase the range and quality of services to meet the specific and diverse needs of men and adolescent boys. This package... focuses specifically on the provision of such services integrated
within clinical and non-clinical contexts and follows a gender-transformative approach. It covers men and adolescent boys in all their diversity and takes a positive approach to SRH, seeing this not just as the absence of disease, but the positive expression of one’s gender, sex and sexuality. In doing so, this service package contributes to efforts to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as prioritized in the Sustainable Development Goals. This package is in no way intended to detract from the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and adolescent girls, nor to divert resources, funding or attention from much-needed SRH services and programmes for women and adolescent girls.
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