Chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma and
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kill more than
four million people every year and affect hundreds
of millions more. These diseases erode the health
and well-being of the patients and have a negative
impact on families and societies. Women ...and
children are particularly vulnerable, especially those
in low and middle income countries, where they are
exposed on a daily basis to indoor air pollution from
solid fuels for cooking and heating. In high income
countries, tobacco is the most important risk factor
for chronic respiratory diseases, and in some of
these countries, tobacco use among women and
young people is still increasing.
more
PEPFAR Malawi’s Country Operational Plan (COP) 2021 reflects a culmination of strong interagency collaboration between the PEPFAR Malawi team, Government of Malawi (GoM), and civil society organizations (CSOs) to mitigate the devastating impacts of COVID-19 and sustain progress achieved over the l...ast two decades towards HIV epidemic control.
At the conclusion of the March 2020 Johannesburg Regional Planning Meeting, the PEPFAR Malawi team presented a COP20 surge strategy to improve client-centered care, mitigate treatment disruption, scale prevention programs to key and vulnerable populations, and strengthen national health systems.
Following this meeting, the first three COVID-19 cases were reported in Malawi and immediately thereafter, adaptations to the COP20 strategy became imperative to deliver safe, client-centered care.
more
In 2006, the Special Session of African Union Health Ministers adopted the Maputo Plan of Action for implementing the Continental Policy Framework on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which expired at the end of 2015. The goal was for all stakeholders and partners to join forces and ...re-double efforts, so that together, the effective implementation of the Continental Policy framework including universal access to sexual and reproductive health by 2015 in all countries in Africa can be achieved. The Revised Maputo Plan of Action (MPoA) 2016 – 2030 was subsequently endorsed by the African Union Heads of State at the 27th AU Summit in July 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda. The plan reinforces the call for universal access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services in Africa and lays foundation to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 3 and 5, as well as the African Union Agenda 2063.
more
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.
more
Ghana's attempt to regulate health care waste management started in 2002 with the development of guidelines on health care waste manage-ment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2006, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) also developed the Health Care Waste Management Policy and Guidelines as ...a single document.
Although awareness on Health Care Waste Management (HCWM) has improved in recent years, there is the need for a systematic approach to improve on effective segregation, safe collection, and storage, as well as ultimate treatment before disposal.
This guideline seeks to ensure that HCW is managed effectively in compliance with existing International Conventions that Ghana is a signatory to, national laws and regulations, and others to be passed in future.
Recommendations for better management of HCW in the nation's health care facilities have been presented in this document. Also, standard operating procedures (SOPs) have been developed to provide
guidance to various levels of the health facilities.
more
This collection of case studies on risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) from 18 different country/area level public health partners in the WHO European Region provides evidence of numerous results achieved and lessons learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. RCCE has not... traditionally been an area where evidence of challenges and solutions was documented. With this compendium, we wanted to collect and share this evidence to support decision-making in this area of work.
more
Further analysis of the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey
7. Rev Panam Salud Publica. 2020;44:e13
Haiti faces a double burden of disease. Infectious diseases continue to be an issue, while non-communicable diseases have become a significant burden of disease. More attention must also be focused on the increase in worrying public health issues such as road... injuries, exposure to forces of nature and HIV/AIDS in specific age groups. To address the burden of disease, sustained actions are needed to promote better health in Haiti and countries with similar challenges.
more
28 Dec 2020. The main objective of these guidelines is to provide tools for staff working in the field of immunization to support effective communication between health personnel and the general population, with the aim of strengthening, maintaining or recovering trust in vaccines and the immunizati...on programs in the Region of the Americas.
Available in English, Spanish and Portuguese
more
Note d’orientation rapide
Sudan has a long history of hosting refugees and asylum seekers with 991,787 individuals, 51 per cent female and 53 per cent children, expected to live in Sudan by the end of 2020.
Modern healthcare has given rise to extremely complex and multifaceted ethical dilemmas. All too often physicians are unprepared to manage these competently. This publication is specifically structured to reinforce and strengthen the ethical mindset and prac...tice of physicians and provide tools to find ethical solutions to these dilemmas. It is not a list of “rights and wrongs” but an attempt to sensitise the conscience of the physician, which is the basis for all sound and ethical decision-making. To this end, you will find several case studies in the book, which are intended to foster individual ethical reflection as well as discussion within team settings.
more
For most people in displacement contexts, there are simply not enough vaccines available in the places where they are hosted: 85% of refugees are hosted in lower- and middle-income countries, while in the first six months of this year 85% of vaccines went to wealthy countries; lower- and middle inco...me countries have still received only a fraction of the vaccine doses they require.3 Shortages in these countries can also pose particular risks to vaccination campaigns aimed at displaced populations, as they can result in them being deprioritized.
more
This report challenges policy-makers and political leaders to tackle fossil fuel production and consumption as a health control issue, in the same way that smoking has been reduced and regulated. Fossil fuel combustion is a major source of toxic air pollution that kills 7 million people every year, ...almost the same as the number of deaths caused by tobacco smoking.
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognised air pollution as a major health risk factor. There is widespread public discussion about the effects of fossil fuel combustion and emissions on climate change… but what about the effect on our health? Climate change poses a threat not only to the health of the planet, but also to humans.
The case studies evaluated in this report offer examples of mechanisms that can be used to restrict the production and consumption of unhealthy commodities, so that the health, air pollution and climate communities can learn from one another, using shared approaches and language. These case studies show that the connection with health is a strong argument to support sustainable change.
more
TUATION UPDATE
In the early morning of 6 February 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred in southern Türkiye near the
northern border of Syria. The earthquake was followed 11 minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Many
aftershocks are still being felt across the region. Whilst the imp...act is still being assessed, initial reports evidence
significant damage in the areas of southern Türkiye and northern Syria.
In response, the Syria Ministry of Health (MoH) activated its emergency operations centre (EOC) on 6 Feb 2023
under the chairmanship of the Deputy Minister. In all affected governorates, public and private health facilities
and medical convoys have been repurposed to support the response and are being managed by the National
Ministry of Health (MoH) and Directorate of Health (DoH) at governorate level. Support has been directed to
affected areas, with medical convoys including 28 ambulances and 7 mobile clinics, deployed from the health
directorates of Damascus, Rural Damascus, Quneitra, Homs, Tartous, Aleppo and Latakia. At the same time, 4
more
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.
more
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a double shock - health and economic. As of March 1, 2021, COVID-19 has cost more than 2.5 million lives and triggered an economic recession surpassing any economic downturn since World War II.
Part I of this paper explores the impact of this current macro-fisc...al outlook on the three primary sources of health spending. Drawing on experiences from previous economic crises, scenario analyses suggest a fall in government per capita spending on health in 2021 and 2022 unless governments make bold choices to increase the share of health in general government spending.
Part II of the paper discusses policy options to meet the spending needs in health. These options encompass strategies to make fiscal adjustments work and channel funds where they are most needed, as well as policies to stabilize the balance sheets of social health insurance (SHI) schemes. The paper explains how the health sector can play an active role in expanding fiscal space, contributing to tax reforms, most importantly pro-health taxes, and mobilizing and absorbing external financing, including debt relief.
more
ABSTRACT
More than 500 million people worldwide live with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Health systems today face fundamental challenges in delivering optimal care due to ageing populations, healthcare workforce constraints, financing, availability and affordability of CVD medicine, and service del...ivery.
Digital health technologies can help address these challenges. They may be a tool
to reach Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 and reduce premature mortality from
non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by a third by 2030. Yet, a range of fundamental barriers prevents implementation and access to such technologies. Health system governance, health provider, patient and technological factors can prevent or distort their implementation.
World Heart Federation (WHF) roadmaps aim to identify essential roadblocks on the pathway to effective prevention, detection, and treatment of CVD. Further, they aim to provide actionable solutions and implementation frameworks for local adaptation. This WHF Roadmap for digital health in cardiology identifies barriers to implementing digital health technologies for CVD and provides recommendations for overcoming them.
more