Summary of key informant interviews with representatives of organizations providing, funding, or supporting WASH services to refugee populations
Sudan recorded the first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020 and, at the beginning of July, the Federal Ministry of Health had confirmed that nearly 10,000 people had contracted the virus, including over 600 who died from the disease across the country. Although more than 70 per cent of the confirmed cas...es are in the Khartoum area, COVID-19 has spread throughout the country, with the highest numbers recorded in the central and eastern states. With extremely low testing capacity — around 800 samples per day, the lowest in the region — the official figures of confirmed cases likely underestimate the extent of the pandemic and the actual situation is unknown.
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After more than three years without cases, Haiti reported on 2 October 2022 a cluster of cholera cases in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, just as the country was on the verge of being declared cholera- free.
This cholera resurgence in Haiti is happening in a complex operational context, am...id a volatile socio- political environment marked by blockades, fuel shortages, criminal gang activity and rampant insecurity. Civil unrest and lack of access to the affected communities are deepening the complex humanitarian crisis and hindering emergency response efforts.
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Since March, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted operations and required a different approach to communication with communities.
UNHCR communication channels have been rapidly enhanced and enlarged to ensure the continued provision of vital health and protection information.
13 May 2021
To avoid a reversal of progress from the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, new knowledge and lessons from successful programmatic innovations are urgently needed to improve TB prevention and care. Experience can provide evidence for innovative approaches and strategies to mainta...in and scale up high-quality TB services. WHO therefore called for case studies on programmatic innovations that address emerging challenges in TB prevention and care during the pandemic in order to collect and disseminate the findings to the TB community. Between November 2020 and February 2021, a total of 23 case studies relevant to the call were accepted from 19 countries in the six regions of WHO. The lessons learnt from these country activities to ensure the continuity of essential services like TB care in the face of the crippling crisis may also inform strategies for minimizing the impact of future emerging pathogens on health services.
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Establishing trauma referral pathways to provide urgent life-saving assistance for displaced populations and civilians remaining in Ar-Raqqa.
In July 2017, a WHO team comprising an external trauma care specialist and two WHO staff members visited the governorates of Ar-Raqqa and neighbouring Al-Ha...sakeh to assess the situation
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Children with disabilities in South Africa: The hidden reality is part of a multiple-country study conducted by ACPF. The study seeks to analyse how cultural, social, physical and other societal barriers prevent children with disabilities from enjoying their constitutional rights to equality, freedo...m and human dignity. It also seeks to establish opportunities and practices that could be used to address these barriers to enhance disabled children’s participation in society.
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Lessons learned from recent public health events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebola virus disease, Zika virus disease outbreaks, and other public health threats, including earthquakes and floods, have highlighted the need for countries to continuously develop, strengthen, and maintain capacities r...equired under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR (2005)).
Developing capacities for health security in a country requires the engagement of public and private entities across a broad range of sectors, including human and animal health, agriculture, environment, finance, security, emergency management, education, and transportation. The World Health Organization (WHO) is mandated through various resolutions, decisions, and reports of the World Health Assembly, and through the IHR (2005), to provide technical guidance and support to its Member States in developing, strengthening, and maintaining their health systems, including capacities required under the IHR (2005).
For countries to better prevent, prepare for, detect, notify, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies, they must build and maintain IHR core capacities and support the strengthening of health emergency prevention, preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR) capacities. National Action Plans for Health Security (NAPHS), as capacity development plans, provide the tasks and resources needed to ensure adequate capacities are in place to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from public health events in a sustainable manner. Investing in the resilience of these capacities within national health systems at national and local levels not only improves national health security but also helps safeguard economic, social, and political developments.
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Despite its rich culture, great economic potential, high level of education and last but not least its sheer size – it is the largest state whose borders lie entirely within Europe and is 1.7 times the size of the Federal Republic of Germany – Ukraine seems far away in perception and awareness. ...Publications on recent dramatic events, such as the Ukraine conflict or the Crimea crisis, have done little to change this. In fact, the armed conflict in the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, which has been ongoing since February 2014, is still a burdening feature of many political and economic difficulties destabilizing the country. News coverage of health issues in Ukraine has recently been dominated by highly critical reports on the handling of the Covid 19 pandemic. This pandemic exacerbated existing weaknesses in the Ukrainian health care system, but at least it did not create any new ones.
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Version 3.1. Le but des procédures opérationnelles standardisées (POS) est d’offrir des orientations politiques et de fournir des normes de performance de riposte à tout type d’épidémie ou d’évènement lié au poliovirus de manière rapide et efficace, et en particulier, d’arrêter un...e épidémie dans les 120 jours.
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This is the ninth paper in our series, “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. Community health workers (CHWs) are in an intermediary position between the health system and the community. While this position provides CHWs with a good platform to improve community health, a major cha...llenge in large-scale CHW programmes is the need for CHWs to establish and maintain benefcial relationships with both sets of actors, who may have diferent expectations and needs. This paper focuses on the quality of CHW relationships with actors at the local level of the national health system and with communities.
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Overview
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders globally. The WHO epilepsy technical brief aims to strengthen action for epilepsy and complements the Intersectoral global action plan on epilepsy and other neurological disorders 2022–2031.
The technical bri...ef presents the key information on epilepsy and recommends actions to policy makers and other stakeholders. Using the concept of levers for change introduced by the Operational Framework for Primary Health Care, it identifies actions on the policy and operational levels that stakeholders should take to strengthen services for people with epilepsy using a person-centered approach based on human rights and universal health coverage.
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Based on research by a team of Nepalese and international experts, this report carries an analysis of the five key elements in the sector - land, basic services, housing finance, building materials and construction technologies, and labour. It gives an assessment
of how these components are governe...d by policy, institutional and legal frameworks, and how they are linked with one another and other urban policies.
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Violence against women and girls is widespread in the Region of the Americas, resulting in enormous consequences for the health and wellbeing of women and girls, their families and communities. These costs are unacceptable and they can be prevented through evidence-based action, including the health... sector through its policies and protocols, as well as in collaboration with other sectors. This report remains the first of its kind and is a major milestone for the Region. It is specifically informed by the commitments of Member States in the regional Strategy and Plan of Action on Strengthening the Health System to Address Violence against Women. The report provides an analysis of efforts to advance the prevention of violence against women through health policies, clinical protocols, multisectoral plans and related approaches across the Americas. Attention to this topic is timely, as the COVID-19 pandemic has created new visibility for this area of work. This report offers critical information on efforts in the Region that can be learned from and used to build upon in the future to prevent and respond to violence against all women and girls everywhere.
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Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are a significant burden globally, with millions of patients affected each year. These infections affect both high- and limited-resource healthcare settings, but in limited-resource settings, rates are approximately twice as high as high-resource settings (15 o...ut of every 100 patients versus 7 out of every 100 patients). Furthermore, rates of infections within certain patient populations are significantly higher in limited-resource settings, including surgical patients, patients in intensive-care units (ICU) and neonatal units. It is well documented that environmental contamination plays a role in the transmission of HAIs in healthcare settings. Therefore, environmental cleaning is a fundamental intervention for infection prevention and control (IPC).It is a multifaceted intervention that involves cleaning and disinfection (when indicated) of the environment alongside other key program elements to support successful implementation (e.g., leadership support, training, monitoring, and feedback mechanisms). To be effective, environmental cleaning activities must be implemented within the framework of the facility IPC program, and not as a standalone intervention. It is also essential that IPC programs advocate for and work with facility administration and government officials to budget, operate and maintain adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure to ensure that environmental cleaning can be performed according to best practices.
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