The articles in this compendium elaborate on some of the ideas shared at the symposium. Together, they provide a broad view of the dynamic interactions among physical, sexual and brain development that take place during adolescence. They highlight some of the risks to optimal development – includi...ng toxic stress, which can interfere with the formation of brain connections, and other vulnerabilities unique to the onset of puberty and independence. They also point to the opportunities for developing interventions that can build on earlier investments in child development – consolidating gains and even offsetting the effects of deficits and traumas experienced earlier in childhood.
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The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health and was developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic. Member States of the WHO South-East Asia Region have made... attempts to implement the demand and supply reduction strategies for tobacco control as recommended by the treaty. While recognizing the need to accelerate implementation of the WHO FCTC in the Region, this document has been developed to support the Member States in implementing the treaty using a ‘PRACTICAL’ Approach which pertains to identified demand and supply reduction strategies under the treaty.
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UNICEF analysis indicates that:
- Investments that increase access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions by poor groups have saved almost twice as many lives as equivalent investments in non-poor groups.
- Access to high-impact health and nutrition interventions has improved ra...pidly among poor groups in recent years, leading to substantial improvements in equity.
- During the period studied, absolute reductions in under-five mortality rates associated with improvements in intervention coverage were three times faster among poor groups than non-poor groups.
- Because birth rates were higher among the poor, the reduction in the under-five mortality rate translated into 4.2 times more lives saved for every 1 million people. Indeed, of the 1.1 million lives saved across the 51 countries during the final year studied for each country, nearly 85 per cent were among the poor.
- Intensified focus on equity-enhancing policies and investments can help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goal newborn and child mortality targets (SDG3.2).
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Updated May 2017
This document is meant to respond to the questions:
■ What health interventions should be delivered during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period?
■ What health behaviours should the women practise (or not practise) during these periods to care for ...herself and her baby?
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STUDY REPORT | This study of the impact of the Nepal earthquake of 25 April, 2015, aims to understand the impact factors leading to the exclusion of older people and persons with disabilities from humanitarian action, barriers to their inclusion, and the extent to which their skills and knowledge we...re utilised to promote inclusive humanitarian action and, using this understanding, to formulate a set of recommendations for promoting inclusion. These recommendations will be used to sensitise the broader humanitarian community to the need for inclusive disaster risk management practices in future emergency responses which pay attention to factors such as gender, age, disability and ethnicity, and build upon the capacities of older people and persons with disabilities.
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Anxiety disorders
Chapter F.2
The Member States of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO)
that appear in the tables below have used the assessment instrument for mental health systems (WHOAIMS)
(1), as have Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos, all British
O...verseas Territories. For the purpose of this report, the countries and territories were grouped into three subregions, as follows:
Central America, Mexico, and the Latin Caribbean, the non-Latin Caribbean, and South America. The tables
also indicate the year each national WHO-AIMS report was published.
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A Practical Guide for Mental Health Service Providers
Responses to epidemics, emergencies and disasters raise many ethical issues for the people involved, including public health specialists and policy makers. This training manual provides material on ethical issues in research, surveillance and patient care in these difficult contexts.
This paper aims to contribute to the reflection on effective practices to address protracted displacement, in support of the GP20 Plan of Action roll-out. It expands on the research conducted by Walter Kälin and Hannah Entwisle Chapuisat for the 2017 OCHA-commissioned study Breaking the Impasse: Re...ducing Protracted Internal Displacement as a Collective Outcome.1 That study provided a comprehensive picture of the impact of protracted internal displacement, as well as five country case studies in contexts of conflict and disasters.It also offered a road map for addressing such displacement through seven steps, including conducting joint analysis and defining collective outcomes.
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Consolidated Guidelines
Geneva, 2016
The End TB Strategy
This survey is part of a series of eight country surveys conducted in the context of the People that Deliver Initiative (peoplethatdeliver.org). This global initiative, which brings together the world’s largest organizations, aims to improve health services performance through the professionalizat...ion of logistics managers.
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This document is to support local authorities, leaders and policy-makers in cities and other urban settlements in identifying effective approaches and implementing recommended actions that enhance the prevention, preparedness and readiness for COVID-19 in urban settings, to ensure a robust response ...and eventual recovery. It covers factors unique to cities and urban settings, considerations in urban preparedness, key areas of focus and preparing for future emergencies.
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Many critical questions remain about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in real-world settings. These questions can only be answered in post-introduction vaccine effectiveness studies.This guidance document outlines an approach to leverage existing surveillance systems for Severe Acute Respirato...ry Infection (SARI) to estimate COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing SARI associated with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 using existing SARI surveillance systems. The approach uses the test-negative design to evaluate VE; cases are SARI patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and controls are SARI patients who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.
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Wound care is a regular component of the package of care we offer in the majority of our health care facilities and represents a high volume of activities. The current practices in MSF projects are often based on the habits of each individual supervisor, the wound care material we off...er is partly outdated and does not allow optimal wound care. There is a need for standardization of wound care and it needs to be evidence based as much as possible, taking into account the realities of the field.
The scope of this document is to guide the caregiver in the wound care process. It does not intend to provide in depth information on wound healing or physiology. There is a wide range of literature and background information available for this purpose in the references and in the list of extra reading
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Extreme heat events (EHEs) are a leading cause of weather-related injury and death in the United States, and under a changing climate, these meteorological episodes are predicted to increase in both frequency and intensity. Prolonged heat exposure from EHEs places an increased strain on the heart an...d may lead to heat-related illness if the cardiovascular system fails to properly thermoregulate internal body temperature. Every individual is susceptible to heat-related illness, however, those with reduced cardiovascular function and pre-existing cardiovascular diseases are at a greater risk for morbidity and mortality during EHEs. This document gives an overview of our current understanding of heat exposure and its impact on cardiovascular health outcomes, an overview of the medications that may exacerbate heat-related cardiovascular illness, and asummary of the interaction between extreme heat and air pollutants, and their collective impact on cardiovascular health. Additionally, this document summarizes epidemiologic evidence and identifies gaps in the extant peer-reviewed literature on the effectiveness of strategies and interventions to protect against heat-related cardiovascular disease and death. This information is intended to aid health departments and other health professionals in understanding and responding to the impacts of heat exposure on cardiovascular health.
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The threat climate change poses to health, equity, and development has been rigorously documented. However, in an era marked by economic crisis, regional conflicts, natural disasters and growing disparities between rich and poor, the joint global actions required to address climate change have been ...vigorously debated – and critical decisions postponed.
This document, part of WHO’s Health in the Green Economy series, describes how many climate change measures can be “win-wins” for people and the planet.
These policies yield large, immediate public health benefits while reducing the upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these policies can improve the health and equity of people in poor countries and assist developing countries in adapting to climate change that is already occurring, as evidenced by more extreme storms, flooding, drought and heatwaves.
WHO’s Department of Public Health and Environment launched the Health in the Green Economy initiative in 2010 to review potential health and equity “co-benefits” of proposed climate change measures – as well as relevant risks.
This review examines mitigation strategies discussed in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which constitutes the most broad-based global review of mitigation options by scientific experts.
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