• provide scientific information on the safety, efficacy, and quality control/ quality assurance of widely used medicinal plants, in order to facilitate their appropriate use in Member States;
• provide models to assist Member States in developing their own mono- graphs or formularies for these... or other herbal medicines; and
• facilitate information exchange among Member States.
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This document is part of the process for improving the quality of care in family planning. Medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use (MEC), the first edition of which was published in 1996, prsents current World Health Organization (WHO) guidance on the safety of various contraceptive e-
m...ethods for use in the context of specific health conditions and characteristics. This is the fifth edtion of the MEC –the latest in the series of periodic updates
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Oxygen is an essential medicine required at all levels of the health care system; only high quality, medical-grade oxygen should be given to patients. Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generating plants are a source of medical-grade oxygen. This document provides technical specifications as th...e minimum requirements that a PSA Oxygen Plant must meet for use for the administration of medical-grade oxygen.
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Social network-based HIV testing is an approach for engaging sexual and drug injecting partners and social contacts of key population members with HIV and of those who are HIV-negative and at ongoing risk in voluntary HTS.
By addressing people’s confidentiality concerns and broadening the reach... to social contacts, social network-based HIV testing approaches can improve the acceptability of partner services among key populations and so reach more people who may not otherwise test for HIV. WHO now recommends that social network-based HIV testing approaches can be offered for key populations
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In preparing this paper, the Pharmacovigilance Group of the Pan American Health Organization’s Pan American Network for Drug Regulatory Harmonization (PANDRH) adopted the perspective of PAHO/WHO, which considers Pharmacovigilance, an essential component of public health programs. Its intention was... to facilitate the development of pharmacovigilance systems in the Region of the Americas and improve, strengthen, and promote the adoption of good practices to improve safety for patients and the general population, based on the needs of the Region.
Document also available in Spanish and Portuguese!
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Q1: Are brief psychosocial interventions for people using cannabis or psychostimulants effective in reducing drug use, dependence and harm from drug use?
The use of Delamanid and Bedaquiline for Children with Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis.
This 3rd edition of Guidelines for medicine donations has been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in cooperation with major international agencies active in humanitarian relief and development assistance. The guidelines are intended to improve the quality of medicine donations in inter...national development assistance and emergency aid. Good medicine donation practice is of interest to both donors and recipients...
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This guide helps pharmacists to understand their role in the hypertension program. From maintaining hypertensive drug stock, to drug dispensing, to recording and reporting, to awareness generation with patients.
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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The Pharmacovigilance team in WHO aims to assure the safety of medicines and vaccines by ensuring reliable and timely exchange of information on safety issues, promoting pharmacovigilance activities throughout the Organization and encouraging participation in the WHO Programme for International Drug... Monitoring. This text was developed in consultation with the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring and the national pharmacovigilance centres participating in the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring.
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This field study to assess the pharmaceutical situation was undertaken in Ghana in May-June 2008 using a standardized methodology developed by the World Health Organization. The study assessed medicines availability and affordability, geographical accessibility, quality and r...ational use among other issues. The survey was conducted in six regions. In each region, 6 public health care facilities, 12 private pharmacies and 1 warehouse were surveyed.
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Antimicrobials have been a critical public health tool since the discovery of penicillin in 1928, saving the lives of millions of people around the world. Today, however, the emergence of drug resistance is reversing the miracles of the past eighty years, with drug choices for the treatment of many ...infections becoming increasingly limited, expensive, and, in some cases, non-existent.
Conscious of the public health threats of AMR to both humans, animals and the environment, the ministries of health and sanitation, agriculture forestry and food security and the environmental protection agency put together a national multi-sectoral coordinating group tasked with the responsibility of establishing mechanisms to integrate all initiatives into a single concerted action and development of the national AMR strategic plan (2018-2022). The National Strategic Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance is the first approach which addresses AMR specifically.
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A key component of achieving control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is effective supply chain management of preventive chemotherapy drugs for Mass Drug Administration (MDA) for trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis and schistosomiasis.... This course explains the end-to-end process from planning and submitting donated drug requests through to waste management of expired and unserviceable stock and reverse logistics of unused tablets. It is essential knowledge for all levels of the health system that must work together to implement MDA.
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Expert Consensus Validation 2018.
This innovative approach aimed at improving and facilitating the screening, prescribing and monitoring of drug therapy for older patients, is currently being further developed in the area of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim. This ap...proach represents another advance in worldwide research efforts aimed at adding a new dimension to already-existing classification systems and negative listings of potentially inappropriate medications for the elderly.
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The consolidated guidelines are complemented by an operational handbook which is designed to assist with implementation of the WHO recommendations by Member States, technical partners and others who are involved in the management of patients with DR-TB. The WHO Operational Handbook on Tuberculosis, ...Module 4: Treatment - Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment provides practical guidance on how to put in place the recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact.
The document provides information on different aspects of care and support for TB patients. In particular, the handbook provides practical guidance on the implementation of the interventions that enable treatment adherence such as social support, treatment administration options, digital adherence technologies. The practical guidance also includes models of care for all TB patients, models of care for children and adolescents, integrated care for TB, HIV and comorbidities, engagement of private sector, managing of TB in health emergencies. This new practical handbook also includes two important chapters on health education and counselling, and palliative care for patients with TB.
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Q3: In individuals with a first psychotic episode with full remission, how long should antipsychotic drug treatment be continued after remission in order to allow for the best outcomes?
The WHO Labour Care Guide is a tool that aims to support good-quality, evidence-based, respectful care during labour and childbirth, irrespective of the setting or level of health care. This manual has been developed to help skilled health personnel to successfully use the WHO Labour Care Guide. The... manual will also be of interest to staff involved in training health care personnel, health-care facility managers, and implementers and managers of maternal and child health services.
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Antimicrobial resistance represents a big threat to public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that every year two million Americans are infected with a (multi-)drug resistant bacterium, resulting in 23,000 deaths. The WHO has repeatedly drawn attention to this majo...r health issue. In the worst-case scenario, we will shortly run out of effective antibiotics. Surgery and cancer therapy will then become very dangerous due to the risk of infection associated with such treatments. (Organ) transplantation will become close to impossible as the immunosuppression necessary for transplant patients makes them highly vulnerable to infections. Some infections we can easily treat today could turn deadly. It is therefore conceivable that infectious diseases once again become the leading cause of death as in early 20th century.
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The mandate of the National Tuberculosis Control Programme is to provide leadership and stewardship to accelerate intense and coordinated efforts to reduce the adult TB burden of 290 per 100,000 population recently established in the 2013 National TB Prevalence Survey. Other key challenges are low T...B case notification, unacceptably high TB death rates, low antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage among TB/HIV patients and low drug-resistant notification and treatment.
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