Leptospirosis, a spirochaetal zoonosis, occurs in diverse epidemiological settings and affects vulnerable populations, such as rural subsistence farmers and urban slum dwellers. Although leptospirosis is a life-threatening disease and recognized as an important cause of pulmonary haemorrhage syndrom...e, the lack of global estimates for morbidity and mortality has contributed to its neglected disease status
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The greatest risk to persons engaging in international medical emergency response is poor preparation.
The In Control handbook hopes to provide a remedy.
At the time of writing, we are living through the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a health emergency that disregards physical borders, brin...gs into focus social inequalities and affects people on every continent. This shared challenge requires unprecedented measures and the collaboration of the brightest minds to support global health protection through this crisis and beyond. Healthcare infrastructures have to be strengthened, public health capacities and processes upgraded, medical countermeasures and vaccinations found and psychosocial side-effects treated.
Solidarity is the normative order of the day and the human species has to collaborate to face this invisible threat. Hiding and living in fear is not an option in this interconnected world. We have both a responsibility and an opportunity to make substantial contributions to a safer, healthier and more sustainable future for us all.
The existence of this handbook is an impressive example of solidarity. Over 50 authors from more than 15 institutes and organisations have come together voluntarily within a very short time to make their expertise available and enable cross-sectoral thinking. Knowledge is bundled, resources are combined, information gaps are filled. The In Control handbook is not a theoretical treatise of possible dangers, but a collection of subject-matter expertise, written by experts and practitioners who have shaped health topics over the past 20 years in the most diverse corners of the world.
The Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is collaborating with its partners and investing heavily in the build-up of operational know-how and capacity to support health crisis response abroad. This is done by preparing and enabling professionals to deploy safely across the world to assist those in need. In Control addresses the multi-faceted challenges of an international deployment. Readers will find not only technical medical information, but also insights into, for example, the fragility of our environment, the cultural differences that influence risk communication or the dilemmas arising from social distancing. Legal principles are highlighted, along with ethical guidance to ensure that our actions and decisions correspond to the highest moral standards.
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The authors conduct an integrated survey of Antimicrobial Resistant Organisms (AMR) in drinking water, wastewater and surface water in three settings in Bangladesh: rural households, rural poultry farms, and urban food markets. Results show that untreated water discharged from rural households, poul...try farms and urban markets are major contributors to surface water pollution and antibiotic resistant bacteria genes, calling for increased surveillance and monitoring.
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Covid-19 Social Policy Response Series / No.14
This report examines Ecuador’s social policy response to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects and protect
vulnerable populations. It chronologically traces containment, closure policies, social policies and programmes
put in place following t...he announcement of Covid-19 as a global pandemic. A combination of external con-
straints and domestic structures, i.e. informality and weak coordination, led to truncated efforts in the healthcare
response, while persistent inequalities in access to technology and high levels of informality led to fragmented
education, labour policies and social protection responses. The report zooms into the Family Protection Grant
(Bono de Protección Familiar or BPF), a new social protection programme that covers informal workers, which
captures the difficulties in reaching unregistered populations amid lockdown and containment measures.
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This document offers public health guidance for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in reception centres, and other temporary accommodation facilities, in the context of the mass influx of Ukrainian people into the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Republic of Moldova.
WHO Guideline. Since 2010, countries in the meningitis belt have started to introduce a new serogroup A meningococcal conjugate vaccine conferring individual protection and herd immunity. Following the successful roll-out of this vaccine, epidemics due to Neisseria meningitidis serogroup A (NmA) are... disappearing, but other serogroups (e.g. NmW, NmX and NmC) still cause epidemics, albeit at a lower frequency and of a smaller size. Due to these changes, WHO organized the review of the evidence to provide recommendations for epidemic control, related to operational thresholds for investigation and response to outbreaks, the use of rapid diagnostic tests, antibiotic regimens in epidemics, and prophylaxis for household contacts of cases
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Senegal has adopted the World Health Organization–Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS recommended 90-90-90 targets.5 The adoption of this strategy means that the country is expected, by 2020, to have 90% of its population living with HIV diagnosed, 90% of all those diagnosed receiving susta...ined HIV treatment, and 90% of those receiving antiretroviral therapy having suppressed viral load measures.5 To achieve these outcomes, having good clinical laboratory services for diagnosis and follow-up will be critical.6 More specifically, investments will be needed to improve laboratory infrastructure, and to facilitate the access and availability of routine viral load and early infant diagnosis (EID) measures through the implementation of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic platforms along with an efficient and sustainable quality assurance programme.
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Report of Meeting: 4 November 2014, Roma
The Early Essential Newborn Care Pocket Guide was developed by the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific for introducing and scaling-up Early Essential Newborn Care. This step-by-step Guide is intended to provide a portable and practical summary of the up-to-date global evidence for newborn ca...re focusing on the first hours and days of life, including infection prevention and control measures during COVID-19. This Guide can be used in all health-care settings by skilled birth attendants (midwives, nurses and doctors) who care for newborns, also by managers to ensure all system measures are put in place for optimal quality of care.
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This paper examines how diaspora and local organisations have responded to the crisis in Syria, how they evolved and the challenges that they face - and how international aid organisations and disapora and local groups can better work together in a new aid model.
Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola (STRIVE)
WHO guidelines for pandemic preparedness and response in the nonhealth sector