This publication describes the reasons for the resurgence of malaria in Kyrgyzstan and presents an analysis of evidence-based elimination strategies and policies that were applied to contain the epidemic and outbreaks of the disease, achieve its elimination, and maintain the country malaria-free. Th...e strong political commitment and the mobilization of human resources that were crucial in achieving elimination are emphasized. It is hoped that the experiences of Kyrgyzstan's national malaria control programme can assist other countries aiming to eliminate malaria. The publication is intended for health managers and personnel, researchers, teachers, students and post-graduates at medical schools.
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The article explores the underlying factors influencing unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles among adolescents in Kilifi County, Kenya. Using a qualitative approach, the study involved interviews and focus group discussions with adolescents, stakeholders, and young adults. Key findings include a... preference for unhealthy, carbohydrate-rich, and sugary foods over traditional and nutritious options, exacerbated by factors like low socioeconomic status, urbanization, and poor farming practices.
Sedentary behavior, such as gambling and extensive technology use, was prevalent, often replacing physical activity. Protective factors like school attendance, community-based services, and parental engagement were identified as mitigating risks. The study highlights the importance of ecological intervention strategies targeting intrapersonal, interpersonal, and community factors to address unhealthy behaviors and promote better health outcomes in adolescents.
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The 65-page report names more than 15 commanders and officials from both the government Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the rebel SPLA-in Opposition and their allies who have used child soldiers. The report is based on interviews with 101 child soldiers who were either forcibly recruited... or joined forces to protect themselves and their communities. They said they lived for months without enough food, far away from family, and were thrown into terrifying gun battles in which they were injured and saw friends killed. Children also expressed deep regret that they had lost time they should have spent in school.
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The document provides educational messages and practical guidance to prevent and manage diarrhoea, particularly in children. It emphasizes hygiene practices like proper handwashing, using latrines, and safe food handling. It also highlights the importance of breastfeeding, balanced nutrition, immuni...zation, and the use of Oral Rehydration Solutions (ORS) and zinc for treating dehydration caused by diarrhoea. Developed alongside Save the Children programs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the material integrates health education into schools and communities, encouraging children to act as agents of change in promoting hygiene and health practices.
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The document presents a humanitarian snapshot from October 2017 highlighting the dire situation of children in Yemen. Over 11 million Yemeni children needed humanitarian assistance due to the conflict that began in March 2015. The report shows one child dying every 10 minutes from preventable causes..., with 386,000 suffering from severe acute malnutrition. The education system was near collapse with 2,531 schools damaged or repurposed, depriving 1.5 million children of education. More than 7,000 children had been killed or injured in the conflict, and child labor and early marriages were increasing as negative coping mechanisms. The report also notes that 55% of Yemen's 2.9 million displaced persons were children.
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Much remains unknown about displaced communities in out-of-camp areas as identification constraints hinder knowledge on the overall situation and preeminent needs of an area. When compared to regularly monitored in-camp populations, less is known about the health, sanitation, livelihoods, food secur...ity, nutritional status, protection situation, and school attainment of out-of-camp populations.
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Updated Interim guidance 29 July 2020
The provision of safe water, sanitation and waste management and hygienic conditions is essential for preventing and for protecting human health during all infectious disease outbreaks, including of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Ensuring evidenced-based ...and consistently applied WASH and waste management practices in communities, homes, schools, marketplaces, and healthcare facilities will help prevent human-to-human transmission of pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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SARS-CoV-2 infections among children and adolescents cause less severe illness and fewer deaths compared to adults. While a less severe course of infection is a positive outcome, there are concerns that mild symptoms may have led to less testing, resulting in fewer identified cases of COVID-19 in ch...ildren. If children with mild or no symptoms transmit the disease, they may act as drivers of transmission within their communities. Understanding symptoms, infectivity and patterns of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in children and adolescents is essential for developing, adapting and improving control measures for COVID-19 across all ages. This is a summary of the current knowledge around SARS-CoV-2 infection acquisition and transmission and COVID-19 disease symptoms in children and adolescents. It aims to inform decisions, based on local contexts, on how to best keep schools, kindergarten and day-care facilities open and what advice to apply to intergenerational mixing.
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UNHCR and its partners implement interventions focusing on adolescent girls and boys, including:
▪ Formation and capacity building of adolescent girls and boys’ clubs as peer groups for awareness raising, and SGBV prevention and response mechanisms.
▪ Community based protection activ...ities and training on child protection
▪ Provision of secondary education for secondary school-aged youth and recruitment of female teachers to encourage adolescent girls to continue education
▪ Introduction of community sharing/ parenting sessions and increasing the number of women support networks
▪ Establishing girls’ friendly spaces, which includes information sharing and psycho-social support
▪ Awareness raising campaigns with all members of the community, including community leaders
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This publication describes the history of malaria in Uzbekistan. It evaluates the policies and strategies applied after the re-establishment of local transmission to contain malaria outbreaks in the 1990s and early 2000s, and highlights the interventions subsequently used to eliminate malaria in the... country. Uzbekistan was officially certified by WHO as a malaria-free country in 2018. Lessons for countries embarking upon elimination are distilled. The publication is intended for health managers and personnel, researchers, teachers, students and post-graduates at medical schools.
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A new respiratory infectious disease, COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, emerged in early December 2019. Since then, the virus has spread to India and 106 other countries in Asia, Europe, North America, Africa, and Oceania. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) decl...ared the outbreak a pandemic, which has since rapidly evolved. As an economic hub with substantial global connectivity and movement of people and goods, India is directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it is too early to gauge the full spectrum of the outbreak’s social and economic impacts, COVID-19 has already caused lockdowns in China, Korea, and in many countries in Europe, and in some states of India, suspension of schools and universities, disruption of food systems and other supply chains, as well as a slowdown in trade between India and rest of the world.
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COVID-19 is stretching formal and informal aspects of community life. The pandemic is overwhelming health systems. Country economies are reaching a breaking point, with particularly significant impact for the livelihoods of vulnerable families and those dependent on daily wages. COVID-19 is also aff...ecting community relationships and trust. Lack of trust in government leaders or health officials can lead citizens to be unwilling to accept essential health messages and take the necessary steps to combat the spread of the disease. The stress, fear and emotional vulnerabilities of children and their caregivers can be particularly acute, especially in light of prolonged school closures and the uncertainty about their health system’s capacity to withstand the pandemic or how long community and household quarantines will last.
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The WHO Vision and eye screening implementation handbook (VESIH) offers a step-by-step guidance for conducting vision and eye screenings in community and primary care settings. The evidence-based interventions are drawn from the WHO Package of eye care interventions and developed with a focus on del...ivering screenings easily, safely, and effectively in low- and low–intermediate-resource settings. The early identification through screenings ensures timely treatments and management to avoid vision impairment in high-risk populations, including newborns, pre-school children, school children, and older adults.
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Asthma is the most common noncommunicable disease in children, and among the most common in adults. According to the most recent estimates from the Global Asthma Network Phase I study, around one in 10 children and adults have symptoms of asthma and one in 20 school-aged children have severe asthma ...symptoms, with marked variations in prevalence and in prevalence trends between countries and regions of the world. The Global Burden of Disease Study estimated that asthma caused the loss of 21.6 million healthy years of life (disability-adjusted life years) and 461 069 deaths in 2019. Approximately 90% of the asthma burden of disease is borne by people living low and middle income countries (LMICs). Some countries report very high (up to 90%) rates of uncontrolled asthma. While the prevalence of asthma is highest in countries with a high Socio-Demographic Index (SDI), death rates from asthma are highest in countries with low and lower middle incomes.
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Chemoprevention is the use of medicines, either alone or in combination, to prevent malaria infection and its consequences. This publication provides standardized approaches for monitoring and evaluating the efficacy of medicines used for intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy, pe...rennial malaria chemoprevention (formerly known as intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in infants), seasonal malaria chemoprevention and intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in school-aged children. It follows the recent release of new and updated WHO recommendations on these interventions.
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Infections by the soil-transmitted helminths (STH), including Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale/Necator americanus (hookworms), and Strongyloides stercoralis, disproportionately affect children around the world. Because of their transmission associated with poor sanita...ry conditions and inadequate hygiene practices, higher burden of disease is seen in children from developing countries from sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Approximately 267 million preschool-age children (PSAC) and 568 million school-age children (SAC) worldwide are at risk of STH infection as well as impaired child growth and cognitive development from A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura, and hookworm infections, and death due to severe S. stercoralis infection. Thus, their control is a global health priority.
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ABOUT THE REPORT
Based on more than seventy interviews, surveys of both mainstream and social media in Myanmar, and a desk review of available election-related materials, this report evaluates the environment in which the current electoral cycle, Rakhine conflicts, and the 21st Century Panglong pea...ce process intersect and identifies opportunities for mitigating conflict risks in the lead-up to the 2020 Myanmar election.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mary Callahan is an associate professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Myo Zaw Oo is an independent researcher focusing on conflict and elections.
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COVID-19 has triggered the deepest global recession since the 1930s. Extreme poverty has risen for the first time in 22 years, and unemployment has increased dramatically. Women and young people aged 15 – 29 working in the informal sector are being hit the hardest. School closures have affected 91... per cent of students worldwide.
Political conflicts are more intense and taking a heavy toll on civilians, disproportionately affecting children. Women and girls are at increased risk of conflict-related sexual violence. Attacks against aid and health workers persist. For the ninth consecutive year, more than 90 per cent of casualties from explosive weapons in populated areas were civilians.
The last decade saw the highest-ever number of people internally displaced by conflict and violence, with many locked in a state of protracted displacement. There are an estimated 51 million new and existing IDPs, and the number of refugees has doubled to 20 million.
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Imagine a child- friendly and resilient community in Malawi. A happy child, healthy parents, a latrine behind the house, livestock somewhere in the backyard, no-one panics when clouds come because people are prepared for the rain.
At UNICEF, we are working with the Government and civil society of M...alawi to create child-friendly, resilient communities where
children and adolescents can grow, go to school and play- free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect.
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A critical building block to achieving the global goal of universal hand hygiene by 2030 is adequate levels of funding. Understanding the costs of implementing hand hygiene plans is an essential precursor to fund allocation. This tool aims to provide country-specific cost estimates of achieving univ...ersal hand hygiene in households by 2030. It has been developed jointly by WHO and UNICEF, through a consultancy with WASHeconomics, and with input from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the World Bank and WaterAid
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