Using Epidemiology to Support Primary Health Care. Updated version of the WHO handbook published in the early 1990's entitled: Manual of Epidemiology for District Health Management or those with an interest in applied epidemiology in primary health care and district health systems
Antibiotic resistance (ABR) particularly hits resource poor countries, and is fuelled by irrational antibiotic (AB) prescribing. We surveyed knowledge, attitudes and practices of AB prescribing among medical students and doctors in Kisangani, DR Congo.
One billion people around the world live with disabilities. This report makes the case that they are being “left behind” in the global community’s work on health. This lack of access not only violates the rights of people with disabilities under international law, but UHC and SDG 3 cannot be a...ttained without better health services for the one billion people with disabilities.
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Background:Neonatal mortality accounts for 43% of global under-five deaths and is decreasing more slowly than maternal or child mortality. Donor funding has increased for maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), but no analysis to date has disaggregated aid for newborns. We evaluated if and how a...id flows for newborn care can be tracked, examined changes in the last decade, and considered methodological implications for tracking funding for specific population groups or diseases. MethodsandFindings:We critically reviewed and categorised previous analyses of aid to specific populations, diseases, or types of activities. We then developed and refined key terms related to newborn survival in seven languages and searched titles and descriptions of donor disbursement records in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System database, 2002–2010. We compared results with the Countdown to 2015 database of aid for MNCH (2003–2008) and the search strategy used by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Prior to 2005, key terms related to newborns were rare in disbursement records but their frequency increased markedly thereafter. Only two mentions were found of ‘‘stillbirth’’ and only nine references were found to ‘‘fetus’’ in any spelling variant or language
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A review of current literature and up date data from the field, April 2015.
This report has been published in part in J Hosp Inf. 2015;90:1-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ebola+nosocomial+shears
In a prospective cohort study in Bangwe primary care clinic, Blantyre, Malawi, all adults (18 years or older) presenting with an acute illness were screened for TB symptoms (cough, fever, night sweats, weight loss). Demographic characteristics were linked to exit interview by fingerprint bioidentifi...cation. Multivariable logistic regression models were constructed to estimate the proportion completing same-visit HIV testing, comparing between those with and without TB symptoms.
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African Health Sciences 2013; 13(2): 219 - 232 http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ahs.v13i2.4
Mental disorders are a leading cause of the global burden of disease, and the provision of mental health services in developing countries remains very limited and far from equitable. Using the Creditor Reporting System, we estimate the amounts and patterns of development assistance for global mental... health (DAMH) between 2007 and 2013. This allows us to examine how well international donors have responded to calls by global mental health advocates to scale up evidence-based services. Although DAMH did increase between 2007 and 2013, it remains low both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total development assistance for health (DAH). The average annual DAMH between 2007 and 2013 was US$133.57 million, and the proportion of DAH attributed to mental health is less than 1%. Approximately 48% of total DAMH was for humanitarian assistance, education, and civil services. More annual DAMH was channelled into the nonpublic sector than the public sector. Despite an expanding body of evidence suggesting that sustainable mental health care can be effectively integrated into existing health systems at relatively low cost, mental health has not received significant development assistance.
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PLoS ONE 9(1): e87262. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087262
PLOS ONE 10(12): e0144040. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144040
The Health Systems in Transition (HiT) series consists of country-based reviews that provide a detailed description of a health system and of reform and policy initiatives in progress or under development in a specific country.
Countries who have no testing capacity and national COVID-19 laboratories with limited experience on COVID-19 virus testing are encouraged to send the first five positives and the first ten negative COVID-19 samples to WHO reference laboratories providing confirmatory testing for COVID-19.
Updates ...29 April 2020
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Journal of Tuberculosis Research, 2016, 4, 1-8
Published Online March 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jtr
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jtr.2016.41001
Reproductive health needs are particularly acute in countries affected by armed conflict. Reliable information
on aid investment for reproductive health in these countries is essential for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of
aid. The purpose of this study was to analyse official developm...ent assistance (ODA) for reproductive health activities in
conflict-affected countries from 2003 to 2006.
Methods and Findings: The Creditor Reporting Syst
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This study aims to explore the impact on the lives of caregivers of
children with cerebral palsy.
A national overview with a case study from Tanahun district. The overall aims of this study are (1) to assess the extent to which social protection systems in Nepal address the needs of people with disabilities; and (2) to identify and document elements of good practice, as well as challenges, in th...e design and delivery of social protection for people with disabilities. As most social protection programmes in Nepal are targeted to various groups considered to be a high risk of poverty or marginalisation (e.g. orphans, widows), the research mainly focuses on disability-specific schemes, as they are relevant to a higher proportion of people with disabilities.
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BMJ 2020; 371 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3086
Using infectious diseases sensitive to climate as indicators of climate change helps stimulate and inform public health responses
To provide information on trends on official development assistance (ODA) disbursement patterns for
reproductive health activities in 18 conflict-affected countries
BMJ 2019;365:l1807 doi: 10.1136/bmj.l1807 (Published 8 May 2019)