Nepal has performed exceptionally in improving reproductive, maternal and child health outcomes over the past two decades. In this article, we discuss these achievements and outline a vision for the future of maternal, newborn and child survival in Nepal after the era of the Millennium Development G...oals. On the pathway towards quality universal health care services for all, we propose strengthening of health information systems, gradual health system reforms, improvement of existing facility based services, development of integrated service delivery models, improved technical and managerial capacity at district and facility levels. Elimination of all preventable causes of maternal, newborn and child deaths in Nepal should be our collective aspirational goal.
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Policy Brief, Updated in March 2017
Key messages
• Sex workers have the right to equal protection under the law, regardless of the legal status of sex work.
• Sex workers have the right to access HIV, sexually transmitted infection (STI) and other health services free from the thr...eat of violence, intimidation, incarceration, and stigma and discrimination.
• Justice and law enforcement sectors, together with the health sector and sex worker communities, should work in partnership to reform relevant legislation, policies and practices.
• Capacity development of all partners is critical to the success of the HIV response among sex workers.
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Antimicrobial resistance is a global crisis that threatens a century of progress in health and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. There is no time to wait. Unless the world acts urgently, antimicrobial resistance will have disastrous impact within a generation.
This Commission report aims to contribute to a new era of multilateral cooperation based on strong UN institutions to reduce the dangers of COVID-19, forestall the next pandemic, and enable the world to achieve the agreed goals of sustainable development, human rights, and peace that governments are... committed to pursue as members of the UN. We address this Commission report to the UN member states, the UN agencies and multilateral institutions, and multilateral processes such as the G20 and the G7.
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This report makes the case for a major new initiative—to rapidly recruit, train and deploy 2 million community health workers in Africa. Drawing on a vast body of evidence and substantial regional experience, the report shows how community health workers save lives and improve quality of life and ...how investments in community health workers effectively harness the demographic dividend, reduce gender inequality and accelerate economic growth and development. Indeed, the benefits of community health workers stretch from one end of the Agenda for Sustainable Development to the other.
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Robust clinical research capacity in low- and middle-income countries is key to stemming the spread of epidemics, according to a new report from the International Vaccines Task Force (IVTF). The report lays out how to develop the political support, financing and coordination required to build this c...apacity as a crucial component of global epidemic preparedness. The IVTF was convened by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in October 2017.
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Annual report on global preparednessfor health emergencies
The next pandemic is not a question of if, but when—and the world is woefully unprepared, according to the first annual report from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. The WHO and the World Bank convened the independent group after ...the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Global News reports. Within 36 hours, a contagion like the 1918 flu could sweep the globe and take 50 to 80 million lives while wreaking havoc on the global economy, the report warns. And that’s just one possibility.
What would it take to get prepared? An investment of $1-$2 per person per year could create “acceptable” level of preparedness.
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Rabies is entirely preventable, and vaccines, medicines, tools and technologies have long
been available to prevent people from dying of dog-mediated rabies. Nevertheless, rabies still
kills about 60 000 people a year, of whom over 40% are children under 15, mainly in rural areas
of economically ...disadvantaged countries in Africa and Asia. Of all human cases, up to 99% are
acquired from the bite of an infected dog.
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This study, and similar studies in Kenya, Mozambique, Swaziland, Uganda, and Zambia is the outcome of close collaborative by a team in Swaziland, with technical and financial support from the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa, UNAIDS Geneva, and the World Bank's Global HIV.../AIDS Program (Global AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Team). The study entailed using existing data and collecting new data to better know the country's HIV epidemic, know the country HIV response and how funding was allocated, so as to improve the HIV response and strengthen prevention based on evidence on what works to prevent new infections.
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An estimated 59 000 people die from rabies each year. That’s one person every nine minutes of every day, 40% of whom are children living in Asia and Africa. As dog bites cause almost all human cases, we can prevent rabies deaths by increasing awareness, vaccinating dogs to prevent the disease at i...ts source and administering life-saving treatment after people have been bitten. We have the vaccines, medicines, tools and technologies to prevent people from dying from dog-mediated rabies. For a relatively low cost it is possible to break the disease cycle and save lives
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March - June 2018
Myanmar introduced Child Death Surveillance and Response (CDSR) in 2015 as an initiative to reduce child (under-5) mortality, an initiative that will contribute to the country’s efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Technical Guidelines for CDSR were devel...oped in 2015 followed by the development of Training Package in 2016. An Implementation Plan was made in 2016; and this led to all townships implementing CDSR in early 2017. After one year of implementation an assessment was carried out in early 2018.
The assessment was conducted in 3 region/states – Ayeyarwaddy, Magway, Shan South, with information gathered from the state/region, district, township and basic health unit levels. In addition a caretaker interview was conducted to see health-seeking behavior. In addition to these three regions/states, information was also gathered from three other regions/states but only at the region/state level – Mandalay, Yangon, Kachin.
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Studien der Sachverständigengruppe „Weltwirtschaft und Sozialethik“ Nr. 21
On the basis of a reflection on social ethics, the German Bishops’ Conference expert panel on "Global Economy and Social Ethics" has analyzed the role of economic growth in relation to environmental issues and sustain...able development. The chairman of the expert panel outlines the main results of this text.
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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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Rwanda’s national health sector is focused on the equitable delivery of high-quality health services. The Government of Rwanda (GoR) recognizes that developing human resources in the health sector is a critical factor to the well-being of the population. Development of the health workforce has bee...n guided by the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Programme (2012-2019) and its successor, the National Strategy for Health Professions Development (NSHPD) (2020-2030). Rwanda has made significant progress in enhancing its skilled health workforce, with notable improvements in the health professional-to-population ratio over the past decade, attaining 13.4 doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, and dentists per 10 000 people in 2022. Despite such progress, health workforce levels remain below national and global recommendations.
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Guide to national implementation of the Shanghai Declaration describes policy orientations and approaches that can unlock the transformative potential of health promotion for sustainable development. This guide was developed to support country level implementation of the commitments and recommendati...ons in the Shanghai Declaration.
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What are the FP and CAC competencies?
Through the clear articulation of the family planning and comprehensive abortion care (FP and CAC) competencies for the primary health care workforce, the aim is to advance improvements in FP and CAC service delivery by aligning health worker education approach...es with population health needs and health system demands.
This document, which describes these competencies in detail, is intended to:
be a foundational tool to be adopted and adapted by educators and regulators for FP and CAC providers (students) with a pre-service training pathway of at least 12 months;
describe competencies that are relevant to current and future health practice;
enable widespread use of the competencies not only for curriculum development for pre-service education, but also for in-service education, regulation, qualifications, quality assurance, personal development, performance evaluation, recruitment, management and career progression;
focus on the core functions of FP and CAC providers within broader efforts towards achieving universal health coverage
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Unchecked inequality and failure to protect the rights of poorest women could undermine peace and world’s development goals, new UNFPA report warns:
- Only about half of the world’s women hold paid jobs
- Globally, women earn 77 per cent of what men get
- Three in five women worldwide lack m...aternity leave, many pay "motherhood penalty"
The report is also available in French: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/UNFPA_PUB_2017_FR_swop_Etat_de_la_population_mondiale.pdf; in Spanish: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/UNFPA_PUB_2017_ES_SWOP_Estado_de_la_Poblacion_Mundial.pdf; in Russian: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/UNFPA_PUB_2017_RU_SWOP_NARODONASELENIE_MIRA_V_2017_GODU.pdf and in Arabic: https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/sowp/downloads/UNFPA_PUB_2017_AR_SWOP_Hl_skn_llm_.pdf
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Mortality due to enteric infections is projected to increase because of global warming; however, the different temperature sensitivities of major enteric pathogens have not yet been considered in projections on a global scale. We aimed to project global temperature-attributable enteric infection mor...tality under various future scenarios of sociodemographic development and climate change.
The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 5, ISSUE 7, e436-e445, July 01, 2021
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Ensuring mental health and well-being has become a worldwide imperative and an important target
of the Sustainable Development Goals.
But in all countries around the world, our response has been woefully insufficient, and we have made
little progress to advance mental health as a fundamental huma...n right.
One in ten people are affected by a mental health condition, up to 200 million people have an
intellectual disability and an estimated 50 million people have dementia. Many persons with mental
health conditions, or psychosocial, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities lack access to quality mental
health services that respond to their needs and respect their rights and dignity.
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The ICOPE Implementation Framework provides a score card to help assess the overall capacity of health and social care services and systems to deliver integrated care in community settings and support the development of ICOPE implementation action plans. There are 19 actions needed to implement ICOP...E on the services level (meso) and systems level (macro). The scoring process provides an evidence-based means of highlighting areas for improvement as well as establishing concrete measures of future improvements
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