WHO published the first COVID-19 Strategic Response and Preparedness Plan (SPRP) on 3 February, 2020. This report highlights the main points of progress that were made up to 30 June 2020 under the three objectives outlined in the SPRP: scaling up international coordination and support; scaling up co...untry preparedness and response by pillar; and accelerating research and innovation. The report also discusses some of the key challenges faced so far, and provides an update on the resource requirements for the next phase of WHO’s response as part of an unprecedented whole-of-UN approach to the pandemic.
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The Active Learning Package is designed to provide methodology, substantive support and practical instruction for the training of health personnel in Health as Bridge for Peace issues. https://www.who.int/hac/techguidance/hbp/active_training_package/en/index5.html
This publication presents the Agenda for the Americas on Health, Environment, and Climate Change 2021–2030 (the Agenda). The Agenda is a call to action to the health sector to lead the charge to address environmental determinants of health in the Americas. The Pan American Health Organization (PAH...O) will work with Member States to achieve its goal and objective to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages using a sustainable and equitable approach that places a priority on reducing health inequity. The Agenda has been developed under the umbrella of the WHO Global Strategy on Health, Environment, and Climate Change, and builds upon the commitments set forth in the Sustainable Health Agenda for the Americas 2018–2030 and the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025. The Agenda was developed in consultation with the Technical Advisory Group and through a consensus-driven decision-making process with Member States during the 2019–2020 period. Looking toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3, the Agenda focuses on: improving the performance of environmental public health programs and institutions; fostering environmentally resilient and sustainable health systems; and promoting environmentally healthy and resilient cities and communities. Its implementation will be context-specific, based on the needs and realities of the countries. It will benefit countries and territories by promoting good governance practices, strengthening the leadership and coordination roles of the health sector, fostering cross-sectoral action, focusing on primary prevention, and enhancing evidence and communication. It will facilitate access to human, technical, and financial resources necessary to address environmental determinants of health and ensure that the Region is fully engaged in global health, environment, and climate change processes and agreements. The objective of the Agenda is to strengthen the capacity of health actors in the health and non-health sectors to address and adapt to environmental determinants of health (EDHs), prioritizing populations living in conditions of vulnerability, in order to meet Outcome 18 of the PAHO Strategic Plan 2020–2025 directly and several other outcomes of the Plan indirectly. To address and adapt to the challenges of EDHs in the Region, an integrated and evidence-informed approach within the health sector and across sectors will be needed, one enabled, and supported by good governance practices, adequate management mechanisms, high-level political will, and adequate human, technical, technological, and financial resources.
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Between 1992 and 2012, disasters caused more than 1.3 million deaths, affected more than 4.4 billion people and led to US$ 2 trillion in economic damages and losses around the world. This Disaster Risk Management Strategy explains how the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) anti...cipates disasters and advocates for more upstream consideration of their occurrence. There are sections on community based disaster risk management and ecosystem based disaster resilience, as well as a look to the future
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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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We investigate whether and to what extent Chinese development finance affects infant mortality, combining 92 demographic and health surveys (DHS) for a maximum of 53 countries and almost 55,000 sub-national locations over the 2002-2014 period. We address causality by instrumenting aid with a set of ...interacted variables. Variation over
time results from indicators that measure the availability of funding in a given year. Cross-sectional variation results from a sub-national region’s “probability to receive aid.” Controlled for this probability in tandem with fixed effects for country-years and provinces, the interactions of these variables form powerful and excludable instruments. Our results show that Chinese aid increases infant mortality at sub-national scales, but decreases mortality at the countrylevel. In several tests, we show that this stark contrast likely results from aid being fungible within recipient countries.
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PLoS Negl Trop Dis 16(10): e0009774. Although the practice of communication is often called upon when intervening asn involgvingcommunties affected by NTD's, the disciplinary framewokr of healt communication research has been largely absent from NTD strategies. To illustrate how practices conceptual...ized and developed within the communication field habe been applied in the context of NTD elimination, we conducted a scoping review focusing on two diseases currently targeted for elimination by the WHO: lymphatic filariasis and Chagas disease
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Rabies is fatal, vaccine-preventable disease responsible for an estimated 59,000 human deaths each year. Most cases are transmitted by dogs, and most deaths occur in underserved populations in Africa and Asia. Approximately 40% of deaths occur in children.
The World Drug Report 2022 is aimed not only at fostering greater international cooperation to counter the impact of the world drug problem on health, governance and security, but also, with its special insights, at assisting Member States in anticipating and address-ing threats from drug markets an...d mitigating their consequences.
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2nd edition. The interagency field handbook on malaria control was developed to set out effective malaria control responses in humanitarian emergencies, particularly during the acute phase when reliance on international humanitarian assistance is greatest. This second edition represents a thorough u...pdating and revision of the first edition. The structure remains similar, but includes an additional chapter on humanitarian coordination. All chapters have been revised to reflect changes in best practices, improvements in technologies, availability of new tools, and changes in WHO recommendations.
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In 2017, the World Bank and partners created the Global Investment Framework for Nutrition as a roadmap towards achieving the World Health Assembly (WHA) nutrition targets by 2025. The framework estimates that the world needs to mobilize an annual additional investment of $7 billion per year to scal...e-up nutrition-specific interventions at the level needed to achieve the global targets. However, the world is off-track to meet the global targets. And it is unclear whether additional resources will be mobilized for life-saving and cost-effective nutrition-specific interventions, or whether donor support will be enough to meet the annual resource need established by the framework.
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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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The UNAIDS 2020 global report is a call to action. It highlights the scale of the HIV epidemic and how it runs along the fault lines of inequalities.
A Toolkit for Implementation. Module 4: Training guide for facilitators of the participatory community assessment in maternal and newborn health
This guidebook for people in school settings is intended to offer strategies for use and adaptation with children and families to re-establish routines of hygiene with basic access to water and sanitation services through an approach that visibly shows that the school is WASHfriendly, inclusive - so... that all children, including those with disabilities have "ownership of the information and activities", and sustainable, repeating messages "over time to encourage lasting behaviour change"
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The document introduces a simple classification, minimums standards and a registration form for Foreign Medical Teams (FMTs) that may provide surgical and trauma care arriving within the aftermath of a sudden onset disaster. These can serve as tools to improve the coordination of the foreign medical... team response, and be the reference for registration on arrival as well as a possible global registration mechanism similar to what exists for urban search and rescue teams
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The power relations around global decisions which shape population health can be changed through new alliances and information flows. The Democratising Global Health Governance Initiative, of which WHO Watch is a project, is designed to contribute to improved population health (and health equity) th...rough new alliances and information flows.
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Making the Case for Alcohol as a Public Health Threat in the Region. The purpose of this document is to explain the need for making alcohol a top public health priority in the region and the need for national and regional action. Current evidence-based research shows that alcohol consumption and dri...nking patterns in the Americas are at damaging levels, with the region surpassing global averages for many alcohol related problems.
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The WHO Effective Communications Participant Handbook was created to support WHO staff around the world in enhancing their communications skills as part of the global communications capacity-building efforts of the WHO Department of Communications (DCO)