7. Rev Panam Salud Publica. 2020;44:e13
Haiti faces a double burden of disease. Infectious diseases continue to be an issue, while non-communicable diseases have become a significant burden of disease. More attention must also be focused on the increase in worrying public health issues such as road... injuries, exposure to forces of nature and HIV/AIDS in specific age groups. To address the burden of disease, sustained actions are needed to promote better health in Haiti and countries with similar challenges.
more
"Some of the problems with our current drug policies stem from the fact that these policies have been largely bifurcated between two different and often contradictory approaches. One treats drug use as a crime that cannot be tolerated and should be punished; the other views addiction as a chronic re...lapsing health or behavioral condition requiring ongoing treatment and support. Neither of these views is all encompassing—it should be recognized that there are patterns of drug use that do not result in significant harm or health problems and therefore require no intervention. The public health approach presented here takes the view that our focus should be on the harm caused by drug use and the harm caused by our policy responses to it. We have focused specifically on illicit drugs, not because they are by themselves more harmful (in fact, tobacco causes more morbidity and mortality than any illicit drug), but because it has become increasingly clear that our current policies to manage illicit drugs are failing."
more
The DHS report itself explains the purpose was, “to obtain and provide information on basic indicators of social progress including fertility, childhood mortality, reproductive and child health, nutritional status of children, and awareness of HIV/AIDS and other health-related issues” in PNG. Th...is is important because a DHS then provides the evidence base for PNG officials themselves to track progress in PNG over time, compare trends with other comparable countries, and then allocate financial and human resources to where they are needed most.
more
Asthma is the most common chronic condition in children worldwide. It affects daytime activities, sleep and school attendance and causes anxiety to parents, families and other carers. The quality of asthma diagnosis and management globally still needs substantial improvement. From infancy to the tee...nage years, there are age-specific challenges, including both underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis with stigma-related barriers to treatment in some cultures and in adolescents. The Paediatric Asthma Project Plan has been initiated to strengthen diagnosis and management of asthma. This encompasses a vision for the next 10–15 years, building on the knowledge and experience from previous educational projects. It will take into account the educational needs of patients, carers and healthcare professionals as well as the accessibility and affordability of medication, particularly in low and middle-income countries where the prevalence of asthma is rising more rapidly. This overview presents a first step for those involved in the diagnosis and management of childhood asthma to strengthen care for children globally.
more
This report is one of the first major products of the newly established Precision Public Health Metrics unit of the UCN cluster of the WHO Regional Office for Africa. The report presents national trends in communicable and non-communicable disease burden and control in the WHO African region. It tra...cks progress made with respect to disease burden reduction, elimination and eradication. It also highlights major emerging threats, opportunities and priorities in the fight against commu- nicable and non-communicable diseases in the region. It covers the period 2000-2022, but for some indicators, information is available only up to 2021.
The report shows the number of reported cases for malaria and vaccine preventable diseases (meningitis, measles, yellow fever, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio); disease incidence due to HIV, tuberculosis and four major noncommunicable diseases (cardiovas- cular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic respira- tory diseases).
more
Tuberculosis (TB) is, and should be, a curable disease; however, each year significant numbers of patients acquire or develop drug-resistant TB, which has a much lower cure rate. Patients with drug-resistant TB have a high prevalence of symptoms; hence, staff caring for these patients should h...ave some familiarity with palliative care, so that general palliative care principles are available to all patients. The timely identification, and addressing, of adverse events occurring during the treatment course is considered as general palliative care for those receiving curative treatment. This publication summarizes the general palliative care approach, which is recommended for use in settings and services that occasionally treat palliative care patients, but do not provide palliative care as the main focus of their work. The review focuses on 18 high TB priority countries of the WHO European Region.
more
The consolidated guidelines are expected to provide the basis and rationale for the development of national guidelines for LTBI management, adapted to the national and local epidemiology of TB, the availability of resources, the health infrastructure and other national and local determinants. The gu...idelines are to be used primarily in national TB and HIV control programmes, or their equivalents in ministries of health, and for other policy-makers working on TB and HIV and infectious diseases. They are also appropriate for officials in other line ministries with work in the areas of health.
more
The primary objective of the 2015-16 MDHS project is to provide up-to-date estimates of basic demographic and health indicators. Specifically, the MDHS collected information on fertility levels, marriage, fertility preferences, awareness and use of family planning methods, breastfeeding practices, n...utrition, maternal and child health and mortality, awareness and behavior regarding HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other health-related issues such as smoking and knowledge of tuberculosis. As the 2015-16 MDHS is the first DHS survey in the country, trend analysis is not carried out in this report.
more
Viral hepatitis is defined as inflammation of the liver cells due to viral infection. The burden of liver disease in South Africa is mostly underestimated as viral hepatitis, in particular chronic infection, is a silent and neglected cause of morbidity and mortality. However, the burden of disease i...s likely substantial given the prevalence of chronic viral hepatitis. This burden is further compounded by the lack of screening and access to care and treatment as well as inadequate disease surveillance, human and financial resources.
The National Guidelines for the Management of Viral Hepatitis were developed, with the purpose to:
inform healthcare workers in the public and private sectors about the disease, its epidemiology in South Africa and current methods of diagnosis and therapy
strengthen the healthcare response to viral hepatitis
empower communicable diseases workers and stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding appropriate and cost effective interventions
more
J Glob Health Sci. 2020 Jun;2(1):e3. A group of enzootic and zoonotic protozoan infections, the leishmaniases constitute among the most severely neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and are found in all continents except Oceania. Representing the most common infectious diseases, NTDs comprise an open-...ended list of some 20 parasitic, bacterial, viral, protozoan and helminthic infections. Called “diseases of the poor,” because of their characteristic prevalence in poor populations regardless of a country's income status, they infect over one billion people in over 140 countries, with about 90% of the global burden in Africa. While NTDs do not contribute significantly to global deaths, they are debilitating and remain the most common infections among the poor worldwide, preventing them from escaping poverty by impacting livelihoods such as agriculture and livestock, and affecting cognitive, developmental and education outcomes.
more
In Kenya, the bacterial infections that contribute most to human disease are often those in which re-‐sistance is most evident. Examples are multidrug-‐resistant enteric bacterial pathogens such as typhoid, ... diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli and invasive non-‐typhi salmonella, penicillin-‐resistant Streptococcus pneu-‐moniae, vancomycin-‐resistant enterococci, methicillin-‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus and multidrug-‐re-‐sistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Resistance to medicines commonly used to treat malaria is of particu-‐lar concern, as is the emerging resistance to anti-‐HIV drugs. Often, more expensive medicines are required to treat these infections, and this becomes a major challenge in resource-‐poor settings.
more
The 2020 Report analyzes global health spending for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and provides insights as to the health spending trajectory from the MDG era to the SDG era prior to the crisis of 2020. The report shows that global spending on health continually rose between 2000 and 2018 and reach...ed US$ 8.3 trillion or 10% of global GDP. The data also show that out-of-pocket spending has remained high in low and lower-middle income countries, representing greater than 40% of total health spending in 2018. We also report and summarize the data on expenditures for PHC, as well as by disease and intervention, including for immunization. The report also analyzes the available data on budget allocation in response to the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, we combine World Bank/IMF projections of the macroeconomic and fiscal impact of the crisis with an analysis of the historical determinants of health spending patterns and UHC indicators, and based on this, we draw out the likely implications of 2020 for future health spending, highlighting key policy and monitoring concerns.
more
The 2007 Rwanda Service Provision Assessment (RSPA) was a national representative survey conducted in 538 health facilities throughout Rwanda. The survey covered hospitals, health centers, dispensaries and
health posts, including all public facilities such as government and government-assisted heal...th facilities. The 2007 RSPA used interviews with health service providers and clients and observations of provider client consultations to obtain information on the capacity of facilities to provide quality services and the existence of functioning systems to support quality services. The areas addressed were the overall facility
infrastructure, maternal and child health, reproductive health, tuberculosis, malaria services; and services for sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS. The objective was to assess the strengths and
weaknesses of the infrastructure and systems supporting these services, and to assess the adherence to standards in the delivery of services.
more
The environment in which young people live, learn and play significantly affects their decisions about whether to consume alcohol. Environmental factors are the main risk factors driving alcohol consumption and related harm among young people. Environments that normalize alcohol consumption – term...ed alcogenic environments – include contexts with unregulated advertising and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher alcohol outlet density, products designed to facilitate affordability and low prices of alcoholic beverages. A recent body of research evidence has emerged related to the measurement, functional significance and consequences of living in alcogenic environments. This includes findings on the complex and bidirectional interactions among alcohol acceptability, availability and affordability and how they create and perpetuate alcogenic environments. Comprehensive and enforced alcohol control policies are effective at delaying the age of onset and lowering alcohol prevalence and frequency among young people. Evidence consistently confirms the effectiveness of designing and implementing alcohol control policies that regulate upstream the drivers of alcogenic environment, including alcohol availability, acceptability and affordability. These policies need to be multipronged and address the complex interactions between these drivers and the local alcohol culture
more
The update of the ESTC was conducted as a joint endeavour with ERS, consulting experts from international societies and organisations, national TB programmes, civil society and affected communities. The second edition of the ESTC includes 21 standards in the areas of diagnosis, treatment, HIV and co...-morbidities and public health and prevention. The ESTC is a user-friendly guide for clinicians and public health workers to help them achieve optimal diagnosis, treatment and prevention of TB
Available in 25 languages: https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/all-topics-ztuberculosisprevention-and-control/european-union-standards-tuberculosis-care
more
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.
more
Reference Guide Version 2. Revised. The Nutrition Program Design Assistant is a tool to help organizations design the nutrition component of their community-based maternal and child health, food security, or other development program. The tool focuses on prevention and also provides guidance on recu...perative approaches that are needed when there is a high prevalence of acute malnutrition
more
Community health workers (CHWs) enable marginalised communities, often experiencing structural poverty, to access healthcare. Trust, important in all patient–provider relationships, is difficult to build in such
communities, particularly when stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and now ...COVID-19, is widespread.
CHWs, responsible for bringing people back into care, must repair trust. In South Africa, where a national CHW programme is being rolled out, marginalised communities have high levels of unemployment, domestic violence and injury. In this complex social environment, we explored CHW workplace trust, interpersonal trust between the patient and CHW, and the institutional trust patients place in the health system
more
The recommendations in these guidelines promote the use of simple, non-invasive diagnostic tests to assess the stage of liver disease and eligibility for treatment; prioritize treatment for those with most advanced liver disease and at greatest risk of mortality; and recommend the preferred use of n...ucleos(t)ide analogues with a high barrier to drug resistance (tenofovir and entecavir, and entecavir in children aged 2–11 years) for first- and second-line treatment. Recommendations for the treatment of HBV/HIV-coinfected persons are based on the WHO 2013 Consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection, which will be updated in 2015.
more