The World Health Organization’s comprehensive antenatal care (ANC) guideline WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy experience was published in 2016 with the objective of improving the quality of routine health care that all women and adolescent girls receive during pregnan...cy. The overarching principle – to provide pregnant service users with a positive pregnancy experience – aims to encourage countries to expand their health-care agendas beyond survival, with a view to maximizing health, human rights and the potential of their populations. Recognizing that ANC provides a strategic platform for important health-care functions, including health promotion and disease prevention, 14 out of the 49 recommendations in the WHO 2016 ANC guideline relate to nutrition in pregnancy.
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This brief focuses specifically on the Grand Nord (Great North): the Beni and Lubero territories of northern North Kivu that are the epicentre of the outbreak. Further participatory enquiry should be undertaken with the affected populations, but given ongoing transmission, conveying key consideratio...ns and immediate recommendations have been prioritised.
This brief is based on a rapid review of existing published and grey literature, professional ethnographic research in DRC, personal communication with administrative and health officials and practitioners in the country, and experience of previous Ebola outbreaks.
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7 Febr. 2021
As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in countries – decimating people’s livelihoods, and leaving health systems struggling to provide healthcare and vaccines for the entire population - governments and donors should look to the Church as a partner. The essential Church networks, tr...usted and rooted in local communities, can reach the most vulnerable people and remote places where governments often struggle to reach. DR Congo is among several countries where the Catholic Church is the main provider of community health services, particularly in more remote areas.
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This practical guidance is designed to assist programme specialists to implement COVID19 RCCE activities for and with refugees, IDPs, migrants and host communities vulnerable to the pandemic. The guidance highlights key challenges and barriers faced by these people in accessing COVID19 health-relate...d information and presents key considerations and recommendations for planning and implementing RCCE activities. The document can be adapted to countries’ specific context and aligned with national response plans for COVID-19 and national RCCE plans.
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Nationally, Senegal met the MDG target for water supply access. It did this by engaging the public and private sectors to effectively invest and report on investments. It focused on larger population centers, less on remote regions of the country. Its achievements set the stage for more equitable an...d widespread service provision as the country now works to achieve the SDGs, requiring sustainable management of universal access. This case study documents the progression of the sector between 1990 and 2015, and analyzes the impact of local systems created in Senegal to respond to the water and sanitation challenge.
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This publication represents a key step forward in translating Control of the leishmaniases (WHO Technical Report Series, No. 949) into a more practical tool for health personnel directly involved in the case management of cutaneous leishmaniasis. With this manual, countries will have, for the first ...time, standardized diagnosis and treatment protocols, case definitions and indicators to enable them to easily track progress on cutaneous leishmaniasis case management across the Region. It will provide support to professionals in charge of cutaneous leishmaniasis, in order to alleviate the suffering of affected populations from this appalling disfiguring and stigmatizing neglected tropical disease.
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The report aims to help policy-makers and programme managers identify the areas that need attention and to work towards effective implementation and enforcement of policies and legislations. The need for alcohol policy-specific infrastructures to support the alcohol policy process, including designa...ted responsible agency, policy and strategy, and law and regulation, is also required at the country level.
The report is presented in three sections. Section 1 gives an insight to the alcohol consumption situation in the WHO South-East Asia Region and cites the alcohol-related problems that the Region is facing. Section 2 illustrates the policy situation in the 10 areas of national action identified in the Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol and gives specific recommendations pertaining to these areas. Section 3 provides overall recommendations.
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This paper has been commissioned by RedR to identify gaps in skills, technology, and knowledge in urban humanitarian response in order to inform RedR’s project Ready to Respond which is looking to address these gaps in two specific areas:
Water supply, sanitation, and hygiene; Shelter res...ponse to earthquakes
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During the past five decades, the incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold. Some 50–100 million new infections are estimated to occur annually in more than 100 endemic countries, with a documented further spread to previously unaffected areas; every year hundreds of thousands of severe cases ari...se, including 20 000 deaths; 264 disability-adjusted life years per million population per year are lost , at an estimated cost for ambulatory and hospitalized cases of US$ 514–1394, often affecting very poor populations. The true numbers are probably far worse, since severe underreporting and misclassification of dengue cases have been documented.
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This technical brief was developed by the UNFPA Global Ageing Network to complement the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (UN DESA) Issue Brief: Older Persons and COVID-19, which emphasized the humanitarian imperative of addressing older persons' specific needs within preparedness and re...sponse to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In recent years, Rwanda has been on the fast track to achieve major health improvements for its entire population. With the support of government agencies and various non-governmental partners, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has endeavored to decentralize Rwanda’s health system and bring health serv...ices closer to the people. Guided by multitude of national and international development frameworks, Rwanda’s healthcare successes include the establishment of a community health insurance scheme (mutuelle de santé), a system of cooperative-financed community health workers in every village, and interventions for researching, preventing, and treating diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria.
As the MoH continues to design innovative means to reach and surpass its prescribed health outcome targets, it will hold as core principles the integration of service provision, the increase in healthcare capacity, and the attainment of sustainable funding sources. Rwanda is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and has declared Family Planning (FP) a national priority for poverty reduction and socioeconomic development of the country. Modern contraceptive use has more than quadrupled from 2005 to 2010, rising from 10% to 45%, but the government’s Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy calls for an increase the modern contraceptive prevalence to 70% by 2016. While structural changes in health care and supply chains have led to noteworthy improvements in FP and other services, there are still many challenges that must be overcome. As such, a strategic plan is needed to coordinate FP efforts around a well-defined set of objectives and responsibilities.
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The WHO End TB Strategy aims to end the global TB epidemic by 2030, in alignment with Goal 3 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN committed to ending the TB epidemic through adoption of WHO’s End TB Strateg...y and the UN SDGs in 2014 and 2015, respectivel
Almost half of the deaths worldwide caused by TB in 2019 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region, home to around a quarter of the global population. Maintaining robust progress in this Region is therefore essential if the global goal of ending the TB epidemic is to be realized. Despite substantial gains made in the Region, the threat to
health worldwide posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse these gains and eclipse the focus on the global TB emergency.
While continuing to tackle COVID-19-related challenges, countries will need to rapidly and urgently deploy supplementary measures to address the large numbers of missed cases, poor treatment outcomes and, potentially, a higher TB burden.
The Regional Strategic Plan towards Ending TB in the Region 2021–2025 clearly articulates priority interventions, analyses the challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities, and focuses on implementation considerations in the Region.
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On 15–16 December 2020, WHO and the Medicines for Malaria Venture co-convened a technical consultation to consider the preferred product characteristics (PPCs) for drugs used in malaria chemoprevention. The main goal of the technical consultation was to agree on the most important PPCs for drugs t...o protect populations from malaria (chemoprevention), while considering relevant measures of efficacy and the safety data needed to support WHO policy recommendations.
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These guidance notes on stress, grief and loss have been compiled by IMC’s Mental Health Advisor, Dr. Lynne Jones, for organizations working with Hurricane Katrina-affected populations. They represent lessons learned regarding mental health activities from IMC’s international experiences in disa...ster response, including the recent tsunami, as well as summarize best-practices identified by international agency consensus.
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The global burden of disease due to mental disorders continues to rise, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In addition to causing a large proportion of morbidity, mental disorders – especially severe mental disorders (SMD) – are linked with poorer health outcomes and increase...d mortality. SMD are defined as a group of conditions that include moderate to severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. People with SMD have a two to three times higher average mortality compared to the general population, which translates to a 10-20 year reduction in life expectancy. While people with SMD do have higher rates of death due to unnatural causes (accidents, homicide, or suicide) than the general population, the
majority of deaths amongst people with SMD are attributable to physical health conditions, both
non-communicable and communicable.
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This timely report comes at a decisive moment in history where
we can reshape urban environments and health systems for the
majority of the world’s population that live in cities. Enabling
this transformation are the SDGs, which have reconfigured how
governments and the international community... need to plan and
implement actions to eradicate poverty and inequality, create
inclusive economic growth, preserve the planet and improve
population health. Central to this quest is to create equitable,
healthier cities for sustainable development.
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The Implementation toolkit for accessible telehealth services provides practical guidance to support governments, industry partners, health service providers and civil society groups in the use and implementation of the WHO-ITU Global standard for accessibility of telehealth services. The toolkit is... the result of a collaboration between the World Health Organization and the International Telecommunication Union, and was developed in response to the growing challenges that persons with disabilities and other marginalized populations experience when accessing and using telehealth platforms around the world.
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High salt consumption is an important determinant of high blood pressure and reducing it would improve health outcomes by lowering cardiovascular disease and therefore death rates. Reducing salt intake has been identified as one of the most effective public health measures and is one of the leading ...targets at global, regional and national levels to reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases. The purpose of the Dietary Salt Intake Survey in the Republic of Moldova was to establish current baseline average consumption of salt (sodium), potassium and iodine through 24-hour urinary excretion testing among a random sample of the adult population (aged 18–69 years), and to assess the knowledge, attitudes, practices and behaviour around dietary salt in order to enable more efficient planning and the implementation of an effective salt-reduction strategy in the Republic of Moldova.
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The goal of the strategy is to prevent seasonal influenza, control the spread of influenza from animals to humans, and prepare for the next influenza pandemic.
The new strategy is the most comprehensive and far-reaching that WHO has ever developed for influenza. It outlines a path to protect popul...ations every year and helps prepare for a pandemic through strengthening routine programmes.
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L'importance de systèmes de surveillance de la mortalité robustes ne peut être surestimée à une époque marquée par des défis sanitaires mondiaux croissants, où les menaces sanitaires pèsent lourd et la dynamique des populations continue d'évoluer. Des données précises et opportunes sur ...la mortalité sont essentielles pour identifier les tendances et détecter les menaces émergentes pour la santé, évaluer l'impact des interventions et orienter les décisions politiques fondées sur des données probantes.
Ce cadre décrit une approche holistique pour renforcer les systèmes de surveillance de routine de la mortalité, en tenant compte des facteurs contextuels uniques et des défis auxquels sont confrontés les pays africains. Il souligne l'importance d'établir des mécanismes de collecte de données efficaces, d'améliorer la qualité et l'exhaustivité des données et de promouvoir le partage des données et la collaboration entre les parties prenantes.
De plus, le cadre reconnaît le rôle central de la technologie dans l'intégration des données provenant de sources de données fragmentées sur la mortalité. Il met en évidence le potentiel des méthodes innovantes de capture de données, des analyses avancées et des systèmes de notification en temps réel pour améliorer la précision, l'efficacité et l'actualité des données sur la mortalité.
Le cadre continental de surveillance de la mortalité s'aligne sur la mission et l'objectif stratégique d'Africa CDC en servant d'élément fondamental dans le renforcement des systèmes de santé publique, l'amélioration des capacités et des capacités de surveillance des maladies, l'élaboration de politiques et d'interventions fondées sur des données probantes et la promotion de la collaboration et de la coordination entre les pays africains pour relever les défis sanitaires et améliorer les résultats sanitaires sur le continent.
La mise en œuvre réussie de ce cadre nécessite un engagement collectif et des efforts concertés de la part des gouvernements, des établissements de santé et de la communauté internationale. Nous espérons que ce document servira de catalyseur pour un changement transformateur, permettant aux pays de mettre en place des systèmes de surveillance de la mortalité résilients qui protègent la santé publique, sauvent des vies et contribuent à la prise de décision fondée sur des données probantes.
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