Strengthening Community responses to HIv Treatment and Prevention
Evaluation report
September 2014
Growing evidence indicates that large proportions of children around the world experience physical, sexual and emotional violence every year, with enormous implications for human rights, public health and economic and social development.1 Over the last five years, national governments and Together f...or Girls – a global public-private partnership comprising UNICEF,
other United Nations (UN) agencies, the United States (US) Government and various private sector agencies – have worked to mobilize and sustain a global movement to end violence against children, with a focus on sexual violence against girls.
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Lancet Infectious Diseases Volume 22, Issue 11e327-e335.
In February, 2022, WHO published new guidelines with six recommendations to update the global public health strategy against schistosomiasis, including expansion of preventive chemotherapy eligibility from the predominant group of school-age...d children to all age groups (2 years and older), lowering the prevalence threshold for annual preventive chemotherapy, and increasing the frequency of treatment. This Review, written by the 2018-2022 Schistosomiasis Guidelines Development Group and its international partners, presents a summary of the new WHO guideline recommendations for schistosomiasis along with their historical context, supporting evidence, implications for public health implementation, and future research needs.
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BMC Infectious Diseases (2024) 24:1102
Communities living along the shoreline and on the islands of Lake Victoria in northwestern Tanzania
remain endemic for schistosomiasis and suffer from the life-threatening morbidities associated with the disease.
While there has been real progress in addressing the burden of disease in the WHO African region, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the link between health, economics and security, as the region saw decades of progress threatened, including positive trends in decreasing inequality. In the Africa...n Region the momentum towards achieving the 2030 SDG disease burden reduction targets (SDG targets 3.3, 3.4 and 3B) has stalled.
The COVID-19 pandemic was also a major threat to gains made, such as the eradication of polio in the region, declared in 2020; reduced numbers of new HIV infections in 2021 compared to 2010; and passing the 2020 milestone of the End TB Strategy, with a 22% reduction in new cases compared with 2015. However, the pandemic also disrupted essential health services in 92% of countries globally, 22.7 million children missed basic immunization, there was an increase in malaria and TB, and global deaths from TB rose for the first time since 2015.
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Strategic communication is used to raise awareness of issues among specific target populations. It aims to provide timely, evidence-based, authoritative information and guidance needed for public health action. Proper implementation of strategic communication leads t...o sustained behaviour change and is essential in overcoming barriers to access to services or generating demand for such services.
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Ghana's attempt to regulate health care waste management started in 2002 with the development of guidelines on health care waste manage-ment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2006, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) also developed the Health Care Waste Management Policy and Guidelines as ...a single document.
Although awareness on Health Care Waste Management (HCWM) has improved in recent years, there is the need for a systematic approach to improve on effective segregation, safe collection, and storage, as well as ultimate treatment before disposal.
This guideline seeks to ensure that HCW is managed effectively in compliance with existing International Conventions that Ghana is a signatory to, national laws and regulations, and others to be passed in future.
Recommendations for better management of HCW in the nation's health care facilities have been presented in this document. Also, standard operating procedures (SOPs) have been developed to provide
guidance to various levels of the health facilities.
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The overall goal of the programme, to reduce the malaria morbidity and mortality by 75% (using 2012 as baseline) by the year 2020, continued to be pursued in 2014. The following areas were identified as some of the priorities for the year: Malaria Case Management under which we have Malaria in Pregn...ancy (MIP), Home Based Care and Diagnostics.
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Despite the significant role of vector control in national leishmaniasis control programmes, the programmatic community perceives vector control as the weakest component of leishmaniasis control strategies in terms of resources, scientific evidence of the usefulness of interventions and capacity for... quality-assured implementation. Therefore, the main objective of this manual is to provide practical tools, techniques and procedures to strengthen sand fly control and surveillance in order to improve implementation of leishmaniasis control programmes. The manual provides a rationale for programme managers in different geographical regions on the types of vector control interventions to be used in different epidemiological and environmental settings and also how to measure their impact.
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Policy Brief | April 2015 | This brief accompanies the data sheet, Addressing Risk Factors for Noncommunicable Diseases Among Young People in Africa: Key to Prevention and Sustainable Development, and its data appendix, which provide all available country-specific data on four key NCD risk factors a...mong young people in Africa since 2004. These publications extend an earlier publication, Noncommunicable Disease Risk Factors Among Young People in Africa: Data Availability and Sources. All are available at www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2015/ncd-risk-youth-africa.aspx.
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This 2011 update of Guidelines for the programmatic management of drug-resistant tuberculosis is intended as a tool for use by public health professionals working in response
to the Sixty-second World Health Assembly’s resolution on prevention and control of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and e...xtensively drug-resistant tuberculosis.
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This summary highlights the experiences, results and actions from the implementation of the Rapid Assessment Tool for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV Linkages in Botswana. The tool – developed by IPPF, UNFPA, WHO, UNAIDS, GNP+, ICW and Young Positives in 2009 – supports national assessmen...ts of the bi-directional linkages between sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV at the policy, systems and services levels. Each country that has rolled out the tool has gathered and generated information that will help to determine priorities and shape national plans and frameworks for scaling up and intensifying linkages. Country experiences and best practices will also inform regional and global agendas.
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Antimicrobial resistant (AMR) organisms are increasing globally, threatening to render existing treatments ineffective against many infectious diseases. In Africa, AMR has already been documented to be a problem for HIV and the pathogens that cause malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera, meningitis..., gonorrhea, and dysentery. Recognizing the urgent need for action, the World Health Assembly adopted the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance in May 2015. In accordance with the Global Action Plan and to meet needs specific to Africa, Africa CDC will establish the Anti-Microbial Resistance Surveillance Network (AMRSNET). AMRSNET is a network of public health institutions and leaders from human and animal health sectors who will collaborate to measure, prevent, and mitigate harms from AMR organisms.
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