Areas for action include: increasing prioritisation and awareness of dementia; reducing the risk of dementia; diagnosis, treatment and care; support for dementia carers; strengthening information systems for dementia; and research and innovation.
BMJ VOLUME 322 24 FEBRUARY 2001 bmj.com
Environmental Research Volume 151, November 2016, Pages 115-123
Dengue is the world’s most important arboviral disease in terms of number of people affected. Over the past 50 years, incidence increased 30-fold: there were approximately 390 million infections in 2010. Globalization, trade, travel,... demographic trends, and warming temperatures are associated with the recent spread of the primary vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus and of dengue. Overall, models project that new geographic areas along the fringe of current geographic ranges for Aedes will become environmentally suitable for the mosquito’s lifecycle, and for dengue transmission. Many endemic countries where dengue is likely to spread further have underdeveloped health systems, increasing the substantial challenges of disease prevention and control. Control focuses on management of Aedes, although these efforts have typically had limited effectiveness in preventing outbreaks. New prevention and control efforts are needed to counter the potential consequences of climate change on the geographic range and incidence of dengue, including novel methods of vector control and dengue vaccines.
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May 2020 International Journal of Infectious Diseases 96 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.05.003
The sixteenth meeting of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (STAG-NTD) was held as a hybrid meeting, 27–28 September 2022.
Dr Ren Minghui, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage/Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases, welcomed participan...ts to the meeting. He said the World Health Organization’s Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (WHO/NTD) was in a state of transition. Following the death of the late esteemed Director Dr Mwelecele Ntuli Malecela earlier in the year, Dr Gautam Biswas had taken over as Acting Director but would soon retire; the appointment of a new Director was under way. Owing to rotation of STAG-NTD members, this would be the last meeting for some and the first meeting for several new participants. The work however would continue with the same commitment. Discussions over the next two days would focus on critical issues regarding recovery of NTD services following the disruptions caused by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which had impacted many health services worldwide. He looked forward to receiving the advice and guidance of STAG-N
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While the full effects of COVID-19 remain unknown, the pandemic continues to profoundly impact regional migration and mobility dynamics, with deep health, social and economic consequences for the most vulnerable, including migrants, displaced populations and their host communities, and returnees.
Effective risk communication requires the alignment of complex factors including trust between the communicator and the audience(s), audience involvement, and emotional responses to risk. Risk communication is especially challenging now as new media changes the landscape for both
communicators and... their audiences. Viewed as a discussion of the most important findings for risk communicators and managers, this report delves into research-driven recommendations for effective risk communication practices.
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This guidance document is meant to support practitioners working in disaster prone contexts to develop and implement more effective integrated resilience programming. It promotes programming that cuts across different fields of work like rights awareness, food security, emergency preparedness, livel...ihoods, education, health etc. whilst at the same time encouraging us to work simultaneously at the individual, household, community and national level. It includes specific recommendations for developing resilience programming for communities prone to floods, cyclone, drought and earthquakes. It also includes recommendations to develop safe school programming to help reduce the impact of disasters on school infrastructure, ensure education continuity and build the resilience of students, teachers and their families.
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2nd edition. The purpose of the WHO human health risk assessment toolkit: chemical hazards is to provide its users with guidance to identify, acquire and use the information needed to assess chemical hazards, exposures and the corresponding health risks in their given health risk assessment contexts... at local and/or national levels.
The Toolkit provides road maps for conducting a human health risk assessment, identifies information that must be gathered to complete an assessment and provides electronic links to international resources from which the user can obtain information and methods essential for conducting the human health risk assessment
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Infection prevention and control (IPC) in a CTC/ CTU IPC are all practical measures taken in the healthcare facility to prevent harm caused by infections to patients, health workers and communities.
The main goal of IPC in the cholera response is to
• To reduce transmission of health care-as...sociated infections of cholera and any other infectious disease
• To enhance the safety of staff, patients and visitors
• To enhance the ability of the organization/health care facility to respond to an outbreak
• To reduce the risk of the hospital (health care facility) itself amplifying the outbreak
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
WASH are all measures taken to guarantee environmental hygiene, safe water of all used within the health facility. It encompasses water, sanitation, waste management, cleaning within the health facility which in this case is CTU/C. A complete WASH package in the CTU/CTC reduces the risk of spread of Vibrio cholerae inside and outside the CTC/CTU.
The probability of spreading or acquiring cholera through a CTC/CTU can be highly reduced when proper IPC and WASH measures are respected, followed and monitored. These measures are, in principle, valid in CTC/CTUs and ORPs, although they need to be adapted to the specific characteristics of the facility concerned.
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Laboratory Biossafety Manual
Guidelines for Prevention and Reponse
Vaccines are powerful weapons in the fight against pandemic viruses as shown by responses to both the 2009 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics. However, planning for accessing, allocating and deploying vaccines in a pandemic situation is a complex endeavour, beset with multiple challenges at a...ll levels – local, regional and global. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have prepared this revised guidance document to assist countries update their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) by leveraging global learnings from past pandemic responses, including the recent COVID-19 vaccination effort. The development and testing of a NDVP would not only advance pandemic preparedness efforts but would also have benefits in terms of increasing national capabilities to manage other health emergencies which require emergency vaccination campaigns.
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On 31st December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. On 7th January 2020, Chinese authorities identified a new strain of Coronavirus as the causative age...nt for the disease. The virus has been renamed by WHO as SARS-CoV-2 and the disease caused by it as COVID-19. The disease since its first detection in China has now spread to over 200 countries/territories, with reports of local transmission happening in more than 160 of these countries/territories. As per WHO (as of 1st April, 2020), there has been a total of 823626 confirmed cases and 40598 deaths due to COVID-19 worldwide.
In India, as on 2nd April, 2020, 1965 confirmed cases (including 51 foreign nationals) and 50 deaths reported from 29 States/UTs. Large number of cases has been reported from Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.
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In recognition of the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), its increasing threat to human, animal and plant health, and the need for a One Health approach to address this issue, the 39th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) agreed it was important for the food safety comm...unity to play its part and re-established the ad hoc Codex Intergovernmental Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance (TFAMR) ). The objectives of the Task Force were
to revise the current Codex Code of Practice to Minimise and Contain Antimicrobial Resistance and to develop new guidance on surveillance programmes relevant to foodborne AMR.
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These guidelines provide updated evidence-based recommendations on the priority HCV-related topics from the 2018 WHO Guidelines for the care and treatment of persons diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C infection and the 2017 WHO Guidelines on hepatitis B and C testing. These priority areas are:
... direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment of adolescents and children ages ≥3 years of age
simplified HCV service delivery (decentralization, integration and task sharing)
HCV diagnostics – use of point-of-care (POC) HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) assays and reflex HCV RNA testing.
These guidelines also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as the inclusion of new manufacturers’ protocols on the use of dried blood spot (DBS) for HCV RNA testing and new data to inform the limit of detection for HCV RNA assays as a test of cure, in addition to their use for diagnosis.
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The most frequent health problems of newly arrived refugees and migrants include accidental injuries, hypothermia, burns, gastrointestinal illnesses, cardiovascular events, pregnancy- and delivery-related complications, diabetes and hypertension. Female refugees and migrants frequently face specific... challenges, particularly in maternal, newborn and child health, sexual and reproductive health, and violence. The exposure of refugees and migrants to the risks associated with population movements – psychosocial disorders, reproductive health problems, higher newborn mortality, drug abuse, nutrition disorders, alcoholism and exposure to violence – increase their vulnerability to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)
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