Updated 17 April 2020
Improving care for women during pregnancy and around the time of childbirth to prevent and treat pre-eclampsia and eclampsia is a necessary step towards the achievement of the health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Efforts to prevent and reduce morbidity a...nd mortality due to these conditions can help address the profound inequities in maternal and perinatal health globally. To achieve this, healthcare providers, health managers, policy makers and other stakeholders need up-to-date and evidence-informed recommendations to guide clinical policies and practices.
more
Contact tracing for COVID-19 is the process of identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to someone who has been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while quarantine is the separation of contacts from other people after exposure to a probable or confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 i...nfection. In the context of growing global population immunity from COVID-19 vaccination and past SARS-CoV-2 infection, WHO recommends that identification, contact, quarantine and follow-up should be prioritized for individuals at high risk who have been in contact with a confirmed or probable case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, rather than targeting all contacts. This updated guidance also introduces shorter recommended quarantine periods, including the ability to further shorten quarantine through the use of testing. National and local health authorities should use risk-based approaches to contact tracing and quarantine that include reviewing and adjusting to their local circumstances and disease epidemiology, population immunity, their health system’s capacities, and risk tolerance.
more
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are spreading at an alarming rate and some bacterial infections may once again be untreatable. Antibiotic resistance (ABR), conservatively calculated, causes more than 500 000 deaths every year. This number is projected to rise dramatically if radical actions are not ta...ken. Lack of effective antibiotics, diagnostics and vaccines threatens the health of millions and hampers fulfilment of several of the Sustainable Development Goals. Access to effective antibiotics should be part of every adult and child’s right to health.
more
Putting Human Rights at the Heart of the Response
Topic in Focus: COVID-19 and Women’s Human Rights
15 April 2020
Stay-at-home restrictions and other measures restricting the movement of people contribute to an increase in genderbased violence, a finding confirmed by media reports, official ...statements and information received from OHCHR field presences and human rights defenders in many countries.
Women and girls already in abusive situations are more exposed to increased control and restrictions by their abusers, with little or no recourse to seek support. Hotlines receive reports of women being threatened with being thrown out of their homes, exposed to the infection, or having financial resources and medical aid withheld.
more
Policy Brief, Updated in March 2017
Key messages
• Sex workers have the right to equal protection under the law, regardless of the legal status of sex work.
• Sex workers have the right to access HIV, sexually transmitted infection (STI) and other health services free from the thr...eat of violence, intimidation, incarceration, and stigma and discrimination.
• Justice and law enforcement sectors, together with the health sector and sex worker communities, should work in partnership to reform relevant legislation, policies and practices.
• Capacity development of all partners is critical to the success of the HIV response among sex workers.
more
Unprecedented humanitarian needs, the COVID-19 pandemic, a worsening economic crisis, and funding shortfalls converge to create life-threatening challenges for people in need throughout the region.
In March 2022, the Syria crisis entered its 12th year, marking another grim milestone for Syrians t...hroughout the region. For women and girls, the cumulative impact has been catastrophic, upending decades of progress on women’s issues and bringing unprecedented risks that have fundamentally altered their realities.
more
The document, "Progress on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases," reports on global efforts to reduce the impact of NCDs, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases, following the commitments made at high-level United Nations meetings. It highlights ...the inadequate progress in meeting the targets set under the Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 to reduce premature NCD mortality by one-third by 2030. Key challenges include insufficient funding, limited implementation of effective interventions, and political and economic barriers, especially in low-income countries. The report calls for strengthened international cooperation, policy reform, and innovative approaches to meet global health targets.
more
This joint ECDC-European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) document aims to support Member States in determining a coordinated approach to reduce the risks related to the movement of people by air within and between the EU/EEA countries and the UK in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, noting th...at the impact of quarantine and testing is likely to vary according to levels of ongoing community transmission, and in the context of ECDC’s current advice that non-essential travel should be avoided during the end-of year festive period
more
The 2021 COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan (SPRP) for AFR serves as a regional guide for a holistic public health response to COVID‑19 at regional, national and sub-national levels. The 2021
SPRP:
1. Builds upon the lessons learnt from the implementation of the 2020 SPRP and outl...ines a regional preparedness, response and recovery strategy for COVID‑19.
2. Has been adapted to reflect the Regional context including COVID-19 vaccination. It also considers epidemiological changes and recommen-dations emerging from the evaluation report of the 2020 SPRP4.
3. Highlights to Member States strategic preparedness and response actions to be sustained at national and sub-national levels, as well as the critical inter-agency and partner support required.
4. provides the indicative resource requirements to reinforce WHO planned interventions in the African Region to enhance countries’ capacities to suppress transmission, save lives and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on people and health systems.
5. Provides a road map for mitigating potential resurgence in the Region as economies reopen and ensure country level continuity of other essential health services.
more
In recent years Terre des Hommes Netherlands observed the steady rise of a new form of child sexual exploitation. One that is enabled and fuelled by rapid technological advances, increasing global connectivity, persisting poverty rates, and growing disparity in the global distribution of resources. ...Terre des Hommes Netherlands received alarming signals from collaborating project partners from the Philippines that new commercial child exploitation trades are evolving and spreading parallel to rising global Internet access rates and developments in communications technology.
Webcam child sex tourism is evidently growing, closely related to child prostitution, child trafficking and child abuse. What is not clear however, are the psychological and social consequences of this new phenomenon. To date, no research has been done on the psychosocial consequences of webcam sex for children. The aim of this research is therefore to gain more knowledge on the psychosocial consequences of webcam child sex tourism for children and to give insight into the antecedent factors that play a role.
more
The coronavirus outbreak that began in 2019 (COVID-19) threatens to reverse years of hard-won gains in preventing and treating HIV. Fragile health systems are further stressed as health workers navigate an increased client load and demands at work while also being concerned for their own health and ...that of their families. Health facilities have been redesigned to care for patients with COVID-19, posing challenges to other services. Governments and civil society organizations have redirected scarce resources and shifted programming priorities to respond to the pandemic. Several countries have reported intermittent declines in HIV testing and diagnosis, antenatal care visits, collection of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) by people living with HIV, and attendance at clinic appointments. Community-based education and support programmes have had to rapidly adapt to restrictions on movement and public gatherings. Children, adolescents, and women have experienced multiple deprivations due to the adverse impact of the pandemic.
more
Health ministries currently lack effective tools for monitoring and evaluation of schistosomiasis control programmes. Egg detection can be used, but the cost, challenges of obtaining samples, and the need for trained personnel and equipment limit the frequency of monitoring. The purpose of this TPP ...is to guide the development of new diagnostic tools to reliably measure when prevalence is above or below a cut-off of 10% in school-aged children. Communities remaining above 10% require annual MDA, while communities below 10% can reduce MDA frequency as long as < 10% prevalence can be maintained. However, the lack of a reliable test has hindered the development of maintenance strategies. The test is also needed to track changes of prevalence > 10% to ensure that annual MDA is reducing overall prevalence.
more
Children continue to be exposed to powerful food marketing, which predominantly promotes foods high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or sodium and uses a wide variety of marketing strategies that are likely to appeal to children. Food marketing has a harmful impact on chi...ldren’s food choice and their dietary intake, affects their purchase requests to adults for marketed foods and influences the development of their norms about food consumption. Food marketing is also increasingly recognized as a children’s rights concern, given its negative impact on several of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.This WHO guideline provides Member States with recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, based on evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing. Guidelines on other policies to improve the food environment are currently under development.
more
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Georgetown University, and the United Nations University have today launched new guidelines to provide the first-ever global policy framework that will help protect, include, and empower children on the ...move in the context of climate change.
The Guiding Principles for Children on the Move in the Context of Climate Change provides a set of 9 principles that address the unique and layered vulnerabilities of children on the move both internally and across borders as a result of the adverse impacts of climate change. Currently, most child-related migration policies do not consider climate and environmental factors, while most climate change policies overlook the unique needs of children.
The guidelines note that climate change is intersecting with existing environmental, social, political, economic, and demographic conditions contributing to people’s decisions to move. In 2020 alone, nearly 10 million children were displaced in the aftermath of weather-related shocks. With around one billion children – nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children – living in 33 countries at high risk of the impacts of climate change, millions more children could be on the move in the coming years.
Developed in collaboration with young climate and migration activists, academics, experts, policymakers, practitioners, and UN agencies, the guiding principles are based on the globally ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child and are further informed by existing operational guidelines and frameworks.
Recommendations for safeguarding the rights and well-being of children regardless of their location or migration status.
The guiding principles provide national and local governments, international organizations and civil society groups with a foundation to build policies that protect children’s rights. The organizations and institutions are calling on governments, local and regional actors, international organizations, and civil society groups to embrace the guiding principles to help protect, include, and empower children on the move in the context of climate change.
more
The Knowledge Guide provides guidance on how health workers can apply the Standards to their own practice. For each of the nine competencies and their specific behaviours in the Standards, the Knowledge Guide examines in detail how a health worker's knowledge, skills and attitudes can reach the stat...ed benchmark for providing people-centred health services to refugees and migrants. The Knowledge Guide also details the learning outcomes that reflect the behaviours that a health worker will demonstrate once they have achieved the Competency Standards.
The Knowledge Guide is designed for educators and health workers to assist in designing or integrating learning content to enable attainment of the identified knowledge, skills and attitudes.
more
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging health systems across the world. Rapidly increasing demand for care of people with COVID-19 is compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on the movement of people and supplies that disrupt the delivery of frontline health care for all people...
This g...uidance addresses the specific role of community-based health care in the pandemic context and outlines the adaptations needed to keep people safe, maintain continuity of essential services and ensure an effective response to COVID-19. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels and complements a range of other guidance, including that on priority public health interventions, facility-based care, and risk communication and community engagement in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic.
more
Over half a billion children are living in areas with extremely high levels of floods and nearly 160 million children live in areas of high or extremely high droughts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 26% of the annual 6.6 million deaths of children under five are linked to environ...ment-related causes and conditions. Children are also disproportionately affected by pollution, not only in terms of death rates, but also in terms of cognitive and physical development. This report illustrates that environmental causes also have an impact on whether children are pushed to work and on the kind of work they engage in, the conditions of work, exposure to dangerous toxicants and the risk of exploitation. However, the report raises more questions than it answers as it is one of the first reports addressing the question, how environmental degradation and climate change affect the vulnerability of children towards exploitation.
more
Schistosomiasis is a public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America. It is one of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) - a group of diseases and conditions that affect particularly low-income populations, worldwide.
Last year, WHO laun...ched a new road map for 2021-2030 that aims to end the suffering from NTDs by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. The road map specifically targets the elimination of schistosomiasis as a public health problem, globally.
This guideline provides evidence-based recommendations in the following areas: prevalence thresholds, target age groups and frequency of PC, establishment of WASH and snail control activities to support control and elimination of schistosomiasis, diagnostic tests for the assessment of schistosomiasis infection in animal reservoirs, in snail hosts, and in humans.
more
This manual details a collaboratively developed intervention to detect and refer Buruli ulcer, Hydrocele, Leprosy
and Lymphedema cases through the use of integrated approaches at community levels. This intervention has
been developed as part of the consortium in partnership with the Nigerian Feder...al Ministry
of Health, and Ogun and Kaduna State Ministries of Health. This manual is designed to assist community and
primary level health workers to identify, refer, diagnose and treat people affected by Buruli ulcer, Hydrocele,
Leprosy and Lymphedema, within the existing patient care pathway
more
After five consecutive below-average rains, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is expanding and deepening.
Combined with insecurity and macroeconomic volatility, the impact of the drought on food and nutrition security has been devastating. Across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, an estima...ted 22 million people are now acutely food insecure because of the drought. The malnutrition situation is also critical. Some 5.1 million children across drought-affected areas of the three countries are acutely malnourished in 2023, with dire implications for their health, growth and survival. Concerningly, the upcoming March-May 2023 rains are also forecast to be below-average. Should these rains fail, and humanitarian assistance not be delivered at scale, food insecurity will continue to deteriorate.
Regardless of how the 2023 rains perform, extremely high humanitarian needs will persist through 2023 while a full recovery from a drought of this magnitude will take years. To address the devastating drought-induced hunger and malnutrition across the region, WFP is pursuing an integrated dual track approach; meeting immediate life-saving food and nutritional needs while simultaneously building resilience to extreme climate variability.
more