Public health emergencies, including pandemics, highlight the need for health systems and services that are prepared, resilient and ready to respond to health security threats. Endorsed by Member States in 2023, the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) is designed to engage m...ultisectoral actors in health security, and to reflect the complex nature of current and future public health emergencies. The Framework presents six interconnected, multisectoral domains of work that together form a comprehensive, multi-hazard health security system — emphasizing the One Health approach. The Framework also supports progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and universal health coverage while meeting the responsibilities and obligations of the International Health Regulations (2005).
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Chronic Dis Int - Volume 3 Issue 1 - 2016
ISSN 2379-7983
Following an overview of maternal and neonatal child health in Nepal and in the districts covered by the project, the briefing outlines the background to the Strengthening Approaches for Maximizing Maternal, Neonatal and Reproductive Health (SAMMAN) project. It then describes the key aspects of the ...two main project approaches: one focused on the community level, and the other on health systems
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To examine how health aid is spent and channelled, including the distribution of resources across countries and between
subsectors. Our aim was to complement the many qualitative critiques of health aid with a quantitative review and to provide insights on the level of development assistance availa...ble to recipient countries to address their health and health development needs.
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The Global Health Expenditure Report delves into the intricate landscape of global economies and health systems. This year, it focuses on health spending in 2022, the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how countries around the world responded to the health and economic shocks of the pande...mic from a financial perspective. It also considers what the future may hold as countries emerge from the pandemic. Although it is still too early to gauge whether the COVID-19 pandemic has altered long-term trends in health spending, spending appears to have peaked and is now at or below its long-term rising trend in most country income groups. Additionally, to mark the 25th anniversary of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Expenditure Tracking Program, the report reviews the program’s achievements and envisions a path forward. As the program’s lead technical agency, WHO is committed to working closely with partners to support countries in tracking health spending and sustaining the Global Health Expenditure Database and the Global Health Expenditure Report as global public goods.
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Achieving financial risk protection for the whole population requires significant financing for health. Health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) are plagued with persistent underfunding, and recent reductions in official development assistance have been registered. To create fiscal
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space for health, the pursuit of efficiency gains and exploring innovative health financing for health seem attractive. This paper sought to synthesize available evidence on the nature of innovative health financing instruments, mechanisms and policies implemented in Africa. We further reviewed the factors that hinder or facilitate implementation, the lessons learnt on the structure, the development process and the implementation.
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Zambia is facing a severe economic crisis marked by high inflation, increasing poverty and a heavy debt burden that is straining both its fiscal stability and progress in health outcomes. By 2020, the country's external debt reached United States dollars (USD) 12.7 billion, representing 108% of the ...country's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2020, Zambia sought assistance through the G20 Common Framework and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Credit Facility (ECF), securing a USD 1.7 billion loan over 5 years. IMF loans, however, come with austerity measures that prioritise fiscal discipline but could potentially exacerbate social inequalities. These measures, which include increasing consumer taxes on goods and services (value added taxes - VATs), electricity tariffs and fuel prices, disproportionately impact vulnerable populations, raising concerns about their long-term effects on essential services, especially accessible and good quality healthcare services.
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There has never been a more critical moment to invest in WHO, and strengthen the unique role it plays in global health. Now is the time to sustainably finance WHO and invest in a healthy return for all.
This Guide is part of WHO’s overall programme of work on Political Economy of Health Financing Reform: Analysis and Strategy to Support UHC. The impetus for this work came from demands for more concrete evidence, recognition and integration of political economy issues within
health financing, and... overall system, reform design and implementation processes. This Guide is complementary to WHO’s Health Financing Progress Matrix assessment, as well as Health Financing Strategy development guidance. In this way, it promotes an embedded political
economy analysis approach that can be used in conjunction with other health financing assessments and guidance. The political economy framework can also be extended and easily adapted to broader health policy reforms.
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Access to safe, effective and quality-assured health products and technologies is crucial for achieving universal health coverage and primary health care goals. The continued growth of the aging population; increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases; growing burden of mental health issues; climat...e change; shifting patterns of vector borne diseases, fungal disease and waterborne diseases; antimicrobial resistance; and new infectious hazards create an ongoing need for equitable access to safe, effective and quality-assured health products and technologies, and renewed investments in research and development for innovative health products and technologies.
The coronavirus pandemic exposed the inequalities in access to health products, highlighting the need for longer-term strategies to strengthen access to health products and technologies outside of and in emergency situations. While technological and scientific advances present an opportunity to increase access to health products and technologies, the risk of increasing inequality due to higher prices for new health products and technologies; the persisting problem of substandard and falsified medical products; a lack of skilled workforce in many low- and middle-income countries; and a lack of data for decisionmaking and for measuring progress present significant challenges.
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More than a quarter of the global population still cook meals over open fires and/or on simple stoves fuelled by firewood, agricultural waste, dried dung, charcoal, and coal. This practice results in the emission of harmful and dangerously high levels of household air pollution.
Exposure to this h...ousehold air pollution has been estimated to cause around 3.2 million deaths annually in 2019; these emissions also worsen ambient air quality, alter the global climate, have gendered livelihood impacts, and degrade the local environment.
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Exposure to air pollution has significant adverse health effects, leading to nearly 1 in every 8 deaths globally. Air pollution affects all age groups, from unborn children to older people, in both high- and low-income nations.
PHSM are vital in reducing the risk and scale of infectious disease transmission and lowering hospitalization and deaths. Examples include contact tracing, quarantine and isolation, mask use, ventilation, school or workplace measures, mobility restrictions and travel requirements.
While these mea...sures are essential, decision-making on PHSM becomes particularly complex during rapidly evolving health emergencies, with incomplete information and under significant public and political pressure, especially when the pathogen is novel or poorly understood. In such contexts, guidance needs to be agile and responsive, developed and adapted based on emerging evidence and shifting epidemiological patterns. Decision-makers are frequently confronted with difficult trade-offs, having to balance measures that are:
─ effective but socially disruptive;
─ cost-effective but logistically burdensome;
─ beneficial for public health but economically disruptive; or
─ practical but inequitable or unethical
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This Toolkit for ensuring rights-based and ethical use of digital technologies in HIV and health programmes is derived from the comprehensive UNDP Guidance on the rights-based and ethical use of digital technologies in HIV and health programmes document. The foundational UNDP Guidance document outli...nes key ethical, human rights and technical considerations for countries adopting digital technologies for health, detailing human rights risks, norms and standards, and provides a practical checklist for assessment.
The Toolkit serves as a quick reference guide for UNDP staff, governments, partners, technology developers, and civil society organizations, designed to provide practical guidance for implementing ethical digital health solutions by distilling and structuring the in-depth information from the broader UNDP Guidance into six easy-access modules. Each module addresses a specific key issue by outlining definitions, ethical principles, key considerations, and recommendations that align with the comprehensive framework established by the UNDP Guidance.
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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.
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Little is known about foreign aid provided by private donors. This paper contributes to closing this research gap by comparing the allocation of private humanitarian aid to that of official humanitarian aid awarded to 140 recipient countries over the 2000-2016 period. We construct a new database tha...t offers information on the country in which the headquarters of private donors are located to test whether private donors follow the aid allocation pattern of their home country. Our empirical results confirm that private aid “follows the flag.” This finding is robust against the inclusion of various fixed effects, estimating instrumental variables models, and disaggregating private aid into corporate aid and NGO aid. Donor country-specific estimations reveal that private aid from China, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “follow the flag.”
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