ECDC Technical Report
In line with ECDC’s recommendations provided in the ’Risk Assessment of HTLV-1/2 transmission by tissue/cell transplantation’ dated 14 March 2012, this Directive replaces the term ‘incidence’ with ‘prevalence’ in the description of endemic areas of HTLV-1/2 i...nfection. According to the new requirements ‘HTLV-1 antibody testing must be performed for donors living in, or originating from high-prevalence areas or with sexual partners originating from those areas or where the donor’s parents originate from those areas’ and this applies to both donors of non-reproductive tissues and cells and reproductive cells.
ECDC contracted experts from the Institut Pasteur in Paris to systematically review the published evidence on the distribution of HTLV-1 infection prevalence throughout the world and to identify high-prevalence countries and areas.
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This document has been developed to provide training and guidance on how to integrate a human rights approach in mental health and related areas, based on international human rights instruments, in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
This publication presents a comprehensive methodology to support the Member States of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in preparing for and responding to heat-health risks in the Region of the Americas. It builds on World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization globa...l documents, as well as on the disaster preparedness methodologies employed throughout the countries of the Region. This publication is part of an effort coordinated by PAHO to support Member States in multihazard preparedness, and includes: early warning system strengthening; threat characterization; activation and deactivation procedure definition; and institutional coordination. It engages different disciplines and recognizes the importance of intersectoral collaboration to respond to heat-health risks. It aims to bring awareness of the impacts of heat on the health of people of the Americas to public health decisionmakers, and thereby strengthen health service provision.
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Issue Brief 31: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can occur when viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi change over time. There is no longer a response to medicines, and the infection treatment gets really difficult which increases the risk of a disesase spread, which can lead to severe health problems.... AMR is an increasing threat to global public health worldwide that requires cross-sectional and cross-disciplinary action. It is present in every country and is spurred by several human-made factors, including over- and/or inadequate use of antibiotics, poor hygiene and infection prevention control, and excessive usage of antibiotics outside the health care sector e.g. in life stock production.
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For thousands of years, humans have been using wildlife for commercial and subsistence purposes. Wildlife trade takes place at local, national and international levels, with different forms of wildlife, such as live animals, partly processed products and finished products. Wildlife is a vital source... of safe and nutritious food, clothing, medicine, and other products, in addition to having religious and cultural value. Wildlife trade also contributes to livelihoods, income generation and overall economic development.
However, wildlife trade can have detrimental effects on species conservation, depleting natural resources, impoverishing biodiversity and degrading ecosystems (Morton et al., 2021). Wildlife trade, whether legal or illegal, regulated or unregulated, can pose threats to animal health and welfare. It also presents opportunities for zoonotic pathogens to spill over between wildlife and domestic animals, and for diseases to emerge with serious consequences for public or animal health and profound economic impacts (IPBES, 2020; Swift et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2009; Gortazar et al., 2014; Stephen, 2021; Stephen et al., 2022; FAO, 2020). The risk of pathogen spillover and disease emergence is amplified with increased interaction between humans, wildlife and domestic animals. The risk of pathogen spillover has also been exacerbated by climate change, intensified agriculture and livestock production, deforestation, and other land-use changes. Wildlife trade is also a risk to ecosystem biodiversity via the introduction of invasive species (Wikramanayake et al., 2021). Therefore, increased effort must be put into understanding the potential consequences of the wildlife trade, mapping and analysing the adjacent risks, and implementing strategies to manage those risks. Reducing wildlife-trade risks not only helps to limit disease but also minimises the negative effects of invasive species. Between 1960 and 2021, invasive alien species caused estimated cumulative damage of around 116 billion euros across 39 countries in the European Union alone, despite strict import regulations (Haubrock et al., 2021). The effect of invasive species is extremely apparent.
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Accountability for the global health sector strategies, 2016–2021
WHO/CDS/HIV/19.7
Policy Brief. 24 June 2022. This policy brief, one of two on the updated hepatitis C (HCV) guidelines, focuses on the new recommendations on simplified service delivery for a public health approach to HCV testing, care and treatment. These recommendations include decentralization, integration and ta...sk-sharing, in addition to the use of point-of-care (POC) HCV viral load assays and reflex viral load testing.
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Despite the development of point-of-care diagnostic tests for syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhoea, and trichomoniasis, none comply with all WHO criteria. This analysis overviews landscape analyses of point-of-care diagnostic technologies for Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Trichomonas vagi...nalis and syphilis, available and in the pipeline. The target audience for the target product profiles is broad and includes clinicians, researchers working on diagnostics, laboratory experts, including, microbiologists and virologists, public health experts, epidemiologists, developers, and representatives for manufactures, including biotech engineers, policy-and decision-makers as well as representatives from regulatory bodies and agencies, donor agencies and international organizations.
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Outstanding child and adolescent TB priorities include the need to: find the missing children with active TB and link them to TB care; prevent TB in children who are in contact with infectious TB cases (through implementation of active contact investigation and provision of preventive treatment); an...d advance integration within general child health services, including maternal and child health/ reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, HIV, nutrition and other programmes.
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Histoplasmosis is a disease caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. This disease is highly endemic in some regions of North America, Central America, and South America and is also reported in certain countries of Asia and Africa. It often affects people with impaired immunity, including people ...living with HIV, among whom the most frequent clinical presentation is disseminated histoplasmosis. The symptoms of disseminated histoplasmosis are non-specific and may be indistinguishable from those of other infectious diseases, especially disseminated tuberculosis (TB), thus complicating diagnosis and treatment. Histoplasmosis is one of the most frequent opportunistic infections caused by fungal pathogens among people living with HIV in the Americas and may be responsible for 5–15% of AIDS-related deaths every year in this Region. These guidelines aim to provide recommendations for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of disseminated histoplasmosis in persons living with HIV
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The purpose of this TPP is to communicate the minimum and ideal characteristics desired to meet the need for discriminating low levels of risk for transmission, i.e. targeted prevalence thresholds in the surveyed areas. An in vitro diagnostic test is needed for the detection of analyte(s) specific t...o Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi, and Brugia timori to aid in the surveillance of defined geographic areas as to whether infection and/or transmission potential has increased (recrudescence) or decreased (elimination of transmission).
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Adapted from the WHO's Decision-Making Tool for family
planning clients and providers
This document addresses preparedness as an important investment against natural and man-made disasters. Through good practices, it urges the humanitarian community, governments and regional bodies to use preparedness thinking to be aware of risks, to reduce them and to plan ahead to combat them in o...rder to respond more effectively and reduce the threat of hunger, disease, poverty and conflicts. It uses examples from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Colombia, Cook Islands, Ghana, Haiti, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Panama, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe
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A Toolkit for Implementation. Module 4: Training guide for facilitators of the participatory community assessment in maternal and newborn health
This report is not a country scorecard. Rather, its purpose is to act as a compass to guide progress towards health in the SDGs.
There has been a significant improvement in the state of health in the region with healthy life expectancy - time spent in full health - in the region increasing from 50....9 years to 53.8 between 2012 and 2015 - the most marked increase of any region in the world.
What is making Africans sick is changing. The top killers are still lower respiratory infections, HIV and diarrhoeal disease and countries have routinely focused on preventing and treating this trio, often through specialized programmes. The payoff has been significant declines in deaths due to these diseases. There has been a 50% reduction in the burden of disease caused by what have been the top 10 killers since 2000 and death rates have dropped from 87.7 to 51.1 deaths per 100,000 persons between 2000 and 2015...
Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer are now claiming more lives with a person aged 30 to 70 in the region having a one in five chance of dying from a noncommunicable disease (NCDs).
Countries are specifically failing to provide essential services to two critical age groups – adolescents and the elderly...
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