Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. The disaster uncovered the realities of a non-existent mental health care system with only ten psychiatrists nationwide. Attempts were made to assess the increased prevalence of mental illness, likely due to t...he trauma to which many were exposed. Several interventions were carried out with aims to integrate mental health into primary health care services. The interplay between socio-cultural beliefs and health (both mental and physical) in Haiti has been widely commented upon by both foreign aid and local caregivers. Observations frequently highlight barriers to the willingness of patients to seek care and to their acceptance of biomedicine over traditional Vodou beliefs. The perception of Haitian beliefs as barriers to the availability and acceptance of mental health care has intensified the difficulty in providing effective recommendations and interventions both before and after the earthquake. Argued in this review is the importance of considering the interactions between socio-cultural beliefs and mental health when developing models for the prevention, screening, classification and management of mental illness in Haiti. These interactions, especially relevant in mental health care and post-disaster contexts, need to be acknowledged in any healthcare setting. The successes and failures of Haiti’s situation provide an example for global consideration.
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GUIDELINES FOR AWWs/ASHAs/ANMs/PRIs
Community-based interventions are vital for facilitating poststroke recovery, increasing community participation, and raising awareness about stroke survivors. To optimize recovery and community reintegration, there is a need to understand research findings on community-based interventions that focu...s on stroke survivors and their caregivers. Although nurses and community health workers (CHWs) are commonly involved in community-based interventions, less is known about their roles relative to other poststroke rehabilitation professionals (physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists). Thus, the purpose of this review is to explore research focused on improving community-based stroke recovery for adult stroke survivors, caregivers, or both when delivered by nurses or CHWs.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases 2010 projects that noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) will be responsible for over 44 million deaths during the next decade, representing an increase of about 15% since 2010. Most of these deaths will occur in the WHO ...regions of Africa, South-East Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. In the African Region alone, NCDs will cause around 3.9 million deaths by 2020.
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The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0) is a generic assessment instrument developed by WHO to provide a standardized method for measuring health and disability across cultures. It was developed from a comprehensive set of International Classification of Functioning..., Disability and Health (ICF) items that are sufficiently reliable and sensitive to measure the difference made by a given intervention.
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This manual summarizes the methodology used to develop WHODAS 2.0 and the findings obtained when the schedule was applied to certain areas of general health, including mental and neurological disorders.
The manual will be useful to any researcher or clinician wishing to use WHODAS 2.0 in their prac...tice. It includes the seven versions of WHODAS 2.0, which differ in length and intended mode of administration. It also provides general population norms; these allow WHODAS 2.0 values for certain subpopulations to be compared with those for the general population.
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Workplaces have played an important role in both the spread and mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world. Being provided a healthy and safe workplace throughout the pandemic and beyond is a human right. Maintaining open, safe and healthy workplaces is of vital importance to protectin...g livelihoods, wellbeing and public health. Critical public health measures can help protect workers, their clients, and the community at large. Through an introduction and 5 modules, this course aims to guide workers and their representatives, business leaders, employers, managers and occupational health and safety professionals on how to protect themselves and their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The WHO Disability-Inclusive Health Services Training Package is a companion to the “WHO Disability-Inclusive Health Services Toolkit: A resource for health facilities in the Western Pacific Region” published by WHO in 2020. This package offers a range of additional training materials including ...presentations, workbooks and videos that will allow users to develop the foundational skills and understanding of the Toolkit for its implementation. Together the Toolkit and Training Package will help ensure equitable access to health services, best-quality outcomes and improved quality of life for all people with disabilities to achieve universal health coverage.
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These standard operating procedures are intended to be used when a Member State wishes to request validation of national elimination of trachoma as a public health problem following implementation of the SAFE strategy,1 which comprises: surgery for trachomatous trichiasis, antibiotics to clear infec...tion,
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Inequality of access to palliative care and symptom relief is one of the greatest disparities in global health care (1). Currently, there is avoidable suffering on a massive scale due to lack of access to palliative care and symptom relief in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (1). Yet basic p...alliative care that can prevent or relieve most suffering due to serious or life-threatening health conditions can be taught easily to generalist clinicians, can be provided in the community and requires only simple, inexpensive medicines and equipment. For these reasons, the World Health Assembly (WHA) resolved that palliative care is "an ethical responsibility of health systems"(2). Further, most patients who need palliative care are at home and prefer to remain there. Thus, it is imperative that palliative care be provided in the community as part of primary care. This document was written to assist ministries of health and health care planners, implementers and managers to integrate palliative care and symptom control into primary health care (PHC).
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The Guidelines for the Prevention, Surveillance and Management of COVID-19 Infection amongst Health Care Workers (HCW) in Zimbabwe were developed to prevent, detect and manage HCW COVID-19 infection, an emerging pandemic affecting the whole world. The HCW is at the fore front of this pandemic, thus ...the need for standardised operating procedures is of utmost importance. These guidelines therefore seek to reduce the significant morbidity and mortality among the HCW, ultimately ensuring the reduction of the cost to the health care worker and the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) as a whole. The Ministry of Health and Child Care requires that all health care workers in various health care settings follow infection prevention and control procedures.
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Investment in all the drivers and facilitators of hand hygiene action in health care to ensure that it occurs at the point of care and other critical moments requires a multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach. WHO describes such an approach as a “multimodal improvement strategy” (MMIS) which is... at the core of its implementation models for hand hygiene and infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes. The focus of this document is on the resource considerations for investing in hand hygiene improvement in health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) using the MMIS approach.
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These guidelines are designed for settings with limited resources to provide inexpensive and effective control strategies for prevention of TB transmission in health care workers (HCW).