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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The pharmacological management of asthma has changed considerably in recent decades, as it has come to be understood that it is a complex, heterogeneous disease with different phenotypes and endotypes. It is now clear that the goal of asthma treatment should be to achieve and maintain control of the... disease, as well as to minimize the risks (of exacerbations, disease instability, accelerated loss of lung function, and adverse treatment effects). That requires an approach that is personalized in terms of the pharmacological treatment, patient education, written action plan, training in correct inhaler use, and review of the inhaler technique at each office visit. A panel of 22 pulmonologists was invited to perform a critical review of recent evidence of pharmacological treatment of asthma and to prepare this set of recommendations, a treatment guide tailored to use in Brazil. The topics or questions related to the most significant changes in concepts, and consequently in the management of asthma in clinical practice, were chosen by a panel of experts. To formulate these recommendations, we asked each expert to perform a critical review of a topic or to respond to a question, on the basis of evidence in the literature. In a second phase, three experts discussed and structured all texts submitted by the others. That was followed by a third phase, in which all of the experts reviewed and discussed each recommendation. These recommendations, which are intended for physicians involved in the treatment of asthma, apply to asthma patients of all ages.
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Pharmaceutical regulators are at the forefront of ensuring that only safe and effective medicines are authorized and available in the market. This document builds on the recommendations in the above publication and has been prepared to specifically assist national medicines regulatory authorities to... understand the nature and extent of oxytocin quality issues and to provide key technical information and quality requirements for oxytocin products in dossier assessments. Furthermore, this document also presents recommendations on other regulatory actions needed to ensure that only quality-assured oxytocin products are authorized and made available to women.
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UNAIDS/WHO Working Group on Global HIV/AIDS and STI Surveillance
Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2011 Dec;13(6):493-9. doi: 10.1007/s11920-011-0229-8.
Module 8
Site Planning
July 2017
Module 8: Site planning. This module is for people involved in organizing PrEP services at specific sites. It outlines the steps to be taken in planning a PrEP service and gives suggestions for personnel, infrastructure and commodities that could be considered... when implementing PrEP.
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This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the percentage of total fat in the diet to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain.
This guideline is intended for a wide audience involved in the development, design and implementation of policies and programmes in nutrition and pub...lic health. This guideline includes a recommended level of total fat intake which can be used by policy-makers and programme managers to address various aspects of dietary fat in their populations through a range of policy actions and public health interventions.
The guidance in this guideline replaces previous WHO guidance on total fat intake, including that from the 1989 WHO Study Group on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases and the 2002 Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. The guidance in this guideline should be considered in the context of that from other WHO guidelines on healthy diets.
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The WHO SAGE values framework for the allocation and prioritization of COVID-19 vaccination is intended to offer guidance on the prioritization of groups for vaccination when vaccine supply is limited. It provides a values foundation for the objectives of COVID-19 vaccination programmes and links t...hose to target groups for vaccination. This information is valuable to countries and globally while specific policies will be developed once vaccines become available.
This document it available in Arabic, Chinese English, French, Portuguese and Russian
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Lancet 2022; 399: 1155–200 Published Online March 15, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0140-6736(21)02488-0
The Global Movement for Mental Health has brought renewed attention to the neglect of people with mental illness within health policy worldwide. The maltreatment of the mentally ill in many low-income countries is widely reported within psychiatric hospitals, informal healing centres, and family hom...es. International agencies have called for the development of legislation and policy to address these abuses. However such initiatives exemplify a top-down approach to promoting human rights which historically has had limited impact at the level of those living with mental illness and their families.
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The recommendation in this document thus supersedes the previous WHO recommendation for the prevention of PPH as published in the 2012 guideline, WHO recommendations for the prevention and treatment of postpartum haemorrhage.
South Africa reported it fist case of COVID-19 on 5 March 2020. While the first cases were imported, local transmission has led to a rapid increase in the number of cases. As of 21 April 2020, more than 3,400 cases and 58 deaths had been confirmed. On 15 March, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a n...ational state of disaster, and the government has since taken several measures to curb the spread of the virus, including closing borders, implementing strict social distancing measures and a 35-day nation-wide lockdown. These measures, along with the global economic shock caused by the pandemic, are expected to generate rising needs requiring an immediate and urgent response. Although South Africa is considered an upper-middle-income country, the amount of disparities—social, economic, and gender—make the country particularly vulnerable during this emergency.
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