At the threshold of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era, this document captures the remarkable achievements by Member States towards achieving MDGs 4 and 5. It acknowledges new opportunities in the post-2015 phase shaped by the SDGs and the Global Strategy for women’s, children’s and adoles...cents’ health and presents an advanced state of preparedness in the Region. This also highlights the region’s renewed commitment for a more inclusive and more dynamic flagship action for ending preventable maternal, newborn and child mortality as well as to improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing in the South-East Asia Region.
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Alcohol use is deeply embedded in the social landscape of many societies, and some 2300 million people drink alcoholic beverages in most parts of the world. At the same time, more than half of the global population aged 15 years and older reported having abstained from drinking alcohol during the pr...evious 12 months. Several major factors have an impact on levels and patterns of alcohol consumption in populations – such as historical trends in alcohol consumption, the availability of alcohol, culture, economic status and implemented alcohol control measures. At the individual level the patterns and levels of alcohol consumption are determined by multiple factors that include gender, age and individual biological and socioeconomic vulnerability factors as well as the policy environment. Prevailing social norms that support drinking behaviour and mixed messages about the harms and benefits of drinking may encourage alcohol consumption, delay appropriate health-seeking behaviour and weaken community action.
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The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is at a historic moment, with a new civilian government assuming power in 2016. The country graduated to lower-middle-income status in 2015, and has made significant progress in reducing poverty, improving food security and addressing malnutrition.
The remai...ning challenges to food and nutrition security and achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 targets include continued population displacements resulting from conflict, vulnerability to extreme weather events, poverty, limited social protection coverage, high malnutrition and persistent gender inequalities.
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This year marked the beginning of the WHO biennium 2016-2017 action plan; this annual report highlights WHO’s key achievements in 2016
It also documents the extraordinary efforts by a broad coalition of government ministries, municipalities, international agencies, community groups, women’s or...ganizations, religious and traditional leaders, media, private sector and donors towards restoration and improving health indicators.
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The objective of this guideline is to present the complete set of all WHO recommendations and best practice statements relating to abortion. While legal, regulatory, policy and service-delivery contexts may vary from country to country, the recommendations and best practices described in this docume...nt aim to enable evidence-based decision-making with respect to quality abortion care.
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This publication provides an overview of evidence and guidance on the growing challenge of workplace heat stress in the context of climate change. It highlights the health and productivity risks faced by billions of workers, especially in manual labor sectors. The report details the physiological, s...ocioeconomic, and mental health impacts of heat stress and outlines evidence-based strategies for prevention and mitigation. It emphasizes the need for occupational heat action programmes, stakeholder collaboration, and tailored interventions to protect vulnerable workers, reduce productivity losses, and support sustainable development in a warming world.
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The purpose of this publication is to facilitate the implementation of existing WHO guidelines on nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive actions required for improving health and well-being of adolescents. Implementing these actions should explicitly take into account the heterogeneity of adoles...cents in general (for instance, in their state of physical growth and social development), as well as the diversity within their country (for instance, in terms of the expected responsibilities in the family, the number out of school or out of work and existing social norms).
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Modelling the health impacts of disruptions to essential health services during COVID-19 Module 1
Several epidemiological models have been created to assess the potential impact of disruptions to essential health services caused by COVID-19 on morbidity and mortality from conditions other than COVI...D-19 illness. This guide presents models that have been used to assess these indirect impacts. The effects have been studied in various settings, using a variety of models.
The guide is intended for people who need to understand what the models say, their construction and their underlying assumptions, or need to use models and their outcomes for planning and programme development and to support policy decisions for a country or region.
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The role of evidence in the journey towards universal health coverage is paramount. Financial risk protection monitoring, the major focus of this report, informs where the WHO African Region stands in reducing the financial hardship people face due to health expenses. This report details the status ...of financial risk protection and related trends, the drivers of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial risk protection. As such, it provides evidence coutries can draw on to develop health financing systems and reforms that mitigate financial barriers to accessing health services. Through analysis of country data, cross-country learning and drawing on the published literature, this report proposes recommendations that countries may adapt to their contexts.
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This update of the Guidelines for poison control, entitled Guidelines for establishing a poison centre, reflects the development of the role of poison centres in public health and the sound management of chemicals, described in section 1, and the opportunities provided by new technology. Assessments... carried out under the IHR show
continuing gaps in capacity for managing chemicals (2). In particular, many countries still lack access to poison
centre services (3). There is therefore demand for updated guidance.
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Guidance has been updated on a number of chemicals: asbestos, bentazone, chromium, iodine, manganese, microcystins, nickel, silver, tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene. Guidance has also been added for chemicals not previously assessed in the Guidelines: anatoxin-a and analogues, cylindrospermopsi...ns and saxitoxins. The new guidance on organotins has replaced the prior guidance focused on dialkyltins. With these updates, the guideline values for tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene have been revised while new guideline values for cylindrospermopsins, manganese, microcystins, and saxitoxins have been established .
Updated information on cyanobacteria has been included, introducing an alert level framework for early-warning and to guide short-term management responses. Guidance has also been updated in the sections on adequacy of water supply, climate change, emergencies, food production and processing, and radiological aspects, particularly on managing radionuclides when exceeding WHO screening values and guidance levels.
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The results of the report clearly show that in 2020, a year dominated by the emergence of COVID-19 and its associated health and economic crises, governments around the world rose to the challenge. Sharp increases in government spending on health at all country income levels underpinned the rise in ...health spending to a new high of US $9 trillion (approximately 11% of global GDP). Government health spending generally increased and offset declines in out-of-pocket spending. Importantly, the rise in government health spending was part of a much broader fiscal response to the pandemic. In high income and upper-middle income countries social protection spending also increased sharply in as governments attempted to cushion populations from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In contrast to health and social protection, growth in education spending was relatively subdued. Countries face the further challenge of sustaining increased public spending on health and other social sectors in the face of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and rising debt servicing. This also includes the challenge of sustaining external support for low income countries, which is essential for reducing ensuring poverty, ensuring access to health services and strengthening pandemic preparedness.
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Excessive consumption of salt (more than 5 g per day) raises blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke, and is the leading cause of death in the WHO European Region. Many countries in the Region have initiated national salt reduction strategies,... including public awareness campaigns, reformulation, and front-of-pack nutrition labelling. However, despite ongoing efforts, surveillance data indicate that salt intake still far exceeds the limits recommended by WHO to protect health.
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The aim of this guidance is to enhance the capacity of health care facilities to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable and changing climate; and to empower health care facilities to be environmentally sustainable, by optimizing the use of resources and minimizing ...the release of waste into the environment. Climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services, and by helping reduce facility costs also ensure better affordability. They are, therefore, an important component of universal health coverage (UHC).
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This report provides an overview of the operations and activities of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine in 2023. Despite the acute health impacts of the war in Ukraine, the Country Office continued its work according to its core mandate. WHO supported the Government of Ukraine in managing the health ...emergency and pursued existing priorities set out in WHO’s Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019–2023, the European Programme of Work 2020–2025, and the Biennial Collaborative Agreement 2022–2023 signed with the Government of Ukraine. The report presents the achievements of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine in 2023 in the context of the war’s impact on the lives, health, and well-being of Ukrainians.
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This document summarizes the results of the WHO-commissioned full value proposition for new tuberculosis (TB) vaccines. The assessment was commissioned to provide early evidence for national and global decision-makers involved in TB vaccine development and implementation, who include stakeholders in...volved in vaccine research, financing, regulation and policy-making, manufacturing, introduction and procurement. The goal is to accelerate development of effective vaccines against TB and their rapid introduction into countries.
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Monitoring implementation of the Dublin Declaration on Partnership to Fight HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia: 2012 progress
Special Report
The purpose of this paper is to clarify relevant terminologies and approaches relating to psychosocial well-being and social and emotional learning (SEL) in education in crisis affected contexts, and to explore how psychosocial support (PSS) and social and emotional learning relate to one another.
In the Indian state of Bihar, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a major public health issue that has been aggravated by the rising incidence of new Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections. In endemic areas, the risk of VL infections in patients living with HIV (PLHIV) is higher. It is important t...o investigate the disease-related knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) of PLHIV in Bihar in order to monitor HIV/VL co-infection. Adequate knowledge, a positive attitude, and good practices for VL control are essential to stamp out the disease. This study investigated the KAP towards VL in HIV patients attending antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic at ICMR-RMRIMS, Patna.
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This document synthesizes key elements of the World Health Organization (WHO) normative guidance on health policy and system support for community health worker (CHW) programmes and their application for HIV programmes. Building on relevant elements of HIV guidelines, tools and evidence identified b...y experts, it provides recommendations on tasks and roles that can be performed by CHWs (including for HIV), identifies the policy and system supports to optimize CHW performance, and gives examples of best practice. Its purpose is to inform the optimal design and delivery of CHW programmes targeting – either specifically or as part of a broader approach – the scale-up and sustainability of HIV services.
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