Introduction Pharmacovigilance (PV) systems to monitor drug and vaccine safety are often inadequate in sub-Saharan
Africa. In Malawi, a PV enhancement initiative was introduced to address major barriers to PV.
Objective The objective of this initiative was to improve reporting of adverse events (A...Es) by strengthening passive safety
surveillance via PV training and mentoring of local PV stakeholders and healthcare providers (HCPs) at their own healthcare
facilities (HCFs).
Methods An 18-month PV training and mentoring programme was implemented in collaboration with national stakeholders,
and in partnership with the Ministry of Health, GSK and PATH. Two-day training was provided to Expanded Programme on
Immunisation coordinators, identified as responsible for AE reporting, and four National Regulatory Authority representa-
tives. Abridged PV training and mentoring were provided regularly to HCPs. Support was given in upgrading the national
PV system. Key performance indicators included the number of AEs reported, transmission of AE forms, completeness of
reports, serious AEs reported and timeliness of recording into VigiFlow.
Results In 18 months, 443 HCPs at 61 HCFs were trained. The number of reported AEs increased from 22 (January 2000 to
October 2016) to 228 (November 2016 to May 2018), enabling Malawi to become a member of the World Health Organization
Programme for International Drug Monitoring. Most (98%) AE report forms contained mandatory information on reporter,
event, patient and product, but under 1% were transmitted to the national PV office within 48 h.
Conclusion Regular PV training and mentoring of HCPs were effective in enhancing passive safety surveillance in Malawi,
but the transmission of reports to the national PV centre requires further improvement.
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his Inter Action Review report for the COVID-19 outbreak in Mauritius documents and assesses the country’s capacity to respond to the outbreak and identifies the best practices, strengths, gaps and challenges of the national response. Areas requiring improvements or sustained actions have been ide...ntified across the 9 strategic pillars of World Health Organization (WHO)’s COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan and an additional pillar for the country’s response beyond health. On an overall, the review aims to enhance and sustain the national response with a particular focus on strengthening the health systems.
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Recognizing the importance of the critical role of community health in disaster management, the Amref health Africa has
developed this operational guide to provide policy direction on COVID-19 response at community level. This guide has
been developed in collaboration with all the implementing cou...ntries in supporting prevention and control of COVID-19.
With a strong community COVID-19 response system at community level, we can all contribute to prevention and control
of COVID-19, and thereby improve health and livelihoods for all people
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In the last decade, Timor-Leste has made remarkable progress in strengthening its health system and improving the health status of its population. This has resulted in an increased life expectancy, and the achievement of Millennium Development Goals such as a reduction in infant and under-five morta...lity, an improvement in maternal and child health outcomes, and an increase in immunization coverage. Further, the country has successfully eliminated infectious diseases such as polio, measles, and maternal and neonatal tetanus. There is full political commitment to reducing the incidence of tuberculosis (TB) by 80% and the number of deaths due to TB by 90% by 2030. The country has made great progress in the context of the pandemic, having established numerous quarantine facilities/isolation centres; trained health-care workers; streamlined the procurement and supply of medicines, consumables, personal protective equipment and other equipment; and strengthened the capacity in critical care across secondary and tertiary health care, to better respond to future pandemics and other disaster situations.
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Globally, over two million women live with obstetric fistula with the majority of the cases
being from Africa. In low-resource settings such as Zambia, obstetric fistula (OF) is a visible indicator of
gaps in maternal health care resulting in failure to provide adequate, accessible and quality m...aternal health
care, including family planning, skilled birth attendance, basic and emergency obstetric and neonatal care,
and affordable treatment of fistula. OF is preventable and treatable, and no woman in Zambia should continue to endure the condition. It is therefore necessary that Zambia intensifies national scale up of OF management centers including
community based interventions, train more surgeons and other health workers to provide quality and
affordable care closer to the women who are silently suffering from obstetric fistula.
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Current evidence that the climate is changing is overwhelming. Impacts of climate change and variability are being observed: more intense heat-waves, fires and floods; and increased prevalence of food- water- and vector-borne diseases. Climate change will put pressure on environmental and health det...erminants, such as food safety, air pollution and water quantity and quality. A climate-resilient future depends fundamentally on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting warming to below 2 °C requires transformational technological, institutional, political and behavioural changes: the foundations for this are laid out in the Paris Agreement of December 2015. The health sector can lead by example, shifting to environmentally friendly practices and minimizing its carbon emissions. A climate-resilient future will increasingly depend on managing and reducing climate change risks to protect health. In the near term, this can be enhanced by including climate change in national health programming and creating climate-resilient health systems.
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Transforming Health Systems: Achieving Universal Health Coverage by 2022. The development of the Kenya Health Sector Strategic Plan 2018–2023 is guided by the Constitution of 2010, the Kenya Vision 2030 and the Kenya Health Policy 2014–2030.
Interim Guidance, 12 July 2021; This tool was developed to assess present and surge capacities for the treatment of COVID-19 in health facilities. It allows health facilities to assess the availability and status of stockout of critical COVID-19 medicines, equipment and supplies on site and to ident...ify areas that need further attention to enable the facility to respond effectively to the pandemic. The tool encompasses key components that are essential to managing COVID-19 in a hospital setting, including:
health workforce (numbers, absences, COVID-19 infections, staff vaccinated for COVID-19 health workforce management, training and support);
medicines and medical supplies for management of COVID-19;
IPC capacities (protocols, safety measures, guidelines) and the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff;
diagnostic testing, imaging and patient monitoring devices and supplies
medical equipment for management of COVID-19, including O2 administration;
COVID-19 vaccine readiness ;
beds and space capacity.
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Module 9
Strategic planning
July 2017
Module 9: Strategic planning. As WHO recommends offering PrEP to people at substantial HIV risk, this module offers public health guidance for policy-makers on how to prioritize services, in order to reach those who could benefit most from PrEP, and in wh...ich settings PrEP services could be most cost-effective.
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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.
This guideline updates and replaces the recommendations in all previous WHO guidelines on abortion care
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The COVID-19 pandemic and in fact all crises – acute or prolonged – remind us that human rights need to be central in all recovery and development efforts. The Sustainable Development Goals will only be achieved if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address failures exposed and e...xploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.
We also share examples from Dorcas’ practice and formulate recommendations based on good practices of other organisations as well as our own. With this report, we aim to inform and inspire policy makers and humanitarian and development practitioners on inclusion of the rights of Older People in the current COVID-19 crisis, as well as others yet to come.
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The second edition of the joint WHO, WIPO and WTO
publication “Promoting Access to Medical Technologies
and Innovation: Intersections between public health,
intellectual property and trade” (the Trilateral Study),*
published in 2020, included a special insert mappi...ng the
challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in relation
to the integrated health, trade and IP policy framework set
out in the study. The Trilateral Study and the special insert
were designed to serve as background reference for policy-
makers in the widest sense – lawmakers, government
officials, delegates to international organizations, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and researchers
who seek a comprehensive presentation of the full range
of issues, including institutions and legal concepts with
which they may be unfamiliar. It is also designed to serve
as a factual resource for the three organizations’ technical
cooperation activities.
This update revises the information contained in that
insert in the light of more recent developments as of
30 August 2021. Further updates will be made to reflect
subsequent developments.
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The Abuja declaration identifies that the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and related infectious diseases must come with additional financial resources. Therefore, African governments agreed on setting the target of allocating at least 15 per cent of each country’s annual budget ...to the improvement of the health sector. Moreover, the declaration demands donor countries to assist by fulfilling the target of delivering official development assistance (ODA) in the amount of 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP).
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A series of information sheets to help empower communities and strengthen health systems
This series of information sheets introduces health literacy, its
relevance to public policy, and the ways it can be used to inform
the promotion of good health, the prevention and management
of communicab...le and noncommunicable diseases, and the
reduction of health inequities. It provides information and links
to further resources to assist organizations and governments
to incorporate health literacy responses into practice, service
delivery systems, and policy.
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The 2021 COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan (SPRP) for AFR serves as a regional guide for a holistic public health response to COVID‑19 at regional, national and sub-national levels. The 2021
SPRP:
1. Builds upon the lessons learnt from the implementation of the 2020 SPRP and outl...ines a regional preparedness, response and recovery strategy for COVID‑19.
2. Has been adapted to reflect the Regional context including COVID-19 vaccination. It also considers epidemiological changes and recommen-dations emerging from the evaluation report of the 2020 SPRP4.
3. Highlights to Member States strategic preparedness and response actions to be sustained at national and sub-national levels, as well as the critical inter-agency and partner support required.
4. provides the indicative resource requirements to reinforce WHO planned interventions in the African Region to enhance countries’ capacities to suppress transmission, save lives and mitigate the impact of the pandemic on people and health systems.
5. Provides a road map for mitigating potential resurgence in the Region as economies reopen and ensure country level continuity of other essential health services.
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This Community Health Systems (CHS) Catalog country profile is the 2016 update of a landscape
assessment that was originally conducted by the Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) project
in 2014. The CHS Catalog focuses on 25 countries deemed priority by the United States Agency for
Internation...al Development’s (USAID) Office of Population and Reproductive Health, and includes
specific attention to family planning (FP), a core focus of the APC project.
The update comes as many countries are investing in efforts to support the Sustainable Development
Goals and to achieve universal health coverage while modifying policies and strategies to better align
and scale up their community health systems.
The purpose of the CHS Catalog is to provide the most up-to-date information available on community
health systems based on existing policies and related documentation in the 25 countries. Hence, it does
not necessarily capture the realities of policy implementation or service delivery on the ground. APC
has made efforts to standardize the information across country profiles, however, content between
countries may vary due to the availability and quality of the data obtained from policy documents.
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25 Nov 2022
The WHO Guidelines for malaria bring together the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for malaria in one user-friendly and easy-to-navigate online platform.
The WHO Guidelines for malaria supersedes 2 previous WHO publications: the Guidelines for the treatment of mala...ria, third edition and the Guidelines for malaria vector control. Recommendations on malaria will continue to be reviewed and, where appropriate, updated based on the latest available evidence. Any updated recommendations will always display the date of the most recent revision in the MAGICapp platform. With each update, a new PDF version of the consolidated guidelines will also be available for download on the WHO website.
This version of the Guidelines includes updates to the case management of malaria, specifically the addition of new molecules for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria and optimization of the dosage regimen for anti-relapse treatment, along with updates on the use of antimalarial medicines in special risk populations including pregnant women.
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The Strategic Plan of Action and Budget 2016-2025 for the elimination of onchocerciasisin countries was prepared based on the above dlrective for the consideration of IAF 18.The vision of the plan of action is to eliminate onchocerciasis in 80 percent of Africancountries. Implementation of the plan ...will also help strengthen health systems at community level while implementing CDI wlll help scale-up interventions agalnst other NTDs to the benefit of the wider national health systems.
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This publication is designed to be used by programme planners and managers as a resource when designing interventions to integrate postpartum family planning into national and subnational strategies. Postpartum family planning should not be considered a ‘vertical’ programme, but rather as an int...egrated part of existing maternal and child health and family planning efforts. Successful interventions for postpartum family planning require holistic and evidence-based programme strategies that contribute to strengthened health systems and sustained improvements in high-quality services that put people at the centre of health care
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Bonchial asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the world. In Kenya, it has been estimated that about 7.5% of the Kenyan population, nearly 4 million people, are currently living with asthma. Many cases tend to be underdiagnosed and undertreated which leads to high levels of morbid...ity and avoidable deaths. The consequences of poorly controlled asthma, including physical, mental, social, and economic impacts, are magnified in the poor on account of poor access to asthma services and sub-optimal quality of those services. With these guidelines, Kenya's Ministry of Health aims to work towards embedding asthma care in Universal Health Care (UHC) to ensure that quality asthma services are available in primary care settings with
referral networks strengthened for those who may require secondary and tertiary care. These national asthma guidelines will also ensure that treatment for asthma is standardized in both the public and the non-state health care sector.
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