In an environment of stagnant donor funding and increasing private sector investment in low- and middle-income countries, actors in both the public and private sectors are increasingly interested in using blended finance approaches to catalyze new funding for global health and achieve health outcome...s. As USAID moves towards greater engagement with the private sector, blended finance will be an important component to help achieve development objectives.
Accessed 19th May 2019.
more
1.1 Why this course is needed
The first few hours and days of a newborn baby’s life are a critical window for establishing breastfeeding and for providing mothers with the support they need to breastfeed successfully. Since 1991, the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has helped to motivate... facilities providing maternity and newborn baby services worldwide to better support breastfeeding. It has been adopted by many countries and organizations. The BFHI aims to provide a health-care environment that supports mothers to acquire the skills necessary to exclusively breastfeed for six months, and to continue breastfeeding for two years or beyond.
more
1.1 Why this course is needed
The first few hours and days of a newborn baby’s life are a critical window for establishing breastfeeding and for providing mothers with the support they need to breastfeed successfully. Since 1991, the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has helped to motivate... facilities providing maternity and newborn baby services worldwide to better support breastfeeding. It has been adopted by many countries and organizations. The BFHI aims to provide a health-care environment that supports mothers to acquire the skills necessary to exclusively breastfeed for six months, and to continue breastfeeding for two years or beyond.
more
Atlas of African Health Statistics 2022: Health situation analysis of the WHO African Region
Since 2019, we have been implementing Phase 2 of the regional Transformation Agenda, which informs and aligns with the global WHO Transformation, to ensure WHO is accountable, driven by re- sults and provid...ing value for money in the pursuit of better health. Our global priority in this period is to contribute to delivering on the triple billion targets of expanding universal health coverage, protecting people from emergencies, and promoting health and well-being for people across the Region.
This year’s Atlas of African Health Statistics is being produced in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that we have been expe- riencing for over two years. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic, together with other health emergencies in the WHO African Re- gion, is yet again testing the strength and resilience of our health systems. Indeed, the impact of COVID-19 is visible in the disruption of services. The report also presents the latest data for more than 50 health-related indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals and WHO’s “triple billion” targets and provides comprehensive country-level statistics using the results chain of the AFRO frame- work of actions for strengthening health systems to achieve UHC and the health-related SDGs.
more
What are the FP and CAC competencies?
Through the clear articulation of the family planning and comprehensive abortion care (FP and CAC) competencies for the primary health care workforce, the aim is to advance improvements in FP and CAC service delivery by aligning health worker education approach...es with population health needs and health system demands.
This document, which describes these competencies in detail, is intended to:
be a foundational tool to be adopted and adapted by educators and regulators for FP and CAC providers (students) with a pre-service training pathway of at least 12 months;
describe competencies that are relevant to current and future health practice;
enable widespread use of the competencies not only for curriculum development for pre-service education, but also for in-service education, regulation, qualifications, quality assurance, personal development, performance evaluation, recruitment, management and career progression;
focus on the core functions of FP and CAC providers within broader efforts towards achieving universal health coverage
more
The roadmap describes the actions needed to
achieve the three development goals for TB
vaccines set by the WHO:
1. A safe, effective and affordable TB vaccine
for adolescents and adults.
2. An affordable TB vaccine for neonates and
infants with improved safety and efficacy.
3. A therapeutic v...accine to improve TB
treatment outcomes
more
299 deaths have been recorded and 329 people are still missing, according to the Government.
• Latest assessments indicate that the homes of some tens of thousands of people have been destroyed or damaged beyond habitability. Most of these people are staying with hosts in the extended community.
...
• Revised Flash Appeal requires US$294 million to respond to the drought and Cyclone Idai.
• Food Cluster partners have so far assisted an estimated 30,000 people in the worst-affected areas of Chimanimani and Chipinge.
• Access to a sufficient quantity of water for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene has been restored for 43,000 people.
• Eight clusters have been activated to bolster the humanitarian response effort in support to the Government of Zimbabwe,
more
Testing and diagnosis of hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) infection is the gateway for access to both prevention and treatment services, and is a crucial component of an effective response to the hepatitis epidemic. Early identification of persons with chronic HBV or HCV infection enables them to recei...ve the necessary care and treatment to prevent or delay progression of liver disease. Testing also provides an opportunity to link people to interventions to reduce transmission, through counselling on risk behaviours and provision of prevention commodities (such as sterile needles and syringes) and hepatitis B vaccination.
more
This guidance is intended for use in developing standalone TB strategic plans, or TB interventions as part of multidisease or health sector plans. It describes key considerations and steps for strategic planning for TB in line with the World Health Organization’s End TB strategy, and the proposed ...structure of the NSP. The target audience of this publication are all stakeholders involved in national strategic planning for TB (e.g., ministry of health, other government ministries, private sector, civil society, affected communities, academic and research institutions, and technical and funding partners).
The current document is an update to the 2015 Toolkit to develop a national strategic plan for TB prevention, care and control.
more
WHO published and launched the third part of the Wheelchair Service Training Package (WSTP) series consisting of two sub-packages: the Wheelchair Service Training Package for Managers (WSTPm) and the Wheelchair Service Training Package for Stakeholders (WSTPs). WHO recognises that in order to develo...p an effective and sustainable wheelchair service provision; managers and stakeholders need to be informed about the importance and benefit of a proper wheelchair service provision. The training manuals and introductory folder comes with 8 GB PenDrive, which contains A to Z of the wheelchair provision.
more
Regional Network for Equity in Health in east and southern Africa (EQUINET): Disussion Paper 111
The health services delivery system in Zambia is pyramid in structure, with primary healthcare (PHC) services at community level, at the base, followed by first and second level hospitals at distric...t and provincial levels, respectively, and third level (tertiary) services at national level. Notably, primary health services are free in Zambia and health service providers are either governmentowned or not-for-profit facilities.
Over the years, resource constraints have affected the quality and extent of healthcare services at all levels, requiring the mobilisation of additional resources for the sector. In doing so, prioritisation was high on the agenda of health sector reform. The EHB, therefore, prioritises interventions with the highest impact on the population, enabling policy makers to revisit priority diseases and conditions and to cost the services provided at each level of facility. Other key issues in developing the EHB in Zambia have included the need to have cost-effective services and cost per capita of services for more systematic budgeting, to rank interventions and to validate and cost the health benefit package as a whole.
more
The purpose of this Emergency Response Framework (ERF) is to clarify WHO’s roles and responsibilities in this regard and to provide a common approach for its work in emergencies. Ultimately, the ERF requires WHO to act with urgency and predictability to best serve and be accountable to populations... affected by emergencies.
more
We systematically reviewed Medline as well as the references of published review articles for relevant studies of adherence to multidrug treatment of both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant TB through February 3, 2018. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as well as prospective and retro...spective cohort studies (CSs) with an internal or external control group that evaluated any adherence intervention and conducted a meta-analysis of their impact on TB treatment outcomes. Our search identified 7,729 articles, of which 129 met the inclusion criteria for quantitative analysis. Seven adherence categories were identified, including DOT offered by different providers and at various locations, reminders and tracers, incentives and enablers, patient education, digital technologies (short message services [SMSs] via mobile phones and video-observed therapy [VOT]), staff education, and combinations of these interventions.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002595
more
The Joint Response Plan sets out a comprehensive programme shaped around three strategic objectives – deliver protection, provide life-saving assistance and foster social cohesion. The Plan covers all humanitarian sectors and addresses key cross-cutting issues, including protection and gender main...streaming. The Plan will also strengthen emergency preparedness and response for weather-related risks and natural disasters, with a focus on community
engagement.
more
Good mental health is integral to human health and well being. A person’s mental health and many common mental disorders are shaped by various social, economic, and physical environments operating at different stages of life. Risk factors for many common mental disorders are heavily associated wit...h social inequalities, whereby the greater the inequality the higher the inequality in risk.
more
The aim of the people-centred framework is to help countries to develop fully prioritized and budgeted NSPs based on a culture of making full use of the available data, which are aligned with national planning cycles and which provide the basis for a robust national response that can accelerate prog...ress towards the goal of ending TB. In addition, applying the framework for other possible applications according to the country’s planning and policy cycle encourages the culture of data utilization and evidence translation into decision making and planning.
more
In Kenya, the bacterial infections that contribute most to human disease are often those in which re-‐sistance is most evident. Examples are multidrug-‐resistant enteric bacterial pathogens such as typhoid, ... diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli and invasive non-‐typhi salmonella, penicillin-‐resistant Streptococcus pneu-‐moniae, vancomycin-‐resistant enterococci, methicillin-‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus and multidrug-‐re-‐sistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Resistance to medicines commonly used to treat malaria is of particu-‐lar concern, as is the emerging resistance to anti-‐HIV drugs. Often, more expensive medicines are required to treat these infections, and this becomes a major challenge in resource-‐poor settings.
more
First published in 2020, this toolkit is intended for clinicians working in acute care, managing adult and paediatric patients with acute respiratory infection, including severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis and septic shock. The main objective is to provide key tools for us...e in the care of critically ill patients – from hospital entry to hospital discharge.
The 2022 updated version includes new tools and adapted algorithms, checklists, memory aids for COVID-19 and influenza, and the latest clinical evidence regarding clinical management of SARI. It is intended to help clinicians care for SARI patients: from epidemiology of severe acute respiratory infections, screening and triage, infection prevention and control, monitoring of patients, laboratory diagnosis, principles of oxygen therapy and different types of ventilation (invasive and non-invasive), as well as antimicrobial and immunomodulator therapies, to ethical and quality of care assessments.
The first edition is availbel in Ukrainian and Russian
more
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging health systems across the world. Rapidly increasing demand for care of people with COVID-19 is compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on the movement of people and supplies that disrupt the delivery of frontline health care for all people...
This g...uidance addresses the specific role of community-based health care in the pandemic context and outlines the adaptations needed to keep people safe, maintain continuity of essential services and ensure an effective response to COVID-19. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels and complements a range of other guidance, including that on priority public health interventions, facility-based care, and risk communication and community engagement in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic.
more
his revision to the Disaster Management Team’s (DMT) multi-sector response plan for COVID-19 is meant to align the multi-sector plan with the Department of Health’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Plan issued on 24 April 2020. Additionally, at the time of this version, the Department of Education an...d Department for Community Development and Religion have also issued their own national COVID-19 response and recovery plans.
The Government’s plan maintains a health sector focus and plans for a ‘worst case’ scenario, articulating the process of progressing into containment and subsequently mitigation of community transmission and on to recovery. It presents an opportunity to improve the core capacities of the whole of government, to see where both health and non-health sectors fit in and respond in the immediate and medium terms, and to adapt to the ‘new normal’ that this coronavirus has inevitably presented
more