This summary highlights the experiences, results and actions from the implementation of the Rapid Assessment Tool for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV Linkages in Botswana. The tool – developed by IPPF, UNFPA, WHO, UNAIDS, GNP+, ICW and Youn...g Positives in 2009 – supports national assessments of the bi-directional linkages between sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV at the policy, systems and services levels. Each country that has rolled out the tool has gathered and generated information that will help to determine priorities and shape national plans and frameworks for scaling up and intensifying linkages. Country experiences and best practices will also inform regional and global agendas.
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Despite improvements in recent years, the prevalence of undernutrition among women and children in Myanmar remains unacceptably high. One in three children are stunted and about 8% are acutely malnourished. Micronutrient deficiencies are common amon...g infants, young children and pregnant women. In fact, more than 80% of children 6 to 23 months of age and 70% of pregnant women are anemic. To better understand the determinants of undernutrition and the linkages between food security, livelihoods and nutrition in Myanmar as a whole as well as in specific geographic areas where programs supported by the Livelihoods, Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) are being implemented, the LEARN project has reviewed food and nutrition security data from the past five years and synthesized relevant findings into this report.
Following the Introduction, Section 2 presents national level data on the food and nutrition security situation in Myanmar in the past five years. Sections 3, 4 and 5 present data on food and nutrition security from the various agro-ecological zones that are of interest to LIFT, namely the Coastal/Delta, Dry, and Uplands.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated, describes current healthcare waste management syst...ems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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The updated List of Essential Diagnostics contains 46 general tests that can be used for routine patient care as well as for the detection and diagnosis of a wide array ...hlight medbox">of disease conditions, and 69 tests intended for the detection, diagnosis and monitoring of specific diseases.
The List is divided into two sections depending on the user and setting: one for community settings, which includes self-testing; and a second one for clinical laboratories, which can be general and specialized facilities.
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Guidelines.
The guidelines set out essential actions that humanitarian actors must take in order to effectively identify and respond to the needs and rights of persons with disabilities who are most at risk ...x">of being left behind in humanitarian settings.
The recommended actions in each chapter place persons with disabilities at the centre of humanitarian action, both as actors and as members of affected populations. They are specific to persons with disabilities and to the context of humanitarian action and build on existing and more general standards and guidelines.
These are the first humanitarian guidelines to be developed with and by persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in association with traditional humanitarian stakeholders. Based on the outcomes of a comprehensive global and regional multi-stakeholder consultation process, they are designed to promote the implementation of quality humanitarian programmes in all contexts and across all regions, and to establish and increase both the inclusion of persons with disabilities and their meaningful participation in all decisions that concern them.
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The new review paper, The Impacts of Climate Change on Health, identifies the extent to which increasing emissions, extreme weather and temperatures elevate health risks, from infectious disease to ...malnutrition, and assesses the associated health burden. It concludes that the health burden will exceed the level of demand that health systems are prepared for.
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Lancet Planet Health 2022;6: e760–68
The emergence of COVID-19 has drawn the attention of health researchers sharply back to the role that food systems can play in generating human ...ttribute-to-highlight medbox">disease burden. But emerging pandemic threats are just one dimension of the complex relationship between agriculture and infectious disease, which is evolving rapidly, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) that are undergoing rapid food system transformation. This changing relationship is examined through four current disease issues.
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These guidelines have been compiled for education ministries or other educational leaders (including development partners, non-governmental or private organizations working with schools or directly with caregivers) who want to adapt and adopt resources to support the marginalized caregivers ...ass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of children with disabilities.
The guidance presented in this document was developed by a team of international and national experts following a proof-of-concept pilot4 of the resources in two countries. The work was carried out between February 2021 and January 2022. The pilots demonstrated that principles and activities described in the resources could be carried out, in practical terms, in line with existing government programmes supporting the implementation of disability-inclusive education.
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The waves of yellow fever transmission in the Region of the Americas in 2016–2018 involved the largest number of human and epizootic cases to be ...reported in several decades. Yellow fever is a serious viral hemorrhagic disease that poses a challenge for health professionals. It requires early recognition of signs and symptoms, which are often nonspecific, and it can mimic other acute febrile syndromes. Early detection of suspected or confirmed cases, monitoring of vital signs, life support measures, and treatment of acute kidney failure continue to be the recommended strategies for case management. This report is the result of discussions among experienced specialists in the Americas on the clinical management of yellow fever patients, especially during outbreaks and epidemics, in the context of current medical and scientific evidence and taking into account the technical guidelines already available in the countries of the Region. It includes flowcharts for initially addressing patients with clinical suspicion of yellow fever and proposes a minimum package of laboratory tests that may be useful in contexts where resources are limited. In addition, it considers aspects of health system organization for dealing with yellow fever outbreaks and epidemics.
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Guidelines on the management of chronic pain in children, developing and implementing national and local policies for pain management and protocols in children, implementing ...to-highlight medbox">national and local regulations for pain management in children, pain management and protocols
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Technical guidelines for testing for COVID-19 in the clinical laboratories of the National Integrated Health System.
This document aims to encourage countries to develop and implement policies to maintain and strengthen IPC programmes and measures in health care facilities in the context of the current ongoing transmission ...x">of the SARS-CoV-2, with recognition that epidemiological trends may vary and the risk of transmission of other pathogens.
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The primary audience for these recommendations includes health professionals who are responsible for developing national and local health-care guidelines and protocols and health workers involved in the provision ...medbox">of care to women and their newborns during pregnancy, labour and childbirth; this includes midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners and obstetricians. The primary audience also includes managers of maternal and child health programmes, and relevant staff in ministries of health and educational and training institutions, in all settings.
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This report is not a country scorecard. Rather, its purpose is to act as a compass to guide progress towards health in the SDGs.
There has been a significant improvement in the state of health in the region with healthy life expectancy - time spen...t in full health - in the region increasing from 50.9 years to 53.8 between 2012 and 2015 - the most marked increase of any region in the world.
What is making Africans sick is changing. The top killers are still lower respiratory infections, HIV and diarrhoeal disease and countries have routinely focused on preventing and treating this trio, often through specialized programmes. The payoff has been significant declines in deaths due to these diseases. There has been a 50% reduction in the burden of disease caused by what have been the top 10 killers since 2000 and death rates have dropped from 87.7 to 51.1 deaths per 100,000 persons between 2000 and 2015...
Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer are now claiming more lives with a person aged 30 to 70 in the region having a one in five chance of dying from a noncommunicable disease (NCDs).
Countries are specifically failing to provide essential services to two critical age groups – adolescents and the elderly...
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This report presents the most current data on four specific forms of violence – violent discipline and exposure to domestic abuse during early childhood; violence at school; violent deaths among adolescents; and sexual violence in childhood and ad...olescence. The statistics reveal that children experience violence across all stages of childhood, in diverse settings, and often at the hands of the trusted individuals with whom they interact daily. The report concludes with specific national actions and strategies that UNICEF has embraced to prevent and respond to violence against children.
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The Updated guidelines on Management of tuberculosis in children and adolescents include new recommendations that cover diagnostic approaches for TB, shorter treatment for children with non-severe drug-susceptible TB, a new option for the treatment ...of TB meningitis, the use of bedaquiline and delamanid in young children with multidrug- and rifampicin-resistant TB and decentralized and family-centred, integrated models of care for TB case detection and prevention in children and adolescents.
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During the 17 years since Surgical approaches to the urogenital manifestations of lymphatic filariasis was first published, there has been heightened awareness of the physical, economic and emotiona...l burden of the genitourinary manifestations of filariasis. With the impetus to provide better guidance for care of those suffering from LF, this update was both warranted and timely.
At the outset, the Committee noted that barriers continue to exist in care of patients affected by LF-associated morbidity. These barriers include lack of information for patients as well as for many healthcare providers, including general surgeons and others within health systems
This update offers a new consensus of the Committee regarding the staging of hydroceles caused by LF, also known as “filariceles”. It recommends integrating LF surgery with other efforts to strengthen surgical care by assessing health facilities for their surgical readiness using the WHO surgical assessment tool or “SAT”. It also recommends integratinghernia surgery with hydrocele surgery and integrating standards for prevention of surgical site infection (SSI).
The update revises recommendations for standard procedures and processes, offers an algorithm for diagnosis (including the use of ultrasound) and discusses postoperative care. It recommends collecting data using the staging and grading system described by Capuano and Capuano along with other metrics for public health management of LF.
A multifaceted approach has therefore been recommended to coordinate public health outreach with national surgical planning and local health systems to include supporting partners such as nongovernmental organizations. Surgical camps with mobile teams, as well as training of personnel at DCP3 “first level” or WHO Level II hospitals (depending on region and resources), have important roles for reducing LF morbidity.
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Childhood Respiratory Diseases & the Environment learning objectives
•To understand how the respiratory tract is affected by the environment
•To describe respiratory diseases linked to the ... environment
•To list one population-level intervention and one personal-level intervention for decreasing risk of respiratory diseases
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This is a detailed manual giving a step by step approach to undertaking the pharmacovigilance of antiretrovirals. It is intended to be a source of practical advice for Pharmacovigilance ..."attribute-to-highlight medbox">Centres and health professionals involved in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes. A number of WHO publications are available that provide a background to pharmacovigilance and, as far as possible, that material will not be repeated here. Health officials, planners, the staff of Pharmacovigilance Centres, public health teams and all health workers should become familiar with these publications, which are: • Safety of Medicines: A guide to detecting and reporting adverse drug reactions
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Types of radiotherapy equipment covered by the guide include external beam radiotherapy machines (both Cobalt-60 and linear accelerators), brachytherapy devices that apply radiation sources directly to tumours and complementary imaging devices such ...as conventional or computed tomography (CT) simulators, as well as other tools essential for safe operation and quality control. Depending on the type of radiotherapy machine, the need for specialized professionals and infrastructure, as well as quality assurance and maintenance, may vary.
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