After five consecutive below-average rains, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is expanding and deepening.
Combined with insecurity and macroeconomic volatility, the impact of the drou
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ght on food and nutrition security has been devastating. Across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, an estimated 22 million people are now acutely food insecure because of the drought. The malnutrition situation is also critical. Some 5.1 million children across drought-affected areas of the three countries are acutely malnourished in 2023, with dire implications for their health, growth and survival. Concerningly, the upcoming March-May 2023 rains are also forecast to be below-average. Should these rains fail, and humanitarian assistance not be delivered at scale, food insecurity will continue to deteriorate.
Regardless of how the 2023 rains perform, extremely high humanitarian needs will persist through 2023 while a full recovery from a drought of this magnitude will take years. To address the devastating drought-induced hunger and malnutrition across the region, WFP is pursuing an integrated dual track approach; meeting immediate life-saving food and nutritional needs while simultaneously building resilience to extreme climate variability.
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This manual and its Excel tool are under revision. The revised edition will be published soon.
Drugs and medical supplies are dispensed at the cutting edge level of the interface between the public health system and the people. Availability or lack of it brings either credit or discredit to t
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he public health system. The primary reason for holding stocks of medicines and medical supplies in a proper scientific manner is to ensure continuous and uninterrupted availability to prevent stock-outs, especially of critical items of supply while at the same time ensuring that stocks of medicines do not get expired. An efficient inventory management is a pre-requisite for optimal stock management. It enables the management of health facilities to know the current pattern of consumption of drug trends over a period of time and also variances. The environmental control of the drugs and other medical supplies play an important role to keep the products' efficacy intact. Some medicines and vaccines need special storage temperature, otherwise, there may be wastage. The quality of the medicines can be adversely affected by poor storage, transportation and distribution. Thus, maintaining proper storage condition for health commodities is vital for ensuring their quality. So, by this training, CDMU wants to educate different people dealing with medicines and equip them for the roles they have to perform efficiently so that the wastage does not take place or can be minimized.
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This implementation guide has been developed to help birth attendants and health-care leaders successfully launch and sustain use of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist. Development, use
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and implementation of the Checklist are described in this guide.
It covers how to introduce and ensure continuous use of the Checklist by engaging relevant stakeholders, how to launch the Checklist formally, and provides support for the process through coaching and data-sharing
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Tune into Kids | UNICEF |
United and proud for the next generation
Education for respect and understanding – inclusion and equity
During the year 2022, COVID-19 continued to be a significant challenge in Eritrea as in many other countries across the world. As COVID-19 devastated communities around the world, WHO worked with the MoH to strengthen the National and Sub-National h
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ealth systems in order to meet community needs and mitigate the devastation during the pandemic and beyond.
One of the major achievements in the year 2022 was the beginning of the journey towards validation of
the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B. This is the culmination of years
of commitment and determination by the political leadership, national and international partnerships to
reduce the associated indices to levels that qualify for elimination.
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Humanitarian crises exacerbate nutritional risks and often lead to an increase in acute malnutrition. Emergencies include both manmade (conflict) and natural disasters (floods, drought, cyclones, ty
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phoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Complex emergencies are combinations of both manmade and natural disasters, often of a protracted nature. Millions of people are affected by humanitarian crises every year. The increasing frequency and scale of emergencies requires nutrition to be addressed in all phases of a response.
Crisis situations, whether acute or protracted, impact on a range of factors that can increase the risk of undernutrition, morbidity, and mortality. They may involve: the large-scale destruction of property and infrastructure; the erosion of livelihood strategies and purchasing power; a breakdown of and reduced access to essential services, including health services, water supply, and sanitation; and the displacement of large numbers of people. Emergencies can also disrupt social systems and the quality of care/feeding practices. Household access to food may be negatively affected and people may find themselves in overcrowded settlements with their families divided. As a result, at the individual level, there is often an increased risk of deteriorating health and nutritional status, resulting in a greater likelihood of death.
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Objectives and scope of the document
This document was developed to provide recommended management strategies for problems and disorders that are specifically related to the occurrence of a major s
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tressful event. The recommended strategies will form the basis of a new module to be added to the WHO (2010) mhGAP Intervention Guide for use in non-specialized specialized health-care settings.
The scope of the problems covered by these guidelines is:
symptoms of acute stress in the first month after a potentially traumatic event, with the following subtypes:
- symptoms of acute traumatic stress (intrusion, avoidance and hyperarousal) in the first month after a potentially traumatic event;
- symptoms of dissociative (conversion) disorders in the first month after a potentially traumatic event;
- non-organic (secondary) enuresis in the first month after a potentially traumatic event (in children);
- hyperventilation in the first month after a potentially traumatic event;
- insomnia in the first month after a potentially traumatic event;
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD);
bereavement in the absence of a mental disorder.
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Version 10.1_5 October 2020
These Guidelines are available in different formats: As a paper booklet, a PDF, a mobile app, and now also as a website.
The 2019 version of the Guidelines introduces a new drug-drug interaction panel
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and now consists of six main sections, including a general overview table of all major issues in PLWH, recommendations on antiretroviral treatment, drug-drug interactions, diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of co-morbidities, co-infections and opportunistic diseases.
Available in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Japanese
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This paper looks at the status of tuberculosis (TB) advocacy
communication and social mobilization (ACSM) activities in selected
national TB control programmes in the WHO African Region. The
findings are from an assessment of TB ACSM activities i
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n Ghana, Kenya,
Lesotho, Malawi and South Africa.
Disease control, issue 15
The African health monitor
Accessed November 2017
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2nd edition.
The book is aimed at general health workers in low- and middle-income country settings and has some chapters on perinatal mental health. That said, it has definite applicability in hig
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h-income country settings too! In the new edition, there has been a big expansion of the psychosocial interventions. Thanks to your advocacy for such a resource being open-access (as the first edition was not), the book is freely available for download: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/where-there-is-no-psychiatrist/47578A845CAFC7E23A181749A4190B54
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Health Systems for Outcomes Publication | Using qualitative data from Rwanda, this study focuses on four institutional factors that affect health worker performance and career choice: incentives, monitoring arrangements, professional norms
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and health workers’ intrinsic motivation. It also provides illustrations of three institutional innovations that work, at least in the context of Rwanda: performance pay, the establishment of community health workers and increased attention to the training of health workers.
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In this report a nutrition governance framework was applied to research and analyse the provincial experience with nutrition policy in Pakistan, looking both at chronic and acute malnutrition. Twent
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y-one in-depth interviews with key stakeholders were also conducted along with a review of published and grey literature. Findings were validated and supplemented by consultative provincial roundtable meetings. Punjab’s nutritional puzzle is that it has high levels of chronic malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies despite a surplus production of food and a low poverty level. Under-nutrition is mainly linked to insufficient attention to preventive health strategies and to a lack of connection between relevant sectors such as Education, Health, Poverty, Safe Water and Sanitation, and Food. Strategic opportunities are recommended which include cross-party political support and ownership for nutrition, with steering by executive leadership; multi-sectoral action and functional integration of various departments and programmes with the creation of a central convening structure for effective cross-sectoral coordination; broadening of nutritional activities beyond salt iodization and vitamin A coverage; central co-ordination of monitoring and evaluation and effective partnerships between the state and non-state sector around data production, awareness, advocacy, and monitoring.
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This report found that while European Schools are paying increasing attention to inclusion, children with disabilities continued to face problems. They are rejected, pressured into changing schools, or are not provided with appropriate accommodations and
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support to allow them to learn and thrive in an inclusive environment.
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Assessing and improving quality and human rights in mental health and social care facilites
The purpose of this article is to consider the relationshipbetween religion and healthcarein order to suggest how physicians and other health care providers shouldrespond when the faith-ba
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sed preference of apatient clashes with the medically indicatedtreatment modalities.
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Sustaining and Expanding Activities to Shift Social Norms and Care Practices for Preterm and Low Birthweight Babies.
Khanda ndi Mphatso (KnM), tra
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nslated as “A Baby is a Gift”, a SBCC campaign intended to improve newborn health by shifting norms around the value of newborns and promoting Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for preterm and low birthweight (PTB/LBW) babies.
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The goal of this best practice guideline is to strengthen collaborative practice among nurses, because effective collaborative practice is essential for working in health-care organizations.
In this guideline, we focus on collaborative practice amongst three types of nursing professionals – reg
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istered nurse (RN), registered practical nurse (RPN) and nurse practitioner (NP) – and explore what fosters healthy work environments for them, aware that collaboration must align with the needs of the patient or client.
This best practice guideline was developed to assist nurses, nursing leaders, other health professionals and senior managers to enhance positive outcomes for patients/clients individual/family/group/community), nurses, and the organization through intra-professional collaborative practice.
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World Journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Research vol. 5 (2019) 3, 129-132