The well-being of children in sub-Saharan Africa is under siege from all directions since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. ...te-to-highlight medbox">The region is now suffering its first-ever economic recession, pushing about 50 million people into extreme poverty, a majority of whom are children.
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The growing understanding of how sequence information can contribute to improved public health is driving global investments in sequencing facilities and programmes. The falling cost and complexity ...of generating GSD provides opportunities for expanding sequencing capacity; however, challenges to widespread implementation remain. This document provides policy-makers and stakeholders with guidance on how to maximize the public health benefit of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequencing activities in the short and long term as the pandemic continues to unfold. Practical considerations for the implementation of a virus genomic sequencing programme and an overview of the public health objectives of genomic sequencing are covered. This guidance focuses on SARS-CoV-2 but is applicable to other pathogens of public health concern.
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The WHO Regional Office for Europe has established the Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative in more than half the countries in ...tribute-to-highlight medbox">the Region for routine monitoring of the policy response to the emerging obesity epidemic. The aim of the Initiative is to measure trends in overweight and obesity in children aged 6.0–9.9 years to get a clear understanding of the epidemic and to allow inter-country comparisons. This document outlines the common protocol agreed for use in the Initiative.
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The Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) has been coordinating sector wide reforms that aim to improve equity and quality of health services. It is widely known that; the sector is growin...g in line the overall growth and transformation plan of the country and the sector is being guided by the health sector transformation plan (HSTP). As part of these efforts, to achieve the targets set, the sector identified information revolution as one of the transformational agendas. In the meantime, Appropriate and timely use of health and health-related information is an essential element in the process of transforming the health sector.
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This policy brief examines the implications of COVID-19 and the government’s preventative measure for political stability,9 especially in the sho...rt to medium term. It argues that in the short term the disease and the preventative measures could make the country less vulnerable to organised political violence and more vulnerable to riots. In the medium and long term, however, vulnerability to both types of violence could increase, depending on the capacity of political forces to instigate and manage conflict and on their willingness to work together.
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The framework responds to the demand from Member States and partners for guidance on how the health sector and its operational basis in health syst...ems can systematically and effectively address the challenges increasingly presented by climate variability and change. This framework has been designed in light of the increasing evidence of climate change and its associated health risks (1); global, regional and national policy mandates to protect population health (2); and a rapidly emerging body of practical experience in building health resilience to climate change (3).
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The international reconstruction effort in Afghanistan after 2001 created an opportunity to advance human rights, and women’s and girls’ rights in particular. Although its achievements have fallen short of what was envisioned, significant improv...ements in legal protections have emerged through the adoption of new and revised laws, the founding and growth of legal aid organizations, and the training of a cadre of women lawyers, prosecutors, and judges.
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The 10 recommendations in the COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health propose a set of priority actions from the global health community ...to governments and policy makers, calling on them to act with urgency on the current climate and health crises.
The recommendations were developed in consultation with over 150 organizations and 400 experts and health professionals. They are intended to inform governments and other stakeholders ahead of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and to highlight various opportunities for governments to prioritize health and equity in the international climate movement and sustainable development agenda. Each recommendation comes with a selection of resources and case studies to help inspire and guide policymakers and practitioners in implementing the suggested solutions
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The world is facing an unprecedented range of emergencies. In reaction to these complex adversities, many people experience considerable distress and impairment, and a minority may even go on to develop mental health conditions. Meanwhile, those wit...h pre-existing mental health conditions may experience a worsening of their condition and are at risk of neglect, abandonment, abuse and lack of access to support. Unfortunately, evidence-based mental health care is often extremely limited in humanitarian settings. In response, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) Humanitarian Intervention Guide (mhGAP-HIG) in 2015. This practical tool supports health-care providers in assessing and offering first-line management of mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) conditions in humanitarian emergency settings.
2 December 2021. The current report, Stories of change from four countries: Building capacity for integrating mental health care within health services across humanitarian settings, describes efforts in four countries to build evidence-based mental health systems in humanitarian emergency settings using the mhGAP-HIG. This report includes three sections, the first describing the importance of scaling up mental health care in emergency contexts, the second outlining case studies (“stories of change”) to scale up the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) programme in four settings and the third describing lessons learned by stakeholders.
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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...span> 2021
SPRP:
1. Builds upon the lessons learnt from the implementation of the 2020 SPRP and outlines 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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The humanitarian-development-peace nexus (HDPNX) is a new way of working that offers a framework for coherent joined-up planning and implementation of shared priorities between humanitarian development and peacebuilding actors in emergency set...tings. To advance the HDPNx in a given country a shared foundational understanding of the current situation is needed. However it can be challenging to find such a resource perpetuating poor understanding planning and operationalization. This is one of a series of country profiles that have been developed by WHO to address that need. Each profile provides an overview of health-related nexus efforts in the country and will be updated regularly.
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The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Union together have called for a New Public Health Order which will safeguard the...span> health and economic security of the continent as it strives to meet the aspirations of the Agenda 2063. A key pillar of this mandate seeks to expand the local manufacture of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Presently, less than one percent of vaccines administered on the continent are manufactured locally. This places a great burden on the health systems of African countries and reduces their ability to respond to pandemics and other health crises.
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The Lancet Global Health Volume 9, ISSUE 3, e361-e365, March 01, 2021
The public health community has tried for decades to show, through evidence-based research, that safe water, sanitation, and hy...giene (WASH) and clean cooking fuels that reduce household air pollution are essential to safeguard health and save lives in low-income and middle-income countries. In the past 40 decades, there have been many innovations in the development of low-cost and efficacious technologies for WASH and household air pollution, but many of these technologies have been associated with disappointing health outcomes, often because low-income households have either not adopted, or inconsistently adopted, these technologies.
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This report presents the findings from a ‘deep dive’ undertaken by UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office to consider the experiences... in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and the Pacific. The target audience for this report includes OPDs and humanitarian actors at global, regional, and country levels.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting of the Technical Advisory Group on Buruli ulcer at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on 25 to 27 March 2019
The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of Buruli ulcer (Mycobacterium ulcerans infection) for the medical and scientific communities and the...span> general public alike.
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The Strategy to respond to antimalarial drug resistance in Africa is a technical and advocacy document, grounded in the best available evidence to date and aimed at minimizing ...-to-highlight medbox">the threat and impact of antimalarial drug resistance of Plasmodium falciparum parasites in Africa. Its objectives are to: i) improve the detection of resistance to ensure a timely response; ii) delay the emergence of resistance to artemisinin and artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) partner drugs; and iii) limit the selection and spread of resistant parasites where resistance has been confirmed.
WHO Team
Global Malaria Programme
Editors
World Health Organization
Number of pages
87
Reference numbers
ISBN: 978 92 4 006026 5
Copyright
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The CWG in Iraq has updated the SMEB and has designed a new MEB and gap analysis to inform the transfer values for cash programming in 2023. This d...ocument is a technical note with the summary of the values and the methodology.
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At the forefront of DNDi’s efforts to develop new treatments is the need to understand the realities and treatment needs of patients and health c...are staff in the field. The ultimate goal for human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a truly simplified
treatment which can be orally administered, implemented at the primary health care level, and effective against both stages of the disease.
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The sub-Saharan African region, carries 90% of the over 250 million cases of schistosomiasis occurring worldwide. In this region, after Nigeria, Tanzania is second country having ...ute-to-highlight medbox">the highest cases of schistosomiasis and approximately 51.5%0 of the Tanzanian population is either exposed or live in areas with high risk of exposure. The country is endemic to both Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma haematobium, these infections are common in communities characterised with limited access to water, sanitation, hygienic practices and health services. Schistosoma mansoni infection is associated with hepatosplenic disease characterised with hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, progressive periportal fibrosis (PPF) which can lead to portal hypertension and its related sequelae, mainly ascites, liver surface irregularities, oesophageal varices and haematemesis. The main consequences of S. haematobium infection are haematuria, dysuria, nutritional deficiencies, urinary bladder lesions, hydronephrosis, urinary bladder squamous cell carcinoma and in children, growth retardation. Preventive chemotherapy using mass drug administration (MDA) of praziquantel targeting primary school aged children is the main strategy for controlling schistosomiasis in Tanzania.
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