Vaccines are powerful weapons in the fight against pandemic viruses as shown by responses to both the 2009 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics. However, planning for accessing, allocating and ...deploying vaccines in a pandemic situation is a complex endeavour, beset with multiple challenges at all levels – local, regional and global. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have prepared this revised guidance document to assist countries update their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) by leveraging global learnings from past pandemic responses, including the recent COVID-19 vaccination effort. The development and testing of a NDVP would not only advance pandemic preparedness efforts but would also have benefits in terms of increasing national capabilities to manage other health emergencies which require emergency vaccination campaigns.
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Situation analysis
Description of the disaster
An Ebola epidemic that started in March 2014 in Guinea has relentlessly continued to claim lives and to spread to other countries in West Africa. The current Ebola outbreak is the largest in history and the first to affect multiple countries simu...ltaneously. There have been over 24 000 reported confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of EVD in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (table 1), with almost 10 000 reported deaths (outcomes for many cases are unknown). A total of 58 new confirmed cases were reported in Guinea, 0 in Liberia, and 58 in Sierra Leone in the 7 days to 8 March (4 days to 5 March for Liberia). Many experts believe that the official numbers substantially understate the size of the outbreak because of families' widespread reluctance to report cases. Because of the fluidity of movement of people between West Africa and several countries in the East African countries, especially Kenya and Ethiopia (who in turn have extensive interaction with other countries in the region in terms of human movement), the risk of an outbreak of Ebola in East Africa is as eminent as in any of the countries bordering the affected countries. The IFRC regional office intends to support National Societies to raise their Ebola preparedness and response capacity through training, technical support in planning and implementation of Ebola related activities, and coordination both within and outside the movement.
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The WHO South-East Asia (SEA) Region bears a high burden of tuberculosis (TB) and MDR-TB. In 2015, the Region accounted for nearly 200 000 or 35% of the global estimated new RR/MDR-TB cases eligible for treatment. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDRTB) has also been reported from s...ix countries of the SEA Region. MDR-TB could potentially replace drug-susceptible TB, and constitutes a threat to global public health security. The South- East Asia Regional Response Framework for DR-TB 2017–2021 complements the Ending TB in the South-East Asia Region: Regional Strategic Plan 2016–2020” and outlines key strategies for reducing morbidity, mortality and transmission of DR-TB.
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The overall objective of the Global Action Plan is to enhance collaboration among 12 global organizations engaged in health, development and humanitarian responses to accelerate country progress on ...the health-related SDG targets. The Plan presents a new approach to strengthening collaboration among and joint action by the organizations, building on an initial joint commitment made in October 2018. The Plan is primarily intended to be strategic but provides some operational detail to guide implementation while also allowing flexibility for adjustment based on regular reviews of progress and learning from experience. Although the purpose of the Global Action Plan is not to provide or seek additional resources, the Plan will enable better use of existing resources as a result of improved collaboration, recognizing that each agency has its own unique mandate and area of expertise.
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This “living paper” contributes to the global knowledge on how countries are responding to the pandemic by documenting real-time actions in a key area of response – that is, social protection measures ...">planned or implemented by governments.
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Ensuring mental health and well-being has become a worldwide imperative and an important target of the Sustainable Development Goals. But in all countries around the world, our response has been woefully insufficient, and we have made
little progre...ss to advance mental health as a fundamental human right.
One in ten people are affected by a mental health condition, up to 200 million people have an intellectual disability and an estimated 50 million people have dementia. Many persons with mental health conditions, or psychosocial, intellectual, or cognitive disabilities lack access to quality mental health services that respond to their needs and respect their rights and dignity.
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HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections continue to pose a major public health burden in the WHO European Region, affecting millions of people and causing premature mortality. Despite some progress being made in achieving the targets outlined in the previous Action ...ibute-to-highlight medbox">plan for the health sector response to HIV in the WHO European Region and the Action plan for the health sector response to viral hepatitis in the WHO European Region, challenges persist, particularly for countries in eastern Europe and central Asia.The Regional action plans for ending AIDS and the epidemics of viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections 2022–2030 outline the visions, goals and actions required to respond to these epidemics.
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In 2023, the World Health Organization was responding to 72 health emergencies, including 19 grade-3 emergencies which required the highest level of activation, reaching millions of people. The annual report on WHO’s response to health emergencies... in 2023 outlines the increasingly critical role of WHO at global, regional and country levels, and across the key elements of effective emergency response, including emergency coordination and planning, operational and logistic support, and community engagement and protection. The huge scale and complexities of health emergencies in the 21st century require a strategic shift towards not only meeting the immediate needs of vulnerable communities, but also building community and health system resilience to all hazards – a challenge that both WHO and its partners must continue to meet.
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Les efforts entrepris dans la lutte contre la tuberculose sont encore loin de résoudre les faibles taux de détection et de guérison enregistrés. La Participation communautaire aux soins de la tuberculose par le programme de l’USAID et celui de PLAN<.../span>/Sénégal avec le Fonds Mondial, ont permis une amélioration des connaissances sur la tuberculose et l’utilisation encore timide des structures de santé comme premier recours.
Toutefois, les conclusions de la dernière revue externe du mois de décembre 2012 mettent en relief un défi communicationnel face aux multiples difficultés qui fragilisent les tentatives déjà entreprises.
Ce plan de communication qui tient compte de plusieurs paramètres, se veut une réponse pour une meilleure adhésion et une appropriation des stratégies du programme par la communauté.
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Interim Guidcance March 2020
People affected by humanitarian crises, particularly those displaced and/or living in camps and camp-like settings, are often faced with specific challenges and vulnerabilities that must be taken into consideration when plan...span>ning for readiness and response operations for the COVID-19 outbreak. They are frequently neglected, stigmatized, and may face difficulties in accessing health services that are otherwise available to the general population. In the context of this Interim Guidance, the people in humanitarian situations affected by this guidance may include internally displaced persons (IDPs), host communities, asylum seekers, refugees and returnees, and migrants when in similar situations. While further adaptations might be needed for some population groups, including those living in slums this interim guidance is issued to assist field staff to immediately respond to urgent needs.
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Objectives: This paper reviews the mental health policies that have been implemented in Chile in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the international context of countries' responses. Even before ...the start of the pandemic, there were significant barriers to access mental health services in Chile, coupled with a scenario of nationwide social unrest and protests that questioned the legitimacy of public institutions; now the rapidly worsening outbreaks of COVID-19 are exacerbating the pre-existing mental health crisis.
Methods: We conducted a bibliometric and content analysis of the Chilean mental health public policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic and then compared these policies with international experiences and emerging scientific evidence on the mental health impact of pandemics.
Results: Our analysis of the policies identifies five crucial points of action developed in Chile: (i) an established framework to address mental health in emergency and disaster situations; (ii) a timely COVID-19 Mental Health Action Plan; (iii) inclusion of mental health in the public health agenda; (iv) development of a presidential strategy during the pandemic for comprehensive mental health and well-being; and (v) emerging research assessing the mental health implications of COVID-19.
Conclusions: In Chile, the public policy responses to address the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by the coordinated implementation of mental health plans, ranging from a health sectoral initiative to inter-agency and intersectoral efforts. However, it is imperative that increased funding is allocated to mental health, and efforts should be made to promote the participation of people with lived experiences and communities in the design and implementation of the proposed actions. This aspect could be of key importance to social peace and community recovery after the pandemic.
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Cities are uniquely positioned to understand local needs and respond rapidly to changing conditions to safeguard health. These changes require strong city leadership to implement multisectoral, health-relevant policies and public services that engage communities. The ...ght medbox">response to malaria must be an integral part of such policies and processes.
This framework supports the control and elimination of malaria in urban environments. It provides guidance for city leaders, health programmes and urban planners as they respond to the challenges of rapid urbanization in a targeted way. For each urban context, the strategic use of data can inform effective, tailored responses and help build resilience against the threat of malaria and other vector-borne diseases.
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This strategy defines the World Health Organization (WHO) vision and framework for supporting Member States to accelerate the development, implementation and monitoring of their National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) from 2022 to 2026. Th...e National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) are critical to ensure national capacities in health emergency prevention, preparedness, response and recovery are planned, built, strengthened and sustained in order to achieve national, regional and global health security and therefore keep the world safe, serve the vulnerable and promote health.
The strategy promotes, where existing, the use of existing national action plans for health security and not necessary the creation of an additional unique plan. This will avoid duplication and ensure maximum efficiency in domestic resourcing and operationalization efficiency while harnessing external buy-in to support national health priorities.
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Through technical consultations with countries and partners, WHO has led the development of Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics. Version 1.0. The Module, currently available as an ad...vanced draft, builds on previous pandemic lessons and guidance, and has the following new elements:
It presents an integrated and efficient respiratory pathogen pandemic planning approach covering both novel pathogens and those known to have pandemic potential;
It enables coherence in addressing pathogen-agnostic and pathogen-specific elements for better preparedness;
It gives an organizing framework including operational stages and triggers for escalation and de-escalation between pandemic preparedness and response periods;
It contextualizes 12 IHR (2005) core capacities within the five components of health emergency preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR), from the respiratory threats perspective; and
It describes the critical sectors for respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness to trigger multisectoral collaboration.
WHO will finalize and publish this Module after a global technical meeting that will be held on 24-26 April 2023.
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History has shown that governments tend to deprioritize environmental commitments during times of financial and public crises as they work to mitigate immediate needs—and the age of COVID-19 has been no different. Even though human interaction with wildlife is believed to be the cause of the pande...mic, the focus on COVID’s fallout has deprioritized the importance of reversing the damage humans have done to the planet.
COVID has had a multifaceted and detrimental effect on environmental conservation. Not only has funding been diverted to deal with the pandemic, conservation-oriented organizations are operating with minimal staff or have closed entirely. People whose daily work it is to advance environmental science and protect the land and water have become ill or have been forced to stay home because of travel restrictions. Plastic use is at an all-time high.
The good news is that there is an unprecedented opportunity for philanthropy to recharge the effort to protect the planet. This Giving Smarter Guide examines the state of environmental philanthropy, and provides an overview of potential strategic starting points for philanthropy and impact capital to play a role in saving the planet. In addition to offering recommendations specific to the COVID-19 response, the Center for Strategic Philanthropy also asks the questions that philanthropists should consider at the start of their journey into the field of conservation philanthropy.
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This revision covers the main non-communicable diseases in Mozambique as well as the National Strategic Plan's aim to create a positive environment to minimize or eliminate the exposure to risk factors and guarantee access to care.
The Global vector control response 2017–2030 (GVCR) provides a new strategy to strengthen vector control worldwide through increased capacity, improved surveillance, better coordination and integrated action across sectors and diseases.
In Ma...y 2017, the World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA 70.16, which calls on Member States to develop or adapt national vector control strategies and operational plans to align with this strategy.
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The scale of international migration in the WHO European Region has increased substantially in the last decade. The dynamics of large-scale migration pose specific challenges and opportunities to health systems, and responses will differ from countr...y to country. Strengthening health system responses is one of the priority areas in the 2016 Strategy and action plan for refugee and migrant health in the WHO European Region. Its agreed actions include the identification and mapping of practices for developing and delivering health services that respond to the needs of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. This compendium aims to collect and present some of these practices in the form of case studies. Selected in 2016, the case studies reflect experience from different levels of administration in a variety of European countries, and during the different phases of the migration journey.
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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 progress 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.
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To understand the national situation, Ethiopia did a situation assessment, launched its first strategy in 2011, and took action to contain AMR, as detailed in the blue boxes found throughout this strategy. This updated version of the strategy was in respon...se to the revised health and medicines policies, health sector transformation plan, and the resolutions of the 68th World Health Assembly
of May 2015 and so that Ethiopia’s efforts could be coordinated with global initiatives in the prevention and containment of AMR.
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