Almost two years after the signing of the Political Accord for Peace and Reconciliation (APPR), the Central African population is still hostage to an unstable and unpredictable security environment. Continuing conflicts in several areas of the country, structural weaknesses combined with the socio-e...conomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the devastating effects of natural disasters have plunged 2.6 million people into dire needs. Of this total, 1.6 million have severe humanitarian needs, a figure unmatched for five years, reflecting a deterioration in the physical and mental well-being and living conditions of populations across the country.
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Since the launch of the 2012–2020 World Health Organization (WHO) road map for the control, elim-ination and eradication of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) (1), considerable progress against NTDs has been made. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of people requiring interventions against NTDs glo...bally fell by 600 million, and 42 countries, areas and territories eliminated at least one NTD (2). In January 2021, a new NTD road map for 2021–2030 (2) was launched, setting future targets and mile-stones for 20 diseases and disease groups. The road map also sets cross-cutting targets, including for strengthened capacity of national health systems to deliver interventions through existing infrastructure.
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The Compendium of data and evidence-related tools for use in TB planning and programming was developed as a companion document to the People-centred framework for tuberculosis programme planning and prioritization – user guide, published by the World Health Organization (WHO)... in 2019. The compendium is intended to support implementation of the people-centred framework user guide. It can also be used independently to inform decisions taken by national tuberculosis (TB) programmes about the implementation of the tools included in this document.
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Urbanization, land use, global trade and industrialization have led to profound and negative impacts on nature, biodiversity and ecosystems across the world. The ongoing depletion of natural resources not only afects environmental conditions but also has an enormous impact on the well-being and secu...rity of societies.
This report provides an overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health.
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The World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are part of a group of agencies working together to accelerate progress towards the health-related SDGs through the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All. Understanding patterns of inequal...ities in these diseases is essential for taking strategic, evidence-informed action to realize our shared vision of ending the epidemics of HIV, TB and malaria.
This report presents the first comprehensive analysis of the magnitude and patterns of socioeconomic, demographic and geographic inequalities in disease burden and access to services for prevention and treatment.
The results confirm there have been improvements in service coverage and decreased disease burden at the national level over the past decade. But they also reveal an uncomfortable reality: unfair inequalities between population subgroups within countries are widespread and have remained largely unchanged over the past decade. For some disease indicators, inequalities are even worsening.
Moreover, the report points to the persistent lack of available data to fully understand inequality patterns in HIV, TB and malaria. Collecting data to improve the monitoring of inequalities in these diseases is vital to develop targeted responses for impact.
There are, encouragingly, isolated successes in reducing inequities. Change is possible when deliberate action is taken to reach disadvantaged populations.
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This document synthesizes key elements of the World Health Organization (WHO) normative guidance on health policy and system support for community health worker (CHW) programmes and their application for HIV programmes. Building on relevant elements of HIV guidelines, tools and evidence identified b...y experts, it provides recommendations on tasks and roles that can be performed by CHWs (including for HIV), identifies the policy and system supports to optimize CHW performance, and gives examples of best practice. Its purpose is to inform the optimal design and delivery of CHW programmes targeting – either specifically or as part of a broader approach – the scale-up and sustainability of HIV services.
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The report offers a snapshot of the drivers behind the persistent exclusion of persons with disabilities and proposes a framework to build an actionable agenda building on promising practices available in the region. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the urgent need to build more inclusive and res...ilient societies. The region has shown its resilience in recovering from many crises in the past. Today, we are at a crucial flection point where it is clear that universal policies and economic growth alone are insufficient to eradicate the remaining pockets of exclusion. A disability-inclusive recovery should be at the core of the region’s rebuilding strategy. This matters in its own right but is also of utmost importance for the sustainability of the region.
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The Planetary Health Report Card is a student-driven, metric-based initiative to inspire planetary health and sustainable healthcare education engagement in medical schools. In addition to inspiring expansion of medical school curricula, we hope to inspire medical schools to expand research efforts,... engage with communities most affected by climate change and environmental injustice, support passionate medical students who are trying to organize around planetary health at the institutional level, and implement sustainable practices. A set of metrics in these five category areas allows students and faculty to conduct a needs assessment at their medical school.
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Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 2020, 00, 1–5
doi: 10.1093/tropej/fmaa072
Brief Repor
A national faecal examination of 27 729 schoolchildren from 395 schools carried out in
2008 indicated that intestinal parasitic worms affected an estimated five million (56.8%)
children in Kenya. Existing evidence shows that worm infections lead to reduced literacy
levels due to impaired growth a...nd physical fitness.
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Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience a high disease burden for epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition.The authors evaluate the cost-effectiveness of community health workers (CHWs) to improve adherence to medication for epilepsy in South Africa. They found that utilizing CHWs to i...mprove medication adherence was cost-effective.
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By almost any measure, human health is better now than at any time in history. Life expectancy has soared from 47 years in 1950–1955, to 69 years in 2005–2010, and death rates in children younger than 5 years of age have decreased substantially, from 214 per thousand live births in 1950–1955, ...to 59 in 2005–2010. But these gains in human health have come at a high price: the degradation of nature’s ecological systems on a scale never seen in human history. A growing body of evidence shows that the health of humanity is intrinsically linked to the health of the environment, but by its actions humanity now threatens to destabilise the Earth’s key life-support systems.
As a Commission, we conclude that the continuing degradation of natural systems threatens to reverse the health gains seen over the last century. In short, we have mortgaged the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present.
Despite present limitations, the Sustainable Development Goals provide a great opportunity to integrate health and sustainability through the judicious selection of relevant indicators relevant to human wellbeing, the enabling infrastructure for development, and the supporting natural systems, together with the need for strong governance.
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WHO recently conducted a survey to assess the availability and cost of a national tracer list of essential medicines in the outpatient sector in Ukraine using a new collection tool – the WHO Essential Medicines and Health Products Price and Availability Monitoring Mobile Application. This tool fac...ilitates rapid and inexpensive data collection at the facility level.
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The Lancet Volume 397, ISSUE 10269, P129-170, January 09, 2021
The One Health approach can help achieve progress and promotes synergies on national and global priorities by generating synergies at the human-animal-environmental interface. While evidence is still scare, it is likely that the approach is highly cost-effective and improves effectiveness of core pu...blic health systems, through reducing morbidity, mortality, and economic costs of disease outbreaks. It also contributes to economic development through strengthening public health systems at the human-animal-environment interface protects health, agricultural production, and
ecosystem services
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