The aim of the WHO QualityRights tool kit is to support countries in assessing and
improving the quality and human rights of their mental health a...nd social care facilities.
The tool kit is based on an extensive international review by people with mental disabilities
and their organizations. It has been pilot-tested in low-, middle- and high-income
countries and is designed to be applied in all of these resource settings.
In this tool kit, the term ‘people with mental disabilities’ can include those with mental,
neurological or intellectual impairments and those with substance use disorders.
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Global actions to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR) include optimising the use of antimicrobial medicines in human and animal health. In countr...ies with weak healthcare regulation, this requires a greater understanding of the drivers of antibiotic use from the perspective of providers and consumers. In Bangladesh, there is limited research on household decision-making and healthcare seeking in relation to antibiotic use and consumption for humans and livestock. Knowledge is similarly lacking on factors influencing the supply and demand for antibiotics among qualified and unqualified healthcare providers. The aim of this study is to conduct integrated research on household decision-making for healthcare and antibiotic use, as well as the awareness, behaviours and priorities of healthcare providers and sellers of antibiotics to translate into policy development and implementation
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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 resourc...es not only afects environmental conditions but also has an enormous impact on the well-being and security 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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This report summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the links between exposure to air pollution and adverse health effects in children. It is... intended to inform and motivate individual and collective action by health care professionals to prevent damage to children’s health from exposure to air pollution.
Air pollution is a major environmental health threat. Exposure to fine particles in both the ambient environment and in the household causes about seven million premature deaths each year. Ambient air pollution alone imposes enormous costs on the global economy, amounting to more than US$ 5 trillion in total welfare losses in 2013.
This public health crisis is receiving more attention, but one critical aspect is often overlooked: how air pollution affects children in uniquely damaging ways. Recent data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that air pollution has a vast and terrible impact on child health and survival. Globally, 93% of all children live in environments with air pollution levels above the WHO guidelines (see the full report, Air pollution and child health: prescribing clean air. More than one in every four deaths of children under 5 years of age is directly or indirectly related to environmental risks. Both ambient air pollution and household air pollution contribute to respiratory tract infections that resulted in 543 000 deaths in children under the age of 5 years in 2016.
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Hepatitis B (HBV) infection is a major public health problem and cause of chronic liver disease.
The 2024 HBV guidelines provide updated evidence-i...an>nformed recommendations on key priority topics. These include expanded and simplified treatment criteria for adults but now also for adolescents; expanded eligibility for antiviral prophylaxis for pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV; improving HBV diagnostics through use of point-of-care HBV DNA viral load and reflex approaches to HBV DNA testing; who to test and how to test for HDV infection; and approaches to promote delivery of high-quality HBV services, including strategies to promote adherence to long-term antiviral therapy and retention in care.
The 2024 guidelines include 11 updated chapters with new recommendations and also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as those on treatment monitoring and surveillance for liver cancer.
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The epidemiology of wheeze in children, when assessed by questionnaires, is dependent on parents' understanding of the term “wheeze”.
In a que...stionnaire survey of a random population sample of 4,236 children aged 6–10 yrs, parents' definition of wheeze was assessed. Predictors of a correct definition were determined and the potential impact of incorrect answers on prevalence estimates from the survey was assessed.
Current wheeze was reported by 13.2% of children. Overall, 83.5% of parents correctly identified “whistling or squeaking” as the definition of wheeze; the proportion was higher for parents reporting wheezy children (90.4%). Frequent attacks of reported wheeze (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 3.0), maternal history of asthma (OR 1.5) and maternal education (OR 1.5) were significantly associated with a correct answer, while the converse was found for South Asian ethnicity (OR 0.6), first language not English (OR 0.6) and living in a deprived neighbourhood (OR 0.6).
In summary, the present study showed that misunderstanding could lead to an important bias in assessing the prevalence of wheeze, resulting in an underestimation in children from South Asian and deprived family backgrounds. Prevalence estimates for the most severe categories of wheeze might be less affected by this bias and questionnaire surveys on wheeze should incorporate measures of parents' understanding of the term wheeze.
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Spread of resistance to antimicrobial agents (AMR) does not know national borders and has reached dimensions, which require immediate actions at the national, regional and global levels.
Antibiotic resistance ...box">is a natural biological response to improper use of antimicrobial agents (AMA); increasing number of essential drugs, which become ineffective, contributing to selection, survival and replication of resistant strains of microorganisms. When chosen antimicrobials prove to be ineffective, the second- or third-line drugs need to be used although
in the majority of cases these drugs are more expensive, less safe and not always available.
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AIDS Research and Therapy 2015, 12:12 (24 April 2015)
This guidance provides an overview of interventions to improve early diagnosis of TB and treatment completion in these populations, as well as fact...ors to consider when developing programmes for health communication, awareness and education, and programme monitoring and evaluation
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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents occurs as a result of a child’s exposure to one or more traumatic events: actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual vio...lence. The victim may experience the event, witness it, learn about it from close family members or friends, or experience repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the event. Potentially traumatic events include physical or sexual assaults, natural disasters, and accidents.
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The key aim of this guideline is to present recommendations based on a critical evaluation of the evidence on emerging digital health interventions that are contributing to health system ...s="attribute-to-highlight medbox">improvements, based on an assessment of the benefits, harms, acceptability, feasibility, resource use and equity considerations.
This guideline urges readers to recognize that digital health interventions are not a substitute for functioning health systems, and that there are significant limitations to what digital health is able to address
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Updated 17 April 2020
Improving care for women during pregnancy and around the time of childbirth to prevent and treat pre-eclampsia and eclampsia is a necessary step towards the achievement of the... health targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Efforts to prevent and reduce morbidity and mortality due to these conditions can help address the profound inequities in maternal and perinatal health globally. To achieve this, healthcare providers, health managers, policy makers and other stakeholders need up-to-date and evidence-informed recommendations to guide clinical policies and practices.
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WHO recommends that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) be offered as an additional prevention choice for HIV-negative individuals at substantial risk of HIV infection as part of combination prevention ...approaches.
HIV drug resistance has been rarely reported among PrEP users who tested HIV positive in randomized controlled trials or open-label studies. However, PrEP-selected HIV drug resistance could potentially negatively impact the effectiveness of treatment options among PrEP users who acquire HIV, since there is a potential for overlapping resistance profiles between antiretroviral drugs used for both PrEP and first-line antiretroviral therapy.
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Community-based strategies play a significant role in many health systems in low- and middle-income countries, especially ...-highlight medbox">in light of critical shortages in the health workforce. The term community health worker has been used to refer to volunteers and salaried, professional or lay health workers with a wide range of training, experience, scope of practice and integration in health systems. In the context of this study, we use the term community-based practitioner (CBPs) to reflect the diverse nature of these cadres of health workers.
CBPs provide preventive, promotive, curative and palliative services across a range of areas, including reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, control of other endemic diseases, and noncommunicable diseases. Significant evidence has emerged over the past two decades on their effectiveness, which has triggered interest in the potential to use their services to expand access to care, in particular in rural and underserved areas where deployment and retention of more qualified health workers is problematic. Calls have been made to integrate CBP programmes in human resources and health strategies, and to scale up rapidly the extent and coverage of CBP initiatives.
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