The immediate objective of the country visit to Cameroon was to ensure that the country is as operationally ready as possible to effectively
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and safely detect, investigate and report potential Ebola virus disease cases and to mount an effective response that will prevent a larger outbreak. After technical working group meetings, field visits, a “table-top” exercise and a hospital-based simulation exercises were undertaken.
Key strengths and weaknesses were identified, and the following areas for improvement were proposed to the Ministry of Health: coordination, surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, rapid response teams, case management, social mobilization, laboratory, points of entry, budget, logistics.
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No publication year indicated
The specific objectives of the plan are to:
- Scale up evidence-based, cost effective interventions through effective strategies within a HSS approach and pro
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vide equitable coverage with quality.
- Reduce neonatal mortality by improved home-based newborn care, early identification of sick newborns and improved access to institutional newborn care of adequate quality.
- Reduce common childhood illness related mortality (due to pneumonia and diarrhoea in all areas and malaria in endemic areas) by improving key family and community practices, community-based early diagnosis and management and referral care for complicated cases.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is a multiplier of vulnerability, compounding threats to food insecurity, while exposing weaknesses in food and health systems. It is severely undermining the capacity of commu
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nities to cope in times of crisis and has become a stress test for political and economic stability.
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With Safety Tips for Conducting Community Meetings
Updated July 2020
This document includes key Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) considerations during shifting lockdown measures, safety measures for conducting in-person community
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meetings, and a template that brings both of these considerations together to help agencies adapt their RCCE approaches as these measures shift.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging health systems across the world. Rapidly increasing demand for care of people with COVID-19 is compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on the movement of people
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and supplies that disrupt the delivery of frontline health care for all people...
This guidance addresses the specific role of community-based health care in the pandemic context and outlines the adaptations needed to keep people safe, maintain continuity of essential services and ensure an effective response to COVID-19. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels and complements a range of other guidance, including that on priority public health interventions, facility-based care, and risk communication and community engagement in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Updated Interim guidance 29 July 2020
The provision of safe water, sanitation and waste management and hygienic conditions is essential for preventing an
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d for protecting human health during all infectious disease outbreaks, including of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Ensuring evidenced-based and consistently applied WASH and waste management practices in communities, homes, schools, marketplaces, and healthcare facilities will help prevent human-to-human transmission of pathogens including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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This report offers a summary of the provided support and recommendations on priority activities for IPC improvement at national and facility levels. The COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted areas for impro
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vement in the IPC programme at national and facility levels. Improvements in the IPC programme were achieved during the acute phase of the pandemic response. WHO will continue to support the Ministry Health of Ukraine and the Public Health Centre, as well as health facility managers and health-care providers, on the next steps to ensure the sustainability of progress achieved and to further enhance IPC in health-care settings.
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USAID funded/ Primary Health Care Project in Iraq (PHCPI) in cooperation with Iraqi Ministry of Health (MOH) aims to promote Primary Health Care (PHC) services provided by Primary Health Care Clinics (PHCCs) in Iraq in order
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to achieve the development goal in enhancing the PHC provision system through achieving the following results: First: Enhancing management and operations systems, which support clinical care. Second: Improving the quality of the delivered PHC according to quality standards. Third: Enhancing and expanding local community participation and partnership in PHC. Maintaining the medical & service devices in the hospitals and health clinics besides making them function according to the adapted standard specifications, lead to providing most efficient medical services for people and accomplish the purposes for which they were invented. Maintenance and repair of facilities and infrastructure, and keeping them safe and clean are also of the important approaches for the results referred to in (first) and (second) above. This can be achieved through enhancing and developing facilities, and medical & service devices management. This guideline seeks to develop work mechanism for engineers, technicians and the PHCCs’ facilities and medical & service equipment maintenance workers; clarify the concept of maintenance, its importance and classifications in health area, its planning and implementation, the tasks and duties of other directorates and departments of the Ministry in relation to all kinds of maintenance. Add to that preparing documents and forms, which are used in documenting and monitoring the steps required to be accomplished in the maintenance of PHCCs’ facilities and medical & service equipment, for the equipment to perform the best possible services for people and get their satisfaction.
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This collection of case studies on risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) from 18 different country/area level public health partners in the WHO European Region provides evidence of numerous results achieved
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and lessons learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. RCCE has not traditionally been an area where evidence of challenges and solutions was documented. With this compendium, we wanted to collect and share this evidence to support decision-making in this area of work.
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One of the many gender inequities in the health and care workforce that COVID-19 has exposed is around the fit and design of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The rapid onset
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and scale of COVID-19 led to shortages of PPE in most countries, causing preventable infection and mortality among healthcare workers and others on the front lines. Even though most health workers are women, manufacturing specifications for medical PPE are usually drawn up based on the male body and there have been many reports of PPE not designed for women's bodies.
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Practical considerations
It provides more detailed and practical guidance for continuing services for each life stage across the life-course continuum. As such, both documents should be read and us
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ed together. The countries in South-East Asia and the Pacific regions would like to adapt the guidance within the national and sub-national continuity plans, based on the local situation of COVID-19 transmission, containment response and health system capacity.
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A new publication - Waste Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic: from response to recovery - reviews current practices for managing waste from healthcare facilities, households and quarantine loca
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tions accommodating people with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19. Jointly produced by UNEP, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and the International Environmental Technology Centre, the report considers various approaches, identifies best practices and technologies, and provides recommendations for policy-makers and practitioners to improve waste management, over the long term.
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COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. Everything has been impacted. How we live and interact with each other, how we work
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and communicate, how we move around and travel. Every aspect of our lives has been affected.
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This implementation brief addresses integration of HIV testing services into family planning (FP) services. It is intended as a practical resource for national health programmes seeking to introduce or scale up HIV testing
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and linkage to HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infection, and antiretroviral therapy services in FP.
This document highlights emerging good practices and country experiences of integrated HIV prevention and testing services within FP and advocates for increased linkage for FP clients to HIV services according to their needs. It also brings together information on models of integration of HIV testing into FP services, programme examples from east and southern Africa and guidance on the implementation monitoring process.
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Guidance Note. The recommended actions are presented under the different components (water supply, hygiene and hand washing, disinfection, solid waste management, latrine and wastewater management,
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and dead body management) of the defined Ebola Care Centre/Unit WASH package to complement community and house-to-house level interventions
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This brief considers the rationale for shielding individuals at high risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19 in low- and middleincome countries. It provides an overview of proposed approaches to
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shielding, discusses the categories of individuals who may be identified for shielding, and outlines the likely difficulties of these measures and ways to mitigate them.
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Six months in, the indirect impacts of COVID-19 take a toll on health, social and economic outcomes.
Annals of Global Health, 87(1), p.43. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.3269;
The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of mental health symptoms (anxiety, depression, and stress) in Bang
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ladesh and the factors associated with these symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They found that about 64%, 87%, and 61% of the respondents in Bangladesh reported high levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, respectively and this varied between divisions (regions), more in women, those who self-quarantined, and those that experienced classical symptoms of COVID-19. We think there is a need for mental health support in this population to minimise the long term effects.
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Background: Understanding the natural course of child and adolescent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has significant implications for the identification of, and intervention for, at-risk youth.
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We used a meta-analytic approach to examine longitudinal changes in youth PTSD prevalence and symptoms over the first 12 months posttrauma.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry57:8 (2016), pp 884–898
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The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in an evolving epidemiological context where some countries are experiencing a progressive decrease in HIV positivity in their testing programme as they are moving closer to the first 95 target. Distinguishing changes i
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n HIV testing services due to the COVID-19 pandemic from those resulting from evolving HIV testing strategies is crucial for adapting services and helping countries define their strategic mix of testing options moving forward. There is a need to focus, prioritize and plan for strategic efforts to prevent going further off the track toward achieving global targets and goals.
To support these efforts, WHO in partnership with ministries of health conducted an in-depth analysis of HIV testing services and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation prior to and during reported COVID-19 disruptions. Additional publicly available Global Fund and PEPFAR data was also reviewed and analysed. This analysis, and coordination with ministries of health, identified key service delivery adaptations utilized during COVID-19-related disruptions and formed the basis of this strategic guide.
This document focuses on current country needs, as well as plans for prioritization and potential surge support needs in the event of future disruptions. Although the data and implications are specific to sub-Saharan Africa, key principles and lessons can be applied elsewhere.
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