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 and supplies that disrupt the delivery of frontline health care for all people...
This g...uidance 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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This guidance note developed by UNICEF explains how the WASH sector can implement infection prevention and control measures in households and community settings. It focuses on reducing the exposure to the disease in vulnerable community settings and public spaces, and the transmission of the disease... in home and community settings hosting patients and contacts. This brief is available in English, Spanish, and French here.
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Mothers and healthcare workers who support them have many questions and concerns about whether it is safe for mothers with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 to be close to and breastfeed their babies during the pandemic.
To address their questions, WHO has released a list of Frequently asked question...s: Breastfeeding and COVID-19. The FAQ complements the WHO interim guidance: Clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection when COVID-19 is suspected and draws upon other WHO recommendations on infant and young child feeding.
The FAQs aim to provide information to healthcare workers supporting mothers and families in maternity services and community settings, and communicate how the interim guidance should be implemented. Additionally, the FAQs provide information about the protective effects of breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact, and the harmful effects of inappropriate use of infant formula milk.
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This document has been developed for the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean to establish a regional plan of action to support the countries of the Region to rapidly accelerate the scaling up of their capacities for the prevention and early detection of, and ... rapid response to, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as required under the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005). The regional plan is aligned with the WHO global 2019 novel coronavirus strategic preparedness and response plan, but tailored to the regional context.
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This What Matters? edition focuses on Covid-19 rumours circulating in the Rohingya camps of Cox’s Bazar. It explores some of the more common rumours, discusses sources and formats of information, presents community perspectives about rumours and communication, and suggests approaches to communicat...ing with the Rohingya community about Covid-19.
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The Internews Humanitarian Information Services Learning Collection communicates key lessons, best practices, and programmatic methodologies used by Internews’ humanitarian teams around the world.
Each module within the Learning Collection includes three parts: Context, Case Studies, and a How-To... Guide. The Context and Case Studies are packaged separately for ease of use.
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This document provides advice on personal protective measures on publictransport(e.g. bus, metro, train, commuter boats).
In the current absence of vaccine for COVID-19, public health response target breaking the chain of infection by focusing on the mode of transmission. This paper summarizes current evidence-base around the transmission dynamics, pathogenic, and clinical features of COVID-19, to critically identify i...f there are any gaps in the current IPC guidelines.
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The global COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented levels of disruption to education, impacting over 90% of the world’s student population: 1.54 billion children, including 743 million girls. School closures and the wider socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on communities and society also disrup...t children’s and young people’s normal support systems, leaving them more vulnerable to illnesses and child protection risks such as physical and humiliating punishment, sexual and gender-based violence, child marriage, child labour, child trafficking and recruitment and use in armed conflict. Girls and other marginalised groups, particularly those in displaced settings, are particularly affected.
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a systematic review and meta-analysis Derek K Chu et al. on behalf of the COVID-19 Systematic Urgent Review Group Effort (SURGE) study authors.
Published: The Lancet June 01, 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016S0140-6736(20)31142-9
'We did a systematic review of 172 observational studies in health-...care and non-health-care settings across 16 countries and six continents... Physical distancing of 1 m or more was associated with a much lower risk of infection, as was use of face masks (including N95 respirators or similar and surgical or similar masks [eg, 12–16-layer cotton or gauze masks]) and eye protection (eg, goggles or face shields)...'
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The WHO COVID-19 Clinical management: living guidance contains the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the clinical management of people with COVID-19. Providing guidance that is comprehensive and holistic for the optimal care of COVID-19 patients throughout their entire illness is ...important. The latest version of this living guideline is available in pdf format (via the ‘Download’ button) and via an online platform, and is updated regularly as new evidence emerges. No further updates to the previous existing recommendations were made in this latest version.
This updated (fifth) version contains 16 new recommendations for the rehabilitation of adults with post COVID-19 condition (see Chapter 24)
This updated (fourth) version contains three new recommendations regarding hospitalized patients with severe or critical COVID-19
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1 June 2020
Countries around the world are facing the challenge of increased demand for care of people with COVID-19, compounded by fear, misinformation and limitations on movement that disrupt the delivery of health care for all conditions. Maintaining essential health services: operational guidan...ce for the COVID-19 context recommends practical actions that countries can take at national, subregional and local levels to reorganize and safely maintain access to high-quality, essential health services in the pandemic context. It also outlines sample indicators for monitoring essential health services, and describes considerations on when to stop and restart services as COVID-19 transmission recedes and surges. This document expands on the content of pillar 9 of the COVID-19 strategic preparedness and response plan, supersedes the earlier Operational guidance for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak, and complements the recently-released Community-based health care, including outreach and campaigns, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is intended for decision-makers and managers at the national and subnational levels.
This is an update to COVID-19: Operational guidance for maintaining essential health services during an outbreak: Interim guidance, 25 March 2020
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This is the first version of the INEE technical guideline to support education during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a living document that will be regularly updated to meet the learning and well-being needs of children, adolescents, youth, teachers, caregivers and other education personnel affected b...y Covid-19.
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Infection prevention and control (IPC) practices are of critical importance in protecting the function of healthcare services at all levels and mitigating the impact on vulnerable populations. Although the management of possible COVID-19 cases is usually guided by national policies for specific heal...thcare facilities, community transmission is currently widespread in most EU/EEA countries and the UK, therefore primary healthcare providers in the community such as GPs, dentists and pharmacists are at risk of being exposed to COVID-19.
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This guideline is for:
• health and care practitioners
• health and care staff involved in planning and delivering services
• commissioners.
The recommendations bring together:
• existing national and international guidance and policies
• advice from specialists working in the NHS fr...om across the UK. These include people with
expertise and experience of treating patients for the specific health conditions covered by the
guidance during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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Updated 2022. This guide addresses the care pathway from presentation of the patient to a health facility to patient discharge. It considers different levels of disease severity, from asymptomatic individuals to critically ill patients. Accounting for variations in the benefits and harms of chest im...aging in different situations, remarks are provided to describe the circumstances under which each recommendation would benefit patients. The guide also includes implementation considerations for different settings, provides suggestions for impact monitoring and evaluation and identifies knowledge gaps meriting further research.
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This document will be continuously updated. Version as of April 27th, 2020
Migrant and displaced children are at heightened risk to the immediate and secondary impacts of COVID-19. They often live in cramped conditions with limited access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), may be in immig...ration detention or “left behind,” live with disabilities, unaccompanied or separated from their families, and can be hardest to reach with accurate information in a language they understand. Migrant workers and refugees can live in the most disadvantaged urban areas, where access to essential services is already limited. Refugee and migrant children may also be prevented from accessing essential services due to legal, documentation, linguistic or safety barriers. Further, the misinformation on the spread of COVID-19 exacerbates the xenophobia and discrimination that migrant and displaced children and their families already face.
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The compendium provides guidance on low-cost handwashing facilities that can be widely used in low and middle-income countries. We hope that this can be shared extensively as governments and agencies tackle the crisis in low and middle-income countries where handwashing facilities are urgently neede...d in households, communities, schools and healthcare facilities.
The compendium includes information and further reading on: handwashing facilities – including facilities that are accessible for all, environmental cues to reinforce handwashing behaviours, physical distancing hygiene promotion.
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As this report shows,
reports of child abuse and of children
witnessing violence between their
parents and caregivers have increased.
Ending violence against children is
increasingly within our reach. D
The report – Global Status Report on Preventing Violence Against Children 2020 – is the first of its kind, charting progress in 155 countries against the “INSPIRE” framework, a set of seven strategies for preventing and responding to violence against children. The report signals a clear need... in all countries to scale up efforts to implement them. While nearly all countries (88%) have key laws in place to protect children against violence, less than half of countries (47%) said these were being strongly enforced.
The report includes the first ever global homicide estimates specifically for children under 18 years of age – previous estimates were based on data that included 18 to 19-year olds. It finds that, in 2017, around 40,000 children were victims of homicide.
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