The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated, describes current healthcare waste management syst...ems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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2nd edition. This toolkit provides step-by-step guidance to NTD programme managers and partners on how to engage and work collaboratively with the WASH community to improve delivery of water, sanitation and hygiene ...t medbox">services to underserved population affected by many neglected tropical diseases. The toolkit draws on tools and practices used in the delivery of coordinated and integrated programmes for control, elimination and eradication of NTDs. This second edition include revisions and new tools based on experiences of using the toolkit in more than 20 countries.
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Mental health problems are common and cause great suffering to individuals and communities around the world. They have a significant impact not only on...pan> the physical and mental health of those affected but also on their families and the communities they live in. At the same time, all communities have their own traditional mechanisms for support and contain a range wide of resources that can be helpful in preventing mental health conditions from developing, promoting positive mental health and supporting the recovery of people that are struggling with a mental health condition.
In the wider context, people living with a mental health condition are often excluded from their communities and experience various violations to their basic human rights (discrimination, violence, exclusion from employment opportunities). The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the mean prevalence of global mental health disorders is 10.8% while the prevalence in emergency settings is 22.1% in any conflict-affected population.
During emergencies and crisis, the stigma, exclusion and discrimination towards people living with mental health conditions is often higher, which can cause isolation and protection issues. Communities can play a crucial role in promoting mental health as well as enhancing primary care and access. Their role is to help reduce mental health inequalities by providing community resources that connect people to community-based resources and by providing mental health education. This also helps to reduce the massive mental health treatment gap.
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This report is not a country scorecard. Rather, its purpose is to act as a compass to guide progress towards health in the SDGs.
There has been a significant improvement in the state of health in ...the region with healthy life expectancy - time spent in full health - in the region increasing from 50.9 years to 53.8 between 2012 and 2015 - the most marked increase of any region in the world.
What is making Africans sick is changing. The top killers are still lower respiratory infections, HIV and diarrhoeal disease and countries have routinely focused on preventing and treating this trio, often through specialized programmes. The payoff has been significant declines in deaths due to these diseases. There has been a 50% reduction in the burden of disease caused by what have been the top 10 killers since 2000 and death rates have dropped from 87.7 to 51.1 deaths per 100,000 persons between 2000 and 2015...
Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer are now claiming more lives with a person aged 30 to 70 in the region having a one in five chance of dying from a noncommunicable disease (NCDs).
Countries are specifically failing to provide essential services to two critical age groups – adolescents and the elderly...
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Bull World Health Organ 2020;98:773–780
Universal health coverage (UHC) depends on a strong primary ...>health-care
system. To be successful, primary health care must be expanded at community and household levels as much of the world’s population still lacks access to health facilities for basic services. Abundant evidence shows that community-based interventions are effective for improving health-care utilization and outcomes when integrated with facility-based services. Community involvement is the cornerstone of local, equitable and integrated primary health care.
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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 als...o 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 document is for humanitarian health actors working at national and sub-national level in countries facing humanitarian emergencies. It applies to Health Cluster partners, including governmental... and non-governmental health service providers.
Based on the IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC, 2007), it gives an overview of essential knowledge that humanitarian health actors should have about mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian emergencies.
This document by the IASC Reference Group for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support was developed in consultation with the IASC Global Health Cluster.
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Version 2, January 2016
The primary purpose of this document is to provide 3MDG stakeholders with some essential information on the MNCH core-indicators for 3MDG, which were derived from the 3MDG Logical Framework, Data Dictionary for ...ass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">Health Service Indicators (2014 June, DoPH, MoH), A Guide for Monitoring and Evaluating Child Health Programmes (MEASURE Evaluation, September 2005) and Monitoring Emergency Obstetric Care (WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA/AMDD). Partners are strongly encouraged to integrate the MNCH indicators into their ongoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities.
These indicators are designed to help Partners assess the current state of their activities, their progress towards achieving their targets, and contribution towards the national response. This guideline is designed to improve the quality and consistency of data collected at the township level, which will enhance the accuracy of conclusions drawn when the data are aggregated.
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The WHO Regional Office for Europe, the WHO Collaborating Centre on Culture and Health at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) and the National Institute of Mental ...hlight medbox">Health (Czechia) convened a workshop on culture and reform of mental health care in central and eastern Europe on 2–3 October 2017 in Klecany, Czechia. The aim of this workshop was to improve understanding of the key cultural aspects that impact and drive mental health-care reform in the central and eastern European region. This report outlines the key points and recommendations made by participants in relation to this objective.
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This paper summarizes the findings for the Latin American and Caribbean countries of the WPA Task Force on Steps, Obstacles and Mistakes to Avoid in the Implementation of Community Mental Health Car...e. It presents an overview of the provision of mental health services in the region; describes key experiences in Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Jamaica and Mexico; and discusses the lessons learned in developing community mental health care.
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Recovery from COVID-19 has been challenging in Guatemala. As a result of the prolonged socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the average poverty rate nationwide has increased by almost 5%. This rise in the poverty level further exacerbates preexist...ing vulnerabilities and erodes the limited safety nets available to vulnerable populations. Year after year, recurrent disasters and humanitarian crises aggravate the historic social gaps that result in high levels of vulnerability, multidimensional poverty, and overall deprivation of essential services among hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. According to the World Risk Report 2020, Guatemala is the tenth country with the highest level of exposure to disaster worldwide. Globally, it ranks 28th regarding vulnerability according to the 2021 INFORM’s risk index and 62nd in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021.
In 2020, Guatemala faced a record-breaking and devastating hurricane season with extreme rainfall, catastrophic winds, and deadly landslides, from which the country has not yet recovered. Unfortunately, recurrent extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Julia that hit Central America in early October 2022, progressively but deeply eroded a weak health infrastructure and local health systems.
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Barriers to the prompt and effective diagnosis and treatment of malaria exist at both the community and health facility level. Household surveys measure malaria case management at the population level with standard indicators that assess treatment-s...eeking behavior, access to diagnostic testing, and access to appropriate treatment. Performance on these indicators varies widely from country to country. Among countries with Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) or Malaria Indicator Surveys (MIS) completed between 2014 and 2016, advice and treatment was sought for a median of 47% of children under age 5 with fever.
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The COVID-19 pandemic poses an additional and critical challenge in a fragile humanitarian context, where the population is already highly vulnerable and lives in often overcrowded settlements where distancing is impossible, and with limited access to basic ...">health services and hygiene. Further spread of COVID-19 in the EHoA region will burden the already complex humanitarian situation with devastating consequences.
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WASH Ex-Post Evaluation Series - Water Communications and Knowledge Management (CKM) Project
This evaluation examines the sustainability of selected components of the USAID/Indonesia Environmental Services Program (ESP), which was implemented f...rom 2004–2010. Among other objectives, this activity sought to improve health and livelihoods of Indonesians through enhanced and expanded access to key environmental services.
Following up on the program seven years after it ended, this evaluation addresses the sustainability of ESP’s capacity-building efforts with Indonesian municipal water utilities, known as Perusahaan Daerah Air Minum (PDAM), and financial mechanisms to improve utility management and expanded water access in urban areas.
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A new frontier for integrated care.
Until now, most efforts to promote integrated care have focused on bridging the gaps between health and social care or between primary and secondary care. But th...e NHS five year forward view has highlighted a third dimension – bringing together physical and mental health. This report makes a compelling case for this ‘new frontier’ for integration. It gives service users’ perspectives on what integrated care would look like and highlights ten areas that offer some of the biggest opportunities for improving quality and controlling costs.
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With this quick reference guide, providers can easily recognize diseases and side effects related to climate change, implement appropriate management and provide guidance to exposed populations, provide up-to-date information on the relationship bet...ween the adverse effects of certain drugs and the worsening of climate-sensitive health conditions, and determine the possible consequences of climate change for health services. This book addresses key meteorological risks, as well as the health conditions which they may influence, grouped by specific clinical areas.
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Core Indicators 2019: Health Trends in the Americas starts with a demographic overview of the Americas to demonstrate how the Region has changed over 25 years. These key demographic indicators provide valuable context to better understand the popula...tion’s characteristics and their impact on health. Brief narratives accompany the graphics to highlight important information.
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The present book deals not only with emergency response, but also with measures designed to reduce the impact of disasters on environmental health ...infrastructure, such as water supply and sanitation facilities. It also aims to strengthen the ability of people to withstand the disruption of their accustomed infrastructure and systems for environmental health (e.g. shelter, water supply, sanitation, vector control etc.) and to recover rapidly.
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A WHO Guideline for Emergency Risk Communication (ERC) policy and practice.
Recent public health emergencies, such as the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa (2014–2015), the emergence of the Zika virus syndrome in 2015–2016 and multi-...country yellow fever outbreaks in Africa in 2016, have highlighted major challenges and gaps in how risk is communicated during epidemics and other health emergencies. The challenges include the rapid transformation in communications technology, including the near-universal penetration of mobile telephones, the widespread use and increasingly powerful influence of digital media which has had an impact on ‘traditional’ media (newspapers, radio and television), and major changes in how people access and trust health information. Important gaps include considerations of context – the social, economic, political and cultural factors influencing people’s perception of risk and their risk-reduction behaviours.
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Submitted to the US Agency for International Development by the Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services (SIAPS) Program. Arlington, VA: Management Sciences for Health. Submitted ...to the United Nations Children’s Fund by JSI, Arlington, VA: JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc.
This guide will assist program managers, service providers, and technical experts when conducting a quantification of commodity needs for the 13 reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health commodities prioritized by the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children. This quantification supplement should be used with the main guide—Quantification of Health Commodities: A Guide to Forecasting and Supply Planning for Procurement. * This supplement describes the steps in forecasting consumption of these supplies when consumption and service data are not available; after which, to complete the quantification, the users should refer to the main quantification guide for the supply planning step.
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