To enhance health co-benefits across urban policies which tackle air pollution and climate change, WHO, in cooperation with various international, national, and local partners, implemented the Urban Health Initiative (UHI) pilot project in Accra, Ghana. The Initiative prompted the health sector to u...se its influential position to demonstrate to decision-makers and the public the full range of health, environmental and economic benefits that can be achieved from implementing local emission reduction and energy access policies and strategies. Policy tracking, although not always considered, is a fundamental component of this procedure. It assesses the planning, implementation and progress of a policy to refine or adjust policies with the final objective of increasing the likelihood of the policy being successful. This report is an outcome of the last component of the UHI model process, Policy tracking and monitoring outcomes. The report proposes a framework for tracking urban health policies, with a special focus on the impacts of air quality and energy access on human health and well-being in African countries, giving some examples from the pilot project in Accra. The report also provides resources to survey air quality in cities and other tools to assess public health and the environmental impacts of urban policies and monitor or track their effects.
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The WHO Living guideline: Drugs to prevent COVID-19 contains the Organization’s most up-to-date recommendations for the use of drugs to prevent COVID-19. The latest version of this living guideline is available in pdf format (via the ‘Download’ button) and via an online platform.
Guidelines ...regarding the use of drugs to treat (rather than prevent) COVID-19 are included in a separate WHO document, Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline, that can via an online platform and in pdf format (or click ‘PDF’ in top right corner of online platform). Guidelines regarding the clinical management of COVID-19 patients are included in a further document, COVID-19 Clinical management: Living guideline, that can be accessed via an online platform and in pdf format (or click ‘PDF’ in top right corner of online platform).
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The PS Centre has released three publications addressing the need for MHPSS tools and guidance in Ukraine and surrounding countries.
The Introduction to Psychological First Aid, presents a training module on basic psychological first aid skills for people affected by the international armed confl...ict in Ukraine which can be delivered in four hours. It is an adaption of another PS Centre publication, Training in Psychological First Aid for Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Module 1. An introduction to PFA.
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Forests, trees and green spaces, hereinafter ‘forests and trees’ for short, provide multiple goods and services that contribute to human health. These include medicines, nutritious foods and other non-wood forest products (NWFPs). Globally, at least 3.5 billion people use NWFPs, including medici...nal plants, which are particularly important for vulnerable groups and Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs).
During periods of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for forest products typically increases amongst these groups. Forests and trees also contribute to better health by playing a role in climate change
mitigation and adaptation, contributing to regulating the carbon cycle, but also moderating the micro-climate, filtering pollutants from the air and protecting settlements against the effects of extreme events such as droughts and flash floods.
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Africa is off track to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and lags behind in building resilient health systems
and health security, against a backdrop of limited resources. The world envisaged a significant role for governments
in funding the Sustainable Development Agenda, but inadeq...uate funding for health in African countries is
persistent, despite additional continental commitments to address the problem. When commitments to global health
targets and available fiscal space do not align, innovation is warranted.
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HIV, viral hepatitis and STI epidemics, particularly among people who inject drugs and other key populations, continue to be fuelled by laws and policies criminalizing sex work; drug use or possession; diverse forms of gender expression and sexuality; stigma and discrimination; gender discrimination...; violence; lack of community empowerment and other violations of human rights. These sociostructural factors limit access to health services, constrain how these services are
delivered and diminish their effectiveness.
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The military offensive by the Russian Federation in Ukraine which began February 2022 has triggered one of the world’s fastest-growing displacement and humanitarian crisis, with geopolitical and economic ripples felt across the globe. The ongoing war has caused large-scale disruptions to the deliv...ery of health services and a near-collapse of the health system. But the crisis also saw an extraordinary mobilization and crisis response to a health emergency by WHO and its more than 100 partners.
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Each humanitarian setting provides distinct opportunities and challenges for actors to coordinate and collaborate at strategic and operational levels. The Health and Protection Joint Operational Framework has been developed to ensure that the health and protection response during humanitarian emerge...ncies can adapt to each environment and is adequately coordinated to ensure high-quality services to meet the needs of affected individuals and at-risk groups based on their situation or vulnerabilities.
The Health and Protection JOF was conceived in 2019 as a collaboration between the Global Health Cluster (GHC), the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) and its Areas of Responsibility (AoRs), the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC MHPSS RG), and the Inter-Agency Working Group for Reproductive Health in Crisis (IAWG), in addition to key technical experts.
A Steering Group (SG) comprised of representatives from each of these entities guided the framework through a joint global analysis of good practices, gaps, and barriers to integrated and inter-sectoral response coordination. This included a mixed methods review of policy and practice, a survey of humanitarian experts, multiple case studies, structured stakeholder interviews, and field visits. This exercise produced a zero-draft which was then reviewed by field practitioners in three operational contexts to clarify and fully coordinate its operationally focused lens. Finally, the JOF was reviewed by the SG including via a series of consultations in early 2023 to consolidate the current framework.
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This publication is a compendium of 49 country examples highlighting efforts in improving refugees’ and migrants’ health following the adoption of the WHO Global Action Plan on Promoting the health of refugees and migrants at the seventy-second World Health Assembly, in May 2019.
A lot has happened this year. While we continued to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, we were hit by disease outbreaks and
humanitarian crises. Yet, despite these challenges, we marched on, resolute in resolving critical health systems issues to increase
access to quality healthcare services. To furth...er our vision and bring concrete actions to reality, under
the leadership of the Government of South Sudan, we developed the Health Sector Strategic Plan to define the strategic
approaches, key interventions, mapping resource needs, and the implementation framework to strengthen the health system
to deliver essential quality health services equitably for 2023 to 2027. For WHO, this Plan will usher in a new reality -- access
to lifesaving or health-promoting interventions is doable and possible, making the health sector fairer, especially for those
unable to pay
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El objetivo general del marco es apoyar a la OMS y a los Estados Miembros en lo relativo a la participación significativa de las personas con enfermedades no transmisibles y afecciones de salud mental y neurológicas con vistas a la creación conjunta y la mejora de políticas, programas y servicio...s que les afectan. Este marco contribuirá a avanzar en la comprensión, el conocimiento y las medidas adoptadas sobre la participación significativa y los enfoques participativos conexos a partir de una base empírica en evolución. En él se ofrece orientación práctica y medidas para pasar de la intención a la acción y hacer realidad la participación significativa. El objetivo del marco es orientar a quienes trabajan en la OMS y en los Estados Miembros para hacer realidad la participación significativa de las personas con experiencia vivida. La OMS promoverá, brindará asistencia técnica y pondrá en marcha el marco en sus tres niveles (Sede, oficinas regionales y oficinas en los países) y apoyará a los Estados Miembros en la aplicación a nivel nacional mediante los procesos y procedimientos establecidos.
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This document is an output of a WHO cross-programme initiative aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and management of anaemia and thereby accelerate reduction in its prevalence. It comes at an important time, midway through the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, when progress in reduci...ng anaemia has stagnated. This framework is based on the core principles of primary health care: meeting people’s health needs through comprehensive promotive, protective, curative, and rehabilitative care along the life course; systematically addressing the broader determinants of health; and empowering individuals, families, and communities to optimize their health
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The World health statistics report is the annual compilation of health and health-related indicators which has been published by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2005. The 2023 edition reviews more than 50 health-related indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO’s T...hirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW 13).
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The Quadripartite organizations have developed the One Health Priority Research Agenda for AMR report, this is a joint initiative to assist in directing and catalysing scientific interest and financial investments for the priority research agenda across sectors for countries and funding bodies. The ...research agenda also serves as a guide to mitigate One Health AMR that will help policymakers, researchers, and a multidisciplinary scientific community work together on solutions to prevent and mitigate AMR within the One Health approach.
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The Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All (SDG3 GAP) is a set of commitments by 13 multilateral agencies to strengthen their collaboration. For this purpose several accelerators were created and an invitation for public comment was started. This document focuses on Accelerator ...Discussion Paper 1: Sustainable Financing.
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COVID-19 has altered health sector capacity in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Cost data to inform evidence-based priority setting are urgently needed. Consequently, in this paper, we calculate the full economic health sector costs of COVID-19 clinical management in 79 LMICs under di...fferent epidemiological scenarios.
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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for major societal transformations that will require significant fiscal outlays as well as private investments. The fiscal outlays cover public investments, the public provision of social services, and social protection for vulnerable populations. The ke...y message of this paper, building on recent reports by the IMF and SDSN (IMF, 2019b; SDSN, 2018) is that the governments of Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs) will require a substantial increase in fiscal (budget) revenues, far beyond what they can achieve by their own fiscal reforms. For this reason, SDG financing will require substantial international cooperation to enable the LIDCs to finance their SDG fiscal outlays. One important source of increased revenues should be the globally coordinated taxation of ultra-high-net worth assets. Today’s ultra-rich should help to pay for the survival and basic needs of the world’s poorest people.
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Financing Global Health 2016: Development Assistance, Public and Private Health Spending for the Pursuit of Universal Health Coverage presents a complete analysis of the resources available for health in 184 countries, with a particular focus on development assistance for health (DAH). DAH was estim...ated to total $37.6 billion in 2016, up 0.1% from 2015. After a decade of rapid growth from 2000 to 2010 (up 11.4% annually), DAH grew at only 1.8% annually between 2010 and 2016. In low-income countries, where much DAH is targeted, DAH made up 34.6% of total health spending in 2016. In upper-middle- and high-income countries, which generally do not receive DAH, DAH accounted for only 0.5% of total health spending. The other 99.5% of health spending – government, prepaid private, and out-of-pocket spending – is the subject of our further analysis.
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Since the 1970s, voluntary contributions have become an increasingly important component of WHO's budget. As voluntary contributions tend to be earmarked for donor-specified programmes and projects, there are concerns that this trend has diverted focus away from WHO's strategic priorities, made coor...dination and attaining coherence more difficult, undermined WHO's democratic structures and given undue power to a handful of wealthy donors. In the past few years, the WHO Secretariat has pushed for donors to increase the amount of flexible funding they provide.
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This report analyses the intersection of HIV, COVID-19 and public debt in developing countries. The collision between COVID-19 and a crippling debt crisis have reversed decades of progress - putting present and future investments in health and HIV at risk. Pragmatic options to address the pandemic t...riad are proposed.
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