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<.../span> care for all conditions. Maintaining essential health services: operational guidance 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.
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Contraception and Family Planning, Preventing Unsafe Abortion and Accessing Postabortion Care, and Maternal Health
This document aims to assist policy‑makers, health care providers and researchers to understand key concepts in health ethics and to identify bas...ic ethical questions surrounding health and health care. It illustrates the challenges of applying ethical principles to global public health and outlines practical strategies for dealing with those challenges.
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Policy Note #1: Myanmar Health Systems in Transition Policy Notes Series
The Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar is committed to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030.... In practice, this means that over the next 15 years the aim is to progressively ensure that all people in all parts of the country have access to the health-care services they need – both preventive and curative – without suffering financial hardship when paying for them.
This policy note is the first in a set of four. It provides an overview of the challenges to be overcome in making progress toward UHC and sets out recommendations for how they can be tackled. The other notes look in more detail at three specific issues: how UHC can improve equity, and how strengthening the township health system and expanding financial risk protection contribute to UHC.
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The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused a deterioration in the level of access to health-care services and medicines in the country, particularly for people living in regions close to the fron...t line and areas that are not partially or fully controlled by the Government of Ukraine, and for people who have been internally displaced. Cost and time constraints involved in getting to and from health facilities, as well as limited transportation options were the main barriers to accessing essential health-care services. At the same time, the findings show that the country’s health system remains resilient and that overall access to health services is fairly high.This report is based on data collected through a quantitative cross-sectional survey of self-reported health needs of the general population in Ukraine. It presents results of the first round survey conducted in September 2022 and could help to address the specific health-care needs of the population groups concerned.
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WHO-OHCHR launch new guidance to improve laws addressing human rights abuses in mental health care
Ahead of World Mental Health Day, the World <...span class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) are jointly launching a new guidance, entitled "Mental health, human rights and legislation: guidance and practice", to support countries to reform legislation in order to end human rights abuses and increase access to quality mental health care.
Human rights abuses and coercive practices in mental health care, supported by existing legislation and policies, are still far too common. Involuntary hospitalization and treatment, unsanitary living conditions and physical, psychological, and emotional abuse characterize many mental health services across the world.
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Ghana is attracting global attention for efforts to provide health insurance to all citizens through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). With the program’s strong emphasis on maternal and... child health, an expectation of the program is that members will have increased use of relevant services. The NHIS does appear to enable pregnant women to access services and allow caregivers to seek care early for sick children, but both the quantitative and qualitative assessments also indicated that the poor and least educated were less likely to have insurance than their wealthier and more educated counterparts.
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Full eHandbook under: http://www.msh.org/resources/health-systems-in-action-an-ehandbook-for-leaders-and-managers
Effective supply management has the potential to make a powerful contribution to the reliable availability of essential medicines, whi...ch are a crucial part of the delivery of highquality health care services. Because medicines are costly and poor management so often results in waste, good supply management is also crucial to the cost-effectiveness of providing medicines.
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Zambia has about 1.2 physicians, nurses, and midwives per 1000 population while the minimum acceptable density threshold is 2.3 per 1000 population. The estimated shortage of doctors, nurses and midwives in Zambia is about 14,960. However, with the ...projected population growth the deficit more than doubles disproportionately to, 25,849 in 2020, and 46,549 in 2035, at the current rate of HRH production. Worryingly, the human resources for health crisis has persisted for over 20 years. The efforts before and leading up to the development and implementation of the 2013 – 2016 National Training Operational Plan (NTOP) and the National Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan (2011 – 2016) yielded certain achievements, however, the HRH numbers and skill-mix gap remained disturbingly enormous.
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Measuring progress towards universal health coverage.
This sixth edition of Health at a Glance Asia/Pacific presents a set of key indicators of health...pan> status, the determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health care expenditure and financing and quality of care across 27 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It also provides a series of dashboards to compare performance across countries and territories, and a thematic analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Asia/Pacific health systems.
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Childhood obesity is a major public health problem globally, which could undermine progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Prevention is recognized as the most efficient means of curbing the epidemic; however, given the scale o...f the problem and the many children who need professional support due to the severity of the disease and/or obesity-related complications, health systems all over Europe must take steps to develop obesity management systems. The aim of this project was to assess the response of health care delivery systems in 19 countries in the WHO European Region to the childhood obesity epidemic.
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DHS Further Analysis Reports No. 108 - This report examines levels, trends, and inequalities in maternal health in Rwanda from 2010 to 2014-15 among women age 15-49 with a recent birth. The analysis uses Demographic and ...hlight medbox">Health Survey (DHS) data for 15 key indicators of maternal health: 6 for antenatal care, 3 for delivery, 1 for postnatal care, and 5 for barriers to accessing medical care. Levels and trends in these indicators were analyzed overall and by three background characteristics: women’s education, household wealth quintile, and region.
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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 provide 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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This report describes the work done by WHO from January 2015 up to the end of December 2016 to address the long-term issues of survivor care, health-systems strengthening and research.
The purpose of this document is to address specific needs and considerations for essential oral health services in the context of COVID-19 in accordance with WHO operational guidance on maintaining essential ...x">health services. This interim guidance is intended for public health authorities, chief dental officers at ministries of health and oral health care personnel working in private and public health sectors. The document may be subject to change as new information becomes available.
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The 2018 global health financing report presents health spending data for all WHO Member States between 2000 and 2016 based on the SHA 2011 methodology. It shows a transformation trajectory for the ...global spending on health, with increasing domestic public funding and declining external financing. This report also presents, for the first time, spending on primary health care and specific diseases and looks closely at the relationship between spending and service coverage
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Background document to the 2018 joint statement by WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, ICM, ICN, FIGO and IPA: definition of skilled health personnel providing care during childbirth
A manual intended for medical and other personnel responsible for humanitarian activities in armed conflicts. It covers the following topics: setting up a health-care system that meets the essential... needs of war victims, particularly of displaced persons; public health tools most frequently used for evaluation, establishment of priorities, analysis of possible activities and their follow-up; protecting war victims and aspects of humanitarian law related to health; and lastly, ethical problems
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This research aims to identify a core set of clinical skills for working in
a Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) setting, and to discuss whether they are appropriate for task shifting to a new or an alternative cadre of rehabilitation workers.
The ASEAN Mental Health Systems Report
catalogues the situation of mental health in ASEAN
Member States. This report provides comprehensive
information on the progress made so far by AMS in
inte...grating mental health into national health systems,
increasing access to care as well as challenges faced.
It also offers recommendations on how to improve the mental health system in
respective ASEAN Member States.
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