Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) is advancing the global fight against acute malnutrition in children under 5 with the launch of its new guideline on the prevention and management of wasting and
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nutritional oedema (acute malnutrition). This milestone is a crucial response to the persistent global issue of acute malnutrition, which affects millions of children worldwide.
In 2015, the world committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the ambitious target of eliminating malnutrition in all of its forms by 2030. However, despite these commitments, the proportion of children with acute malnutrition has persisted at a worrying level, affecting an estimated 45 million children under five worldwide in 2022.
In 2022, approximately 7.3 million children received treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Although treatment coverage has increased, children with SAM in many of the worst affected countries are still unable to access the full necessary care for them to recover.
The Global Action Plan (GAP) on child wasting recognized the need for updated normative guidance to support governments in the prevention and management of acute malnutrition. WHO answered this call to action and developed a comprehensive guideline that provides evidence-based recommendations and good practice statements and will be followed by guidance and tools for implementation.
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sthma prevalence is increasing worldwide, and surveys indicate that most patients in developed and developing countries, including South Africa, do not receive optimal care
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and are therefore not well controlled. Standard management guidelines adapted to in-country realities are important to support optimal care. The South African Thoracic Society (SATS) first published a guideline for the management of chronic persistent asthma in 1992, which has subsequently been revised several times.
The main aim of the present document was to revise and update SATS’ statement on the suggested management of chronic asthma, based on the need to promote optimal care and control of asthma, together with the incorporation of new concepts and drug developments. This revised document reinforces optimal care and incorporates the following primary objectives to achieve the recent advances in asthma care:
• continued emphasis on the use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) as the foundation of asthma treatment
• to reduce the reliance on short-acting beta-2 agonist (SABA) monotherapy for asthma symptoms
• to incorporate the evidence and strategy for the use of the combination of an ICS and formoterol for acute symptom relief (instead of a SABA)
• to incorporate the evidence and strategy for the use of as-needed ICS-long-acting beta agonists (LABA) for patients with infrequent symptoms or ‘mild’ asthma
• to incorporate the evidence and strategy for the use of a long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) in combination with ICS-LABA; and
• to incorporate the evidence and strategy for the use of and management with a biologic therapy in severe asthma.
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These standards for the quality of paediatric care in health facilities form part of normative
guidance for improving the quality of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health care.
In view of the importance of the continuum of both the life-c
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ourse and service delivery (1),
these standards build on the Standards for improving the quality of maternal and newborn
care in health facilities (2), during labour, childbirth and the early postnatal period.
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This paper reviews the effects of vertical responses to COVID-19 on health systems, services, and people’s access to and use of them in LMICs, where historic
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and ongoing under-investments heighten vulnerability to a multiplicity of health threats. We use the term ‘vertical response’ to describe decisions, measures and actions taken solely with the purpose of preventing and containing COVID-19, often without adequate consideration of how this affects the wider health system and pre-existing resource constraints.
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Hypertension is referred to as a “silent killer”. Most people with hypertension are unaware of their condition as in most cases, they experience no warning signs or symptoms hence they are not identified or treated. Hypertention is associated with a number of conditions, disability,
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and causes of death. These include: strokes; myocardial infarction; end-stage renal disease; congestive heart failure; peripheral vascular disease and blindness. According to Stats SA, in 2017, hypertensive disorders resulted in 19 900 deaths with a further 44 357 deaths associated with cerebrovascular diseases and other heart diseases. This means around 30% of all deaths in 2017 were associated with increased blood pressure.
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Recommendations for a public health approach
2010 revision
Regional Network for Equity in Health in east and southern Africa (EQUINET): Disussion Paper 113
This report synthesises the learning across the full programme of work. It presents the methods used, the context
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and policy motivations for developing EHBs; how they are being defined, costed, disseminated and used in health systems, including for service provision and quality, resourcing and purchasing services and monitoring and accountability on service delivery and performance, and for learning, useful practice and challenges faced.
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Guidelines
June 2017
HIV strategic information for impact
Accountability for the global health sector strategies, 2016–2021
WHO/CDS/HIV/19.7
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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These guidelines provide updated evidence-based recommendations on the priority HCV-related topics from the 2018 WHO Guidelines for the care and treatment of persons diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C infection
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and the 2017 WHO Guidelines on hepatitis B and C testing. These priority areas are:
direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment of adolescents and children ages ≥3 years of age
simplified HCV service delivery (decentralization, integration and task sharing)
HCV diagnostics – use of point-of-care (POC) HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) assays and reflex HCV RNA testing.
These guidelines also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as the inclusion of new manufacturers’ protocols on the use of dried blood spot (DBS) for HCV RNA testing and new data to inform the limit of detection for HCV RNA assays as a test of cure, in addition to their use for diagnosis.
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The guidance document provides a set of indicators for assessing the status of development, implementation and monitoring of key policy interventions for prevention and control of NCDs
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and injuries. It promotes city-level evidence based decision-making processes to identify gaps and take appropriates actions to strengthen responses. Additionally, using the standardized indicators can facilitate cross-city learning, sharing best practices and lessons learnt in implementing various policy interventions.
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