This report details the nutrition situation in Namibia. It provides information on what needs to be done! The situation calls for a consorted action. Nutrition is everyone’s business.The establishment of the National Alliance for Improved Nutritio
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n (NAFIN) is a positive response to this urgency. NAFIN is a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder association, not for gain.
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Rehabilitation in health systems provides recommendations for Member States and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen and expand the availability of quality rehabilitation services. Currently, there is a significant unmet need for rehabilitation
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services and it is frequently undervalued in the health system. As populations age and the prevalence of noncommunicable diseases and injuries increases, and the demand for rehabilitation grows, strengthening rehabilitation in health systems becomes ever more paramount.
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This document has been developed to support countries to develop and strengthen peer support groups in mental health and related areas. It addresses the provision of peer support groups in the context of
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health services and the wider community.
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This document has been developed to support countries develop and strengthen individualized peer support services in mental health and related areas. It addresses the provision of individualized peer support in the context
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of health services and the wider community.
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This handbook and teaching guide on recovery has been designed to complement the QualityRights training module on Promoting Recovery in Mental Health and Related Services. The handbook and teaching guide covers much of the same material, but also co
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ntains additional text and exercises. It can be given to participants at the end of the training sessions so that they are able to review the concepts and material learned during the training.
Alternatively, it can be used independently as a standalone document to deliver training on recovery over 4-5 training days. The handbook/ teaching guide does not rely on PowerPoint presentations to deliver the training. Instead all participants should have a copy of the handbook/ teaching guide and work through the text and exercises either in plenary or in groups based on the discretion of the facilitator for the training.
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This training and guidance has been developed to provide an in-depth understanding on what it means to respect legal capacity in mental health and related areas as well as concrete strategies to ensure that people are able to exercise their right to legal capacity in all areas
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of their life. In this context a wide range of scenarios are used to describe how different models of supported decision making can be applied in practice.
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This document has been developed to provide training and guidance on how to integrate a human rights approach in mental health and related areas, based on international human rights instruments, in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of Perso
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ns with Disabilities (CRPD).
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The World Drug Report 2022 is aimed not only at fostering greater international cooperation to counter the impact of the world drug problem on health, governance and security, but also, with its special insights, at assisting Member States in antici
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pating and address-ing threats from drug markets and mitigating their consequences.
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Key Considerations
This brief focuses on cross-border movement in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) and its implications for development of risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) strategies aimed at preventing transmission
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of COVID-19 in the ESA region. Given the extensive risk of cross-border transmission of the virus and the imminent reopening of borders, such strategies are essential to containment efforts
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Conflict, climate crisis and COVID-19 pose great threats to the health of women and children.
The WHO Quality Health Services: a planning guide focuses on actions required at the national, district and facility levels to enhance quality of health services, providing guidance on implementing key activities at each
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of these three levels. It highlights the need for a health systems approach to enhance quality of care, with a common understanding on the activities needed by all stakeholders. The guide articulates the key actions required to improve the quality of health services for the entire population. It recognizes that the path varies for each country, district and facility – stimulating the reader to consider multiple factors and entry points for action. This planning guide is for staff working at all levels of the health system (i.e. national, district and facility) who have a role in enhancing the quality of health services. It is also relevant to all stakeholders initiating and supporting action at facility, district and/or national levels both in the public and private sectors.
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This report makes the case for a major new initiative—to rapidly recruit, train and deploy 2 million community health workers in Africa. Drawing on a vast body of evidence and substantial regional experience, the report shows how community health
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workers save lives and improve quality of life and how investments in community health workers effectively harness the demographic dividend, reduce gender inequality and accelerate economic growth and development. Indeed, the benefits of community health workers stretch from one end of the Agenda for Sustainable Development to the other.
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Progress in prevention and treatment is faltering around the world, putting millions of people in grave danger. Eastern Europe and central Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa have all seen increases in annual HIV infections ove
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r several years. In Asia and the Pacific, UNAIDS data now show new HIV infections are rising where they had been falling. Action to tackle the inequalities driving AIDS is urgently required to prevent millions of new HIV infections this decade and to end the AIDS pandemic
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The Contingency Fund for Emergencies (CFE) provides WHO with rapid and flexible resources to respond to disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. The annual report provides an overview of the use and impact
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of the Fund over the previous year.
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Adolescence, defined as the period between 10 and 19 years of age, is a developmental stage during which many psychosocial and mental health challenges emerge. There is a well-established link between mental health and HIV outcomes. Adolescents and
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young adults living with HIV typically have additional mental health needs linked to their experiences of living with and managing a chronic illness, along with prevailing stigma and discrimination. Mental health promotion and prevention is thus a critical priority for this group.
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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown that public financial management (PFM) should be an integral part of the response. Effectiveness in financing the health response depends not only on the level of
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funding but also on the way public funds are allocated and spent, this is determined by the PFM rules, and how money flows to health service providers. So far, early assessments have shown that PFM systems ranged from being a fundamental enabler to acting as a roadblock in the COVID-19 health response. While service delivery mechanisms have been extensively documented throughout the pandemic, the underlying PFM mechanisms of the response also merit attention. To highlight the importance of PFM in health emergency contexts, this rapid review analyses various country PFM experiences and identifies early lessons emerging from the financing of the health response to COVID-19. The assessment is done by stages of the budget cycle: budget allocation, budget execution, and budget oversight. Identifying lessons from the varying PFM modalities used to finance the response to COVID-19 is fundamental both for health policy-makers and for finance authorities to prepare for future health emergencies.
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Outstanding child and adolescent TB priorities include the need to: find the missing children with active TB and link them to TB care; prevent TB in children who are in contact with infectious TB cases (through implementation of active contact inves
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tigation and provision of preventive treatment); and advance integration within general child health services, including maternal and child health/ reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, HIV, nutrition and other programmes.
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Vitamin D deficiency is thought to be common among pregnant women, particularly during the winter months, and has been found to be associated with an increased risk of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus, preterm birth, and other tissue-spe
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cific conditions.
This guideline is intended for a wide audience including policy-makers, their expert advisers, and technical and programme staff at organizations involved in the design, implementation and scaling-up of nutrition actions for public health.
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Infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics are increasing in frequency, scale and impact. Health care facilities can amplify the transmission of emerging infectious diseases or multidrug-resistant organisms (MDRO) within their settings and communiti
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es. Therefore, evidence-based infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in health care facilities are critical for preventing and containing outbreaks, while still delivering safe, effective and quality health care. This toolkit is intended to support IPC improvements for outbreak management in all such facilities, both public and private throughout the health system. Specifically, this document systematically describes a framework of overarching principles to approach the preparedness, readiness and response outbreak management phases. The document also provides a toolkit of resource links to guide specific actions for each infectious disease and/or MDRO outbreak management phase at any health facility. This document is specifically tailored to an audience of stakeholders who establish and monitor health care facility-level IPC programs including: IPC focal points, epidemiologists, public health experts, outbreak response incident managers, facility-level IPC committee(s), safety and quality leads and managers, and other facility level IPC stakeholders.
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These consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services (HTS) bring together existing and new guidance on HTS across different settings and populations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) first released consolidated guidelines on HTS in 2015, in response to requests from Member States, national pr
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ogramme managers and health workers for support to achieve the United Nations (UN) 90–90–90 global HIV targets – and specifically the first target of diagnosing 90% of all people with HIV. In 2016, based on new evidence, WHO released a supplement to address important new HIV testing approaches – HIV self-testing (HIVST) and provider-assisted referral.
Since the release of 2015 and 2016 HTS guidelines, new issues and more evidence have emerged. To address this, WHO has updated guidance on HIV testing services. In this guideline, WHO updates recommendation on HIVST and provides new recommendations on social network-based HIV testing approaches and western blotting (see box, next page). This guideline seeks to provide support to Member States, programme managers, health workers and other stakeholders seeking to achieve national and international goals to end the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030.
These guidelines also provide operational guidance on HTS demand creation and messaging; implementation considerations for priority populations; HIV testing strategies for diagnosis HIV; optimizing the use of dual HIV/syphilis rapid diagnostic tests; and considerations for strategic planning and rationalizing resources such as optimal time points for maternal retesting
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