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
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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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Der Krieg der Russischen Föderation gegen die Ukraine hat Leid und Verwüstung in einem in der Europäischen Region der WHO seit Jahrzehnten nicht gekannten Ausmaß verursacht. In der Ukraine spielt sich eine sich rasch entwickelnde humanitäre und Flüchtlingskrise ab, deren geopolitische und wirt
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schaftliche Auswirkungen in der ganzen Welt zu spüren sind, ganz zu schweigen von den schwerwiegenden Rückschlägen für die in der öffentlichen Gesundheit gemachten Fortschritte in der Ukraine, in den
Nachbarländern und in der Region.
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The Regional Action Framework for Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control provides a unified vision of objectives and recommended actions to combat the noncommunicable disease (NCD) epidemic in the Western Pacific Region. Implementation should be supported by cross-sectoral coordination
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, sustainable financing, evidence-based policy, and community engagement, tailored to each Member State’s unique context. In doing so, Member States are encouraged to transform a disease treatment-centered “sick system” into a “health system” in which a population’s health and well-being enable socioeconomic development.
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The objective of Critical Considerations and Actions for Achieving Universal Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Context of Universal Health Coverage through a Primary Health Care Approach is to provide guidance to WHO Member States for ensuring progress towards universal access to compr
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ehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in the context of primary health care (PHC)- and universal health coverage (UHC)-related policy and strategy reforms.
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CATALYST DIALOGUE ON HEALTH FINANCING
Insights from a debate on how to increase funding for health and spend existing funds more effectively.
Catalyst Dialogue participants:
Christoph Benn, Director for Global Health Diplomacy, Joep Lange Institute • Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Univer
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sity of Massachusetts at Amherst • Tom Hart, Research Fellow, ODI • Lesley-Anne Long, President & CEO, Global Business Coalition for Health • Riaz Tanoli, CEO, Social Health Protection Initiative, Health Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
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Six months after its launch on 24 April, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator has already delivered concrete results in speeding up the development of new therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines. Now mid-way through the scale-up phase, the tools we need to fundamentally change the course o
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f this pandemic are within reach. But to deliver the full impact of the ACT-Accelerator – and ultimately an exit to this global crisis – these tools need to be available everywhere. On behalf of the ACT-Accelerator Pillar lead agencies – CEPI, Gavi, the Global Fund, FIND, Unitaid, Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – I am pleased to share this document setting out the near-term priorities, deliverables and financing requirements of the ACT-Accelerator Pillars and Health Systems Connector. Urgent action to address these financing requirements will boost the impact of the ACTAccelerator achievements to date, fast-track the development and deployment of additional game-changing tools, and mitigate the risk of a widening gap in access to COVID-19 tools between low- and high-income countries. Delivering on this promise requires strong political leadership, financial investment, and incountry capacity building. COVID-19 cannot be beaten by any one country acting alone. We must ACT now, and ACT together to end the COVID-19 crisis.
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Background:Neonatal mortality accounts for 43% of global under-five deaths and is decreasing more slowly than maternal or child mortality. Donor funding has increased for maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), but no analysis to date has disaggregated aid for newborns. We evaluated if and how a
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id flows for newborn care can be tracked, examined changes in the last decade, and considered methodological implications for tracking funding for specific population groups or diseases. MethodsandFindings:We critically reviewed and categorised previous analyses of aid to specific populations, diseases, or types of activities. We then developed and refined key terms related to newborn survival in seven languages and searched titles and descriptions of donor disbursement records in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System database, 2002–2010. We compared results with the Countdown to 2015 database of aid for MNCH (2003–2008) and the search strategy used by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Prior to 2005, key terms related to newborns were rare in disbursement records but their frequency increased markedly thereafter. Only two mentions were found of ‘‘stillbirth’’ and only nine references were found to ‘‘fetus’’ in any spelling variant or language
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Oral health is defined as the absence of disease and a status that ensures optimal functioning of the mouth and its tissues in a manner preserving the highest level of function and self-esteem. Oral health enables an individual to eat, speak and socialise having no active disease, discomfort or disc
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ouragement thus contributing to the general well-being. Good oral health is an essential component of general health and a right of every person1. Poor oral health has a negative impact on general health, work productivity, educational performance and adversely affects growth and development.
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The environment in which young people live, learn and play significantly affects their decisions about whether to consume alcohol. Environmental factors are the main risk factors driving alcohol consumption and related harm among young people. Environments that normalize alcohol consumption – term
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ed alcogenic environments – include contexts with unregulated advertising and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher alcohol outlet density, products designed to facilitate affordability and low prices of alcoholic beverages. A recent body of research evidence has emerged related to the measurement, functional significance and consequences of living in alcogenic environments. This includes findings on the complex and bidirectional interactions among alcohol acceptability, availability and affordability and how they create and perpetuate alcogenic environments. Comprehensive and enforced alcohol control policies are effective at delaying the age of onset and lowering alcohol prevalence and frequency among young people. Evidence consistently confirms the effectiveness of designing and implementing alcohol control policies that regulate upstream the drivers of alcogenic environment, including alcohol availability, acceptability and affordability. These policies need to be multipronged and address the complex interactions between these drivers and the local alcohol culture
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Developmental disabilities are common. Yet, children with developmental disabilities have been neglected in health systems planning and policy provisions for health and continue to experience stigmatization, institutionalization, barriers to access health care and inequalities in health and educatio
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n outcomes.
Using findings from research and practice and guided by the tenets of international human rights conventions, this WHO-UNICEF Global Report on children with developmental disabilities provides principles and approaches to intentionally include the needs and aspirations of children and young people with developmental disabilities in policy, programming and public health monitoring. It makes the case for greater accountability and proposes 10 priority actions to accelerate changes towards inclusive environments and responsive multisectoral care systems for children with developmental disabilities.
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The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG target 3.8) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has i
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ncreased.
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he global architecture for providing development assistance for health (DAH)
has become increasing complex in the last decade, with many new funding agencies entering the health sector.
This study presents a detailed picture of European Union (EU) and EU member state originating DAH
between 2006
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and 2009; with a sp
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Trustworthy, evidence-based health guidelines form the basis of national policies affecting both patients and health-care workers. Emphasizing the link between robust evidence and people’s trust in their health systems, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe said at the launch ev
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ent, “Trust and transformation are key words for us, especially when we talk about improving and strengthening our health systems. Transformation should first and foremost serve the interests of patients and health-care workers”.
While it is not always easy to demonstrate the immediate effect of guidelines on people’s health, there is no viable alternative to utilizing guidelines based on the best available evidence.
Yet, developing robust guidelines remains a challenge for most countries. “Guidelines need to be both simple to use and timely, they need to address people’s real needs, especially at the local level, and should ultimately reflect the resources available,” said Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director, Country Health Policies and Systems, WHO/Europe. “This means that any successful guideline needs to be adjusted and adapted to local contexts and realities.”
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World Vision’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) approach actively strives to examine, question, and change harmful social norms and power imbalances as a means of reaching gender equality and social inclusion objectives in a programme area.
This reference guide is designed to help WASH
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practitioners implement GESI-transformative WASH programmes by supporting change across all five GESI domains – access, decision-making, participation, systems, and well-being. It provides information on how to design, implement, monitor and evaluate a WASH project or programme to address GESI.
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Little is known about the patterns of development assistance (DA) for each component of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) in conflict-affected countries nor about the DA allocation in relation to the burden of disease
This guide presents a basis for understanding how diarrhoeal diseases are currently influenced by climate and weather, and may be further exacerbated by climate change. It is a technical guide on how to conduct a Vulnerability & Adaptation assessment for diarrhoeal diseases and climate change, and p
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rovides guidance on how to:
identify populations and regions vulnerable to diarrhoeal diseases and the reasons for their vulnerability;
establish relevant baselines that can be analysed and monitored;
conduct analyses to project how diarrhoeal diseases may be impacted in the future due to climate change; and
identify appropriate responses to mitigate and monitor these risks over time.
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To examine how health aid is spent and channelled, including the distribution of resources across countries and between
subsectors. Our aim was to complement the many qualitative critiques of health aid with a quantitative review and to provide insights on the level of development assistance availa
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ble to recipient countries to address their health and health development needs.
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WHO today released its first roadmap to tackle postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) – defined as excessive bleeding after childbirth - which affects millions of women annually and is the world’s leading cause of maternal deaths.
Despite being preventable and treatable, PPH results in around 70 000 de
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aths every year. For those who survive, it can cause disabilities and psychological trauma that last for years.
“Severe bleeding in childbirth is one of the most common causes of maternal mortality, yet it is highly preventable and treatable,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This new roadmap charts a path forward to a world in which more women have a safe birth and a healthy future with their families.”
The Roadmap aims to help countries address stark differences in survival outcomes from PPH, which reflect major inequities in access to essential health services. Over 85% of deaths from PPH happen in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Risk factors include anaemia, placental abnormalities, and other complications in pregnancy such as infections and pre-eclampsia.
Many risk factors can be managed if there is quality antenatal care, including access to ultrasound, alongside effective monitoring in the hours after birth. If bleeding starts, it also needs to be detected and treated extremely quickly. Too often, however, health facilities lack necessary healthcare workers or resources, including lifesaving commodities such as oxytocin, tranexamic acid or blood for transfusions.
“Addressing postpartum haemorrhage needs a multipronged approach focusing on both prevention and response - preventing risk factors and providing immediate access to treatments when needed - alongside broader efforts to strengthen women’s rights,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, WHO Director for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HRP, the UN’s special programme on research development and training in human reproduction. “Every woman, no matter where she lives, should have access to timely, high quality maternity care, with trained health workers, essential equipment and shelves stocked with appropriate and effective commodities – this is crucial for treating postpartum bleeding and reducing maternal deaths.”
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The response to a cholera outbreak must focus on limiting mortality and reducing the spread of the disease. It should be comprehensive and multisectoral, including epidemiology, case management, water, sanitation and hygiene, logistics, community engagement and risk communication. All efforts must b
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e well coordinated to ensure a rapid and effective response across sectors.
This document provides a framework for detecting and monitoring cholera outbreaks and organizing the response. It also includes a short section linking outbreak response to both preparedness and long-term prevention activities.
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People affected by impairments and disabilities associated with TB are even more likely to belong to marginalized segments of society and are more likely to have their human rights unprotected. The challenges faced by people affected by TB include the consequences of impairment and disability associ
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ated with the disease, its treatment as well as with the stigma and discrimination applied to people affected by TB. There is now compelling evidence that the disease and its treatment affect quality of life and life expectancy even after successful treatment.
The WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme has produced the first policy brief on TB-associated disability, building on the increasing evidence in recent years on the unaddressed needs of people with TB who experience impairment and disability while on TB treatment and after completing TB treatment.
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