As the global impact of climate change accelerates, there is increasing awareness that human health is severely threatened. Just what are these threats to health and what can we do about them?
UCSF faculty and associates examined the effects of global warming on individual patient health and expl...ore fundamental principles of public health, challenges in climate health and science communication, and the big picture of global warming effects on populations.
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The threat climate change poses to health, equity, and development has been rigorously documented. However, in an era marked by economic crisis, regional conflicts, natural disasters and growing disparities between rich and poor, the joint global actions required to address climate change have been ...vigorously debated – and critical decisions postponed.
This document, part of WHO’s Health in the Green Economy series, describes how many climate change measures can be “win-wins” for people and the planet.
These policies yield large, immediate public health benefits while reducing the upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these policies can improve the health and equity of people in poor countries and assist developing countries in adapting to climate change that is already occurring, as evidenced by more extreme storms, flooding, drought and heatwaves.
WHO’s Department of Public Health and Environment launched the Health in the Green Economy initiative in 2010 to review potential health and equity “co-benefits” of proposed climate change measures – as well as relevant risks.
This review examines mitigation strategies discussed in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which constitutes the most broad-based global review of mitigation options by scientific experts.
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Global temperatures and the frequency and intensity of heatwaves will rise in the 21st century as a result of climate change. Extended periods of high day and nighttime temperatures create cumulative physiological stress on the human body which exacerbates the top causes of death globally, including... respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus and renal disease. Heatwaves can acutely impact large populations for short periods of time, often trigger public health emergencies, and result in excess mortality, and cascading socioeconomic impacts
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Despite the continuing war in Ukraine, the Government is preparing for the country’s recovery and reconstruction. Given the magnitude of the attacks on the health infrastructure and consequent disruption to health system functioning, reconstruction of the health system is integral to the country...s recovery. The immediate priorities are to restore essential services, respond to new physical and mental health needs, protect public health, and provide a secure and attractive environment for the return of both health professionals and the general population. This policy note identifies strategic directions for post-war health system recovery in the short and longer terms, while sustaining essential health services during the ongoing invasion
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Noma (cancrum oris) is a serious gangrenous disease of the mouth and face, mainly affecting children aged 2 to 6 years in sub-Saharan Africa.
Despite substantial knowledge gaps, it is reported to be linked with malnutrition, poor oral hygiene, immunosuppression, and living in extreme poverty situ...ations.
This course addresses epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical features, diagnosis, treatment, and public health considerations, including the human rights perspective of noma.
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Onchocerca volvulus transmitted by repeated bites of infected blackflies (Simulium spp.). These blackflies breed along fast-flowing rivers and streams, close to remote villages located near fertile land where people rely on agriculture.
There is a need to reinforce skills of national and district... health workers to know and identify the disease, understand the risk factors according to the context and living conditions of the affected communities, and promote the implementation of public health interventions. With the shift from control to elimination, large areas in Africa require mapping to assess whether transmission is active, and treatment required. A sampling strategy named Onchocerciasis elimination mapping has been developed to help countries conduct those assessments and start treatment where needed.
This course examines the epidemiology of Onchocerciasis, clinical aspects, impact, diagnosis, treatment and control, elimination, public health interventions and role of community health workers
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Contains data from World Health Organization's data portal covering the following categories:
Mortality and global health estimates, Sustainable development goals, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Health systems, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Child health, Infectious diseases, Neglected Tropical Disea...ses, World Health Statistics, Health financing, Tobacco, Substance use and mental health, Injuries and violence, HIV/AIDS and other STIs, Public health and environment, Nutrition, Urban health, Noncommunicable diseases, Noncommunicable diseases CCS, Negelected tropical diseases, Infrastructure, Essential health technologies, Medical equipment, Demographic and socioeconomic statistics, Health inequality monitor, Health Equity Monitor, Child malnutrition, TOBACCO, Neglected tropical diseases, International Health Regulations (2005) monitoring framework, 0, Insecticide resistance, Oral health, Universal Health Coverage, Global Observatory for eHealth (GOe)
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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 communities. 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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The objective of Health in the Americas: Overview of the Region of the Americas in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic is to respond to the need to address important public health issues in an increasingly timely manner, while serving as a platform with a close focus on specific issues of regional ...importance. This 2022 edition is the second in its new format, providing an overview of the analysis, as well as an in-depth description of the key issues related to COVID-19 in the Region of the Americas. This overview is supported by the Health in the Americas+ virtual platform, which offers interactive resources for data analysis and allows for the comparison of information disaggregated by subregions and countries.
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The results of the report clearly show that in 2020, a year dominated by the emergence of COVID-19 and its associated health and economic crises, governments around the world rose to the challenge. Sharp increases in government spending on health at all country income levels underpinned the rise in ...health spending to a new high of US $9 trillion (approximately 11% of global GDP). Government health spending generally increased and offset declines in out-of-pocket spending. Importantly, the rise in government health spending was part of a much broader fiscal response to the pandemic. In high income and upper-middle income countries social protection spending also increased sharply in as governments attempted to cushion populations from the economic impacts of COVID-19. In contrast to health and social protection, growth in education spending was relatively subdued. Countries face the further challenge of sustaining increased public spending on health and other social sectors in the face of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and rising debt servicing. This also includes the challenge of sustaining external support for low income countries, which is essential for reducing ensuring poverty, ensuring access to health services and strengthening pandemic preparedness.
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Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease of global medical and veterinary importance. As efforts to eliminate schistosomiasis as a public health problem and interrupt transmission gather momentum, the potential zoonotic risk posed by livestock Schistosoma species via viable hybridisation in s...ub-Saharan Africa have been largely overlooked. We aimed to investigate the prevalence, distribution, and multi-host, multiparasite transmission cycle of Haematobium group schistosomiasis in Senegal, West Africa.
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The development of this target product profile (TPP) was led by the WHO Department of Control of Ne-
glected Tropical Diseases (NTD) following standard WHO guidance for TPP development. In order to
identify and prioritize diagnostic needs, a WHO NTD Diagnostics Technical Advisory Group (DTAG)
was... formed, and different subgroups were created to advise on specific NTDs, including a subgroup
working on the human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) diagnostic innovation needs. This group of in-
dependent experts included leading scientists, public health officials and endemic-country end-user rep-
resentatives. Standard WHO Declaration of Interest procedures were followed. A landscape analysis of
the available products and of the development pipeline was conducted, and the salient areas with unmet
needs were identified
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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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This report presents a framework to link science, policy and practice for a comprehensive assessment of climate mitigation and adaptation investments and their impact on human health.The framework proposes to use weather and climate data to forecast health impacts over time, as well as biophysical a...nd economic models to quantify the outcomes of investments in climate change adaptation and mitigation for relevant sectoral indicators and health co-benefits. It provides guidance on the economic valuation of health co-benefits of climate action, for inclusion in sector-specific cost–benefit analysis (CBA), including the spatial allocation of such costs and benefits.
The framework developed and presented in this study is comprehensive, and provides various entry points for different audiences, including decision-makers in the public and private sectors, researchers and scientists, working in the health sector as well as in other thematic areas and related sectors affected by climate action.
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For the past years, Haiti has been engulfed in a socioeconomic, political, and humanitarian crisis that has reached critical levels since mid-September 2022 with the intensification of gang violence and social unrest. The widespread insecurity and
political instability have drastically affected the... country’s access to essential goods and services, including food, water, and health. The current fuel supply crisis has affected the water and electricity supply to the population, health centers, and hospitals. Due to problems of insecurity and violence, patients and health personnel have difficulty accessing hospitals and health services.
In parallel, the public health system and international partners face limited response capacity due to reduced international personnel in Haiti, logistics issues, and difficulties in importing supplies. Indeed insecurity, roadblocks, and lockdowns are affecting the importation of internationally procured goods, which may slow the arrival of essential lifesaving supplies to support cholera response efforts. This scenario is particularly problematic, as cholera recently resurfaced in early October.
Armed gangs now control over 60% of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, affecting at least 1.5 million people, and have expanded their influence outside of the capital city, interrupting vital humanitarian programs in most of the national territory,
including COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.
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This policy brief describes key HIV viral load thresholds and the available viral load testing approaches for monitoring how well antiretroviral therapy is working for people living with HIV. It provides clarification for and elaborates upon the current treatment monitoring algorithm from the Consol...idated guidelines on HIV prevention, testing, treatment, service delivery and monitoring: recommendations for a public health approach.
This information can help people living with HIV to live healthy lives, ensure that HIV is not transmitted to other people and support policy-makers in determining the optimal allocation of resources for viral load testing and communicating the results.
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The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed,
especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in
many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was di...sbursed for COVID-19. We
aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health
financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020.
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This report started with a simple question—“How can we tell how much funding is devoted to global health programs?”—and ended (more than two years later) with an answer that is far from simple. As those who have tried know well, tracking health-related funding is challenging in any setting, ...given the range of public and private sources and the many types of services and programs that fall within the definition of “health sector.” It is made all the more complicated when significant external support from donors and private charities plus in-kind donations of drugs and other inputs are taken into account. The task is made yet harder by inadequate public expenditure management systems in countries where public agencies’ capacity is stretched very thin and by donor accounting structures that are not designed to respond in a timely way
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Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, c...orruption is rarely openly discussed. In this Lecture, I outline the magnitude of the problem of corruption, how it started, and what is happening now. I also outline people's fears around the topic, what is needed to address corruption, and the responsibilities of the academic and research communities in all countries, irrespective of their level of economic development. Policy makers, researchers, and funders need to think about corruption as an important area of research in the same way we think about diseases. If we are really aiming to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure healthy lives for all, corruption in global health must no longer be an open secret.
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The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed,
especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in
many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was di...sbursed for COVID-19. We
aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health
financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020.
more