o support and guide countries and partners to strengthen a health systems response to address violence against women, WHO has produced several tool
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s, including:
• clinical and policy guidelines;
• implementation handbooks and manuals;
• training curriculum;
• evidence-based policy, prevention and intervention strategy packages.
The resource package consolidates these documents to support countries to develop or update their national or subnational guidelines, protocols, standard operating procedures, health provider training materials, and multisectoral action plans to prevent and respond to violence against women.
The resource package is also intended to be used for training and sensitization of policy-makers, advocates, health care providers and managers of services and programmes to address violence against women.
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Strategic communication is at the heart of public health and more important than ever in the digital age. Using communication strategically require
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s expertise, skills and resources to plan, implement and evaluate interventions that encourage governments to implement policies that improve people’s lives and well-being, that empower health workers to deliver the best care possible, and that encourage people to take actions that protect and improve their health and that of their family and community. This Regional Action Framework on Communication for Health (C4H) aims to support Member States in implementing the C4H approach. It outlines steps to be taken by WHO and Member States to use C4H to achieve shared public health goals in the Western Pacific.
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27 April 2022 Chronic land degradation: UN offers stark warnings and practical remedies in Global Land Outlook 2. GLO2 offers hundreds of examples from around the world that demonstrate the potentia
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l of land restoration.
The way land resources – soil, water and biodiversity – are currently mismanaged and misused threatens the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including our own, warns a stark new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
It also points decision makers to hundreds of practical ways to effect local, national and regional land and ecosystem restoration.
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A key purpose of the Recovery Toolkit is to support countries in the reactivation of health services
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which may have suffered as a result of the emergency. These services include ongoing programmes such as immunization and vaccinations, maternal and child health services, and noncommunicable diseases.
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This publication presents a comprehensive methodology to support the Member States of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in preparing for
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and responding to heat-health risks in the Region of the Americas. It builds on World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization global documents, as well as on the disaster preparedness methodologies employed throughout the countries of the Region. This publication is part of an effort coordinated by PAHO to support Member States in multihazard preparedness, and includes: early warning system strengthening; threat characterization; activation and deactivation procedure definition; and institutional coordination. It engages different disciplines and recognizes the importance of intersectoral collaboration to respond to heat-health risks. It aims to bring awareness of the impacts of heat on the health of people of the Americas to public health decisionmakers, and thereby strengthen health service provision.
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WHY THIS GUIDE?
Because, in the face of crises and emergencies, it is vital to include a human rights perspective in responses. Vulnerable groups
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face major obstacles to accessing and benefiting from prevention, mitigation, and health care policies due to structural barriers of inequality. To offer guidelines to the countries of the Americas for crafting and implementing inclusive and accessible, human rights-based responses to a pandemic that is unprecedented in the region and in the world as a whole.
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Frontline health workers (FHWs) provide services directly to communities where they are most needed, especially in remote and rural areas. Many are
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community health workers and midwives, though they can also include local emergency responders/paramedics, pharmacists, nurses, and doctors who serve in community clinics.
The growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on low- and middle-income countries threatens many health systems that are already weakened. In many countries, health systems—and health workers—are not prepared to address the complex nature of NCDs. Health systems are often fragmented, and designed to respond to single episodes of care or long-term prevention and control of infectious diseases.1 Many countries also continue to face shortages and distribution challenges of trained and supported health workers. As most NCDs are multifactorial in origin and are detected later in their evolution, health systems face significant challenges to provide early detection as well as affordable, effective, and timely treatment, particularly in underserved communities.
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Early damage assessments indicate that at least 800,000 people could be directly exposed to minor to severe damages, including communication, access, security, loss of livelihoods, infrastructure, and
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health services could be impacted.
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This interagency report provides recommendations for assuring quality of medicines during key activities of country-level procurement agencies, namely prequalification
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of pharmaceutical products and manufacturers; purchase of pharmaceutical products; storage of pharmaceutical products; and distribution of pharmaceutical products.
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A training manual for identifying, assessing, preventing and controlling the risks of pandemics in the workplace. This training manual has been developed for both medical
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and non-medical personnel who may be called upon to lead emergency response, (eg epidemic outbreak, etc), ensure effective containment whiles work continues and essential goods and services continue to be supplied.
The manual provides insight into some of the local epidemics experienced in Ghana such as Cholera, Cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) and Influenza(s), the causes, signs and symptoms and preventive measures with a view to increasing knowledge among management, staff and their families as well as immediate communities within which they work.
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In the last quarter century, several projects emerged to reform mental health services in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Some did not surv
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ive the difficulties that inevitably arise in processes of change, and ended up disappearing before the intended changes could be introduced. Others, however, as shown in this publication, were able to overcome difficulties and meet intended objectives, effectively transforming the structure and quality of services. All these projects, including the many that did not survive, were part of one of the richest experiences in the transformation of mental health care worldwide - the experience of mental health reform in Latin America and the Caribbean
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These guidelines were developed as part of Kenya's fast-track plan to end AIDS among adolescents and young people. Based on research into adolescent and
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young key populations in Kenya and elsewhere, they outline a package of HIV prevention services, and emphasize the need to combine biobehavioural interventions with services in education, job skills training, mental health, and social care and protection.
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Health facilities in the Region of the Americas frequently suffer the effects of health emergenc
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ies and disasters, which jeopardize their ability to provide services to the population. The STAR-H methodology helps staff responsible for health emergency and disaster risk management to identify and assess risks as part of strategic planning to improve facility preparedness. It is intended to help them develop, with a multi-hazard approach, a response framework with operating procedures to deal with hazards of any type, scale, or frequency; determine roles and responsibilities; facilitate the effective use of resources; undertake strategic planning exercises, and improve the preparedness of facilities to effectively respond to and recover from impacts. This methodology is designed for use in health facilities of any size and capacity, and makes it possible to generate historical reports and national or subnational risk profiles. This information can be used to develop an effective health emergency and disaster risk management program.
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Public Health is the science field dedicated to promoting health and well-being, and preventing
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disease within the human population to ultimately increase the quality of our livelihood and life span. Public Health does not focus on individual patients or diseases, but rather a given population and health system. The discipline is community-centered in its interventions and seeks to improve the health status of whole populations...
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Tuberculosis (TB) is, and should be, a curable disease; however, each year significant numbers of patients acquire or develop drug-resistant TB, which has a much lower cure rate. Patients with
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drug-resistant TB have a high prevalence of symptoms; hence, staff caring for these patients should have some familiarity with palliative care, so that general palliative care principles are available to all patients. The timely identification, and addressing, of adverse events occurring during the treatment course is considered as general palliative care for those receiving curative treatment. This publication summarizes the general palliative care approach, which is recommended for use in settings and services that occasionally treat palliative care patients, but do not provide palliative care as the main focus of their work. The review focuses on 18 high TB priority countries of the WHO European Region.
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Globally, approximately 56.8 million people are in need of palliative care
services; 78% of them living in low
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and middle-income country yet only
about 12% have their needs being met causing great suffering for many.
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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
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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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AJOL, Vol.92 No.2; There is a low bed capacity in ICUs compounded by a universal deficit in human resource capacity and support infrastructure for the critical care
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services. Regionalisation, increased funding and more training opportunities for critical are
services by the regional and central governments will go a long way in alleviating these challenges
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For close to 15 years, the Monitor has tracked the impact of victim assistance on the lives of victims of landmines
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, cluster munitions,
and other explosive remnants of war (hereafter “mine/ERW victims”). Over this time, the international community has strengthened its resolve to promote the rights and address the needs of victims through programs and services that are accessible and adequate in quantity, quality, availability, and consistent with the high standards set by human rights as well as other international humanitarian law.
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This document adopts a health determinants framework for examining the evidence related to women’s poor mental health. From this perspective, public policy including economic policy, socio-cultura
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l and environmental factors, community and social support, stressors and life events, personal behaviour and skills, and availability and access to health services, are all seen to exercise a role in determining women’s mental health status. Similarly, when considering the differences between women and men, a gender approach has been used. While this does not exclude biological or sex differences, it considers the critical roles that social and cultural factors and unequal power relations between men and women play in promoting or impeding mental health. Such inequalities create, maintain and exacerbate exposure to risk factors that endanger women’s mental health, and are most graphically illustrated in the significantly different rates of depression between men and women, poverty and its impact, and the phenomenal prevalence of violence against women.
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