This is the ninth paper in our series, “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. Community health workers (CHWs) are in an intermedi
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ary position between the health system and the community. While this position provides CHWs with a good platform to improve community health, a major challenge in large-scale CHW programmes is the need for CHWs to establish and maintain benefcial relationships with both sets of actors, who may have diferent expectations and needs. This paper focuses on the quality of CHW relationships with actors at the local level of the national health system and with communities.
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National AIDS and STI Control Program
The 2014-2015 outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Liberia resulted in over 10,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. Recognizing the importance
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of addressing children’s trauma, the Ebola recovery and restoration trust fund (EERTF) funded the implementation of a Comfort for kids (C4K) program which encourages psychological healing, and promotes resilience in children who have experienced a crisis or disaster. The C4K program in Liberia was implemented between January 2015 and December 2016 in fifteen townships in Montserrado County through a collaboration between Mercy Corps Liberia, the World Bank’s Liberian health task team, and the government of Liberia. C4K primarily centers on the My Story workbook and associated classroom activities, which provide children with the opportunity to express their emotions about their experiences through drawing, writing, and facilitated discussion. C4K also provides capacity building for parents, teachers, and other caretakers on how to identify and more effectively respond to children’s trauma responses and to support their recovery
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The context of the Ebola epidemic presented extreme challenges for Oxfam, as it did for many organisations. At the onset of the epidemic, there was a general lack
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of understanding of the disease and how to respond to it effectively and safely. A pervasive and persistent climate of fear, coupled with changing predictions about the likely evolution of the epidemic, influenced analysis and response at all levels. There was strong pressure to treat the epidemic as a medical emergency requiring a medical response – organised through topdown processes – rather than standard humanitarian coordination
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The greatest risk to persons engaging in international medical emergency response is poor preparation.
The In Control handbook hopes to provide a remedy.
At the time of writing, we are living through the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a
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health emergency that disregards physical borders, brings into focus social inequalities and affects people on every continent. This shared challenge requires unprecedented measures and the collaboration of the brightest minds to support global health protection through this crisis and beyond. Healthcare infrastructures have to be strengthened, public health capacities and processes upgraded, medical countermeasures and vaccinations found and psychosocial side-effects treated.
Solidarity is the normative order of the day and the human species has to collaborate to face this invisible threat. Hiding and living in fear is not an option in this interconnected world. We have both a responsibility and an opportunity to make substantial contributions to a safer, healthier and more sustainable future for us all.
The existence of this handbook is an impressive example of solidarity. Over 50 authors from more than 15 institutes and organisations have come together voluntarily within a very short time to make their expertise available and enable cross-sectoral thinking. Knowledge is bundled, resources are combined, information gaps are filled. The In Control handbook is not a theoretical treatise of possible dangers, but a collection of subject-matter expertise, written by experts and practitioners who have shaped health topics over the past 20 years in the most diverse corners of the world.
The Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is collaborating with its partners and investing heavily in the build-up of operational know-how and capacity to support health crisis response abroad. This is done by preparing and enabling professionals to deploy safely across the world to assist those in need. In Control addresses the multi-faceted challenges of an international deployment. Readers will find not only technical medical information, but also insights into, for example, the fragility of our environment, the cultural differences that influence risk communication or the dilemmas arising from social distancing. Legal principles are highlighted, along with ethical guidance to ensure that our actions and decisions correspond to the highest moral standards.
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This year marked the beginning of the WHO biennium 2016-2017 action plan; this annual report highlights WHO’s key achievements in 2016
It also documents the extraordinary efforts by a broad coalition o
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f government ministries, municipalities, international agencies, community groups, women’s organizations, religious and traditional leaders, media, private sector and donors towards restoration and improving health indicators.
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“2022 was an eventful year for the WHO Country Office in Ghana,” says Dr Francis Kasolo, WHO Representative to Ghana.
In 2022, WHO Ghana collaborated with partners to deliver interventions in support of the
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Government of Ghana's health sector agenda to ensure healthy lives for all towards achieving Universal Health Coverage. This 2022 annual report highlights some of the achievements that were chalked in our efforts to help promote the health and wellbeing of Ghanaians
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The audit was undertaken in order to ascertain whether allocations and donations received directly by the Government of Sierra Leone, in the fight
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against the Ebola Virus Disease were utilised with due regard to economy and efficiency and that internal controls were observed accordingly. The audit found that more than US$ 10 million in spending was inadequately documented and US$ 6 million may have been diverted to non-existent or “ghost” workers. The Quote: “It makes one wonder how a serious humanitarian crisis was used as money-making machine,” said Ibrahim Tommy, coordinator for Sierra Leone’s Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law
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A study conducted by the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on older persons both globally and in the African region. Although o
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verall the region’s population is younger relative to many other world regions, the WHO AFRO region has a population just over 62 million older people and is ageing rapidly, with the number of older people expected to triple in the next three decades (Aboderin et al., 2020).
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The report underscores that sexual and reproductive health and rights are often the first to be sacrificed during epidemics
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and that the gains of the past decade must be protected. The report also makes it clear that scarce resources must be focused on the most marginalized women and girls, including sex workers, gender diverse people, women in prison and migrants and others without proof of employment or residence.
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