Tackling COVID-19 misinformation. Ensuring communities have access to lifesaving public health information from trusted sources and are not misled by misinformation is essential to ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to empower doctors and nurses – some of the most effective and trusted
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messengers of public health information – to actively address COVID-19 misinformation and build vaccine confidence globally, the WHO welcomes this social media toolkit for healthcare practitioners, developed by the Government of the United Kingdom.
This toolkit aims to provide healthcare workers with the tools, skills and content needed to effectively share authentic and reliable information online. Centered around three core vaccine confidence messages, Vaccine Safety, Vaccine Development and Vaccine Reducing Risk of Sickness; this toolkit sets out three approaches: creating your own posts, posting the images and videos provided in the toolkit, or resharing vaccine information from trusted sources.
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5 April 2022, Addendum. This policy brief confirms WHO guidance and policy on injection safety in the context of the extraordinary increase in global injections resulting from COVID-19 immunization campaigns. It also calls attention to information o
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n specialized syringes for COVID-19 vaccines and broad short-term and long-term solutions to address and alleviate supply shortages related to vaccine products with non-standard dose volumes.
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31 March 2021
This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and
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equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
Countries around the world are rolling out COVID-19 vaccines, and a key topic of interest is their safety. Vaccine safety is one of WHO’s highest priorities, and we’re working closely with national authorities to develop and implement standards to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
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This document is part three in a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Part one focused on how vaccines work to protect our bodies from disease-carrying germs. Part two focused on the ingredients in a
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vaccine and the three clinical trial phases.
This document outlines the next part of the vaccine journey: the steps from completing the clinical trial phases through to distribution.
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August 2020, The Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 is underpinned by the need to limit transmission, prevent deaths and reduce associated harms. Participation by African nations in clinical trials is an essential step to ensure that sufficient data is generated on the
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safety and efficacy of the most promising vaccine candidates among the region’s populations.
While current COVID-19 clinical trial activity on the continent is limited, Africa has substantial experience and capabilities to conduct clinical trials for preventative vaccines across a range of diseases, and many organizations on the continent are working tirelessly to help prepare additional trials on potential COVID-19 vaccines. As the number of candidate vaccines in the development pipeline continues to increase, it will be important for organizations responsible for managing clinical trials in the region to partner with vaccine developers to identify potential and appropriate trial locations, provide support to remove any critical obstacles impeding commencement and progress of trials, and to provide oversight ensuring that trials are conducted safely and ethically.
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The immunization program has been going well until a rumor begins that one child in a community far from the capital has become sick after receiving a vaccine. The rumor is becoming stronger every day and is picking up coverage on local radio.
Co
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ncerned that the rumor might make caregivers concerned about bringing their children for vaccination, a few frontline workers (FLWs) go to the house of the children who fell sick. They find out from the child's mother that she never thought her son was sick due to the vaccination he received. The mother agrees to speak to other caregivers during a community gathering to explain that her son's illness was not caused by his vaccination. She also responds to a few questions to reassure other caregivers about the safety and advantages of immunization.
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Interim Guidance, 12 July 2021; This tool was developed to assess present and surge capacities for the treatment of COVID-19 in health facilities. It allows health facilities to assess the availability and status of stockout of critical COVID-19 medicines, equipment and supplies on site and to ident
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ify areas that need further attention to enable the facility to respond effectively to the pandemic. The tool encompasses key components that are essential to managing COVID-19 in a hospital setting, including:
health workforce (numbers, absences, COVID-19 infections, staff vaccinated for COVID-19 health workforce management, training and support);
medicines and medical supplies for management of COVID-19;
IPC capacities (protocols, safety measures, guidelines) and the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff;
diagnostic testing, imaging and patient monitoring devices and supplies
medical equipment for management of COVID-19, including O2 administration;
COVID-19 vaccine readiness ;
beds and space capacity.
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The authors state that researchers, governments and global agencies should proceed with particular care in the evaluation of candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in LMICs, with effective communication to build trust and avoid generation of vaccine hesitanc
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y. Vaccine efficacy is often highly variable between high-resource and low-resource settings
Archives of Disease in Childhood, vol.106 Issue 2
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How far apart should the doses of vaccines be? What if I miss my second dose? Can I get two doses from two different manufacturers? How was safety of vaccines ensured? WHO’s Chief Scientist, Dr Soumya Swaminathan explains in Science in 5.
Health workers involved in deployment and implementation of COVID-19 vaccination require vaccine-specific knowledge to ensure safe and efficient vaccine delivery. This training provides key informat
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ion about COVID-19 vaccines through short instructional videos, vaccine explainers, job aids, topic briefings, and downloadable presentations. It builds on the COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers and the Orientation to National Deployment and Vaccination Planning for COVID-19.
Please note that further videos and resources concerning other vaccines will be added as they receive emergency use listing (EUL) or prequalification. Available in different languages
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14 July 2021 This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and eq
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uitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be safe, effective and life-saving. Like all vaccines, they do not fully protect everyone who is vaccinated, and we do not yet know how well they can prevent people from transmitting the virus to others. So as well as getting vaccinated, we must also continue with other measures to fight the pandemic.
Available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian
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Extract from report of GACVS meeting of 29-30 November 2006, published in the WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record of 19 January 2007
31 March 2021
This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and
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equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.
Vaccines are a critical tool in the battle against COVID-19, and getting vaccinated is one of the best ways to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.
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1 March 2021
The COVID-19 vaccine checklist is for frontline health workers planning a COVID-19 vaccination session. This checklist can help them to prepare and complete a COVID-19 vaccination session at a fixed post or outreach session.
The safety of medicines in Zambia - why health workers need to take action | Produced by the National Pharmacovigilance Unit (NPVU)
Infographic
Health workers play a key role in ensuring the continued safety of COVID-19 vaccines
Many countries are using the approach of mixing vaccine doses from different manufacturers. What do we know about the safety and efficacy of this approach? What does the evidence tell us about using
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a fraction of the vaccine dose ? Dr Katherine O’Brien explains in Science in 5 this week.
Closed Captioning is available for Science in 5 in several languages on YouTube:Spanish,Portuguese,Thai,Nepali,Maithili,BahasaandJapanese.
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7 June 2021
The Africa Regulatory Taskforce is a joint effort established by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) coordinated African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) Initiative, and the World Health Organisat
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ion’s (WHO) African Vaccine Regulatory Forum (AVAREF) to enable and provide support for an effective regulatory framework for COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa.
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