The WHO End TB Strategy aims to end the global TB epidemic by 2030, in alignment with Goal 3 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States of the World Health ...class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">Organization (WHO) and the UN committed to ending the TB epidemic through adoption of WHO’s End TB Strategy and the UN SDGs in 2014 and 2015, respectivel
Almost half of the deaths worldwide caused by TB in 2019 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region, home to around a quarter of the global population. Maintaining robust progress in this Region is therefore essential if the global goal of ending the TB epidemic is to be realized. Despite substantial gains made in the Region, the threat to
health worldwide posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse these gains and eclipse the focus on the global TB emergency.
While continuing to tackle COVID-19-related challenges, countries will need to rapidly and urgently deploy supplementary measures to address the large numbers of missed cases, poor treatment outcomes and, potentially, a higher TB burden.
The Regional Strategic Plan towards Ending TB in the Region 2021–2025 clearly articulates priority interventions, analyses the challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities, and focuses on implementation considerations in the Region.
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The workshop aimed to support countries in the prioritization and acceleration of NCD prevention and management with a specific focus on accelerating the prevention and control of hypertension and diabetes, identifying the most impactful NCD interventions within their context, closing the gaps in ca...ncer care services through regional collaboration and integrating NCD services in when responding to emergencies.
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Workshop Report: Dhaka, Bangladesh 12-15 June 2023
The current SEARVAP (South-East Asia regional vaccine action plan) describes a set of regional goals and objectives for immunization and control of... vaccine-preventable diseases for 2016 – 2020 and highlights priority actions, targets and indicators that address the specific needs and challenges of countries in the Region.
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The report aims to help policy-makers and programme managers identify the areas that need attention and to work towards effective implementation and enforcement of policies and legislations. The need for alcohol policy-specific infrastructures to support the alcohol policy process, including designa...ted responsible agency, policy and strategy, and law and regulation, is also required at the country level.
The report is presented in three sections. Section 1 gives an insight to the alcohol consumption situation in the WHO South-East Asia Region and cites the alcohol-related problems that the Region is facing. Section 2 illustrates the policy situation in the 10 areas of national action identified in the Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol and gives specific recommendations pertaining to these areas. Section 3 provides overall recommendations.
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To implement the set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children
With the growing obesity crisis among children, WHO and other public health advocates and consumer groups have called for restrictions on ...advertising of ‘unhealthy foods’ high in salt, sugar and fat to children. Each day, children in the South East Asia Region are exposed to large volume of marketing of unhealthy foods that may influence children’s food preferences and consumption patterns and is associated with childhood overweight and obesity.
The definition of ‘unhealthy’ is debatable, and therefore, an objective method of describing foods as healthy or unhealthy is needed. A nutrient profile model does just that and therefore, a nutrition profile model for South East Asia was developed. The model is consistent with international guidance for preventing chronic disease and is a simple system with clear cut-offs for defining which foods are not suitable for advertising to children.
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The leishmaniases are a group of diseases caused by Leishmania spp., which occur in cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral forms. They are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which disproportionately affect marginalized populations who have limited access to ...">health care. HIV co-infected patients with Leishmania infection are highly infectious to sandflies, and an increase in the coinfection rate in an endemic area is likely to increase the effective infective reservoir.
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The WHO South-East Asia (SEA) Region bears a high burden of tuberculosis (TB) and MDR-TB. In 2015, the Region accounted for nearly 200... 000 or 35% of the global estimated new RR/MDR-TB cases eligible for treatment. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDRTB) has also been reported from six countries of the SEA Region. MDR-TB could potentially replace drug-susceptible TB, and constitutes a threat to global public health security. The South- East Asia Regional Response Framework for DR-TB 2017–2021 complements the Ending TB in the South-East Asia Region: Regional Strategic Plan 2016–2020” and outlines key strategies for reducing morbidity, mortality and transmission of DR-TB.
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At the threshold of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) era, this document captures the remarkable achievements by Member States towards achieving MDGs 4 and 5. It acknowledges new opportunities in the post-2015 phase shaped by the SDGs and the Global Strategy for women’s, children’s and adoles...cents’ health and presents an advanced state of preparedness in the Region. This also highlights the region’s renewed commitment for a more inclusive and more dynamic flagship action for ending preventable maternal, newborn and child mortality as well as to improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing in the South-East Asia Region.
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is described as a situation when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites
change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder or impossible to treat,
and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.1 AMR in recent years has... become
a global priority in public health due to its widespread consequences and increasing occurrence from
time to time. AMR has a formidable impact where the existing antibiotics and other antimicrobial
medicines become ineffective, and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat.
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Diabetes is not new to South-East Asia, since this condition was first described by Indian and Egyptian physicians three and a half thousand years ...ago. Diabetes is a serious, chronic disease characterized by chronic elevation of blood glucose and disturbance of carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Raised blood glucose, a common effect of uncontrolled diabetes, may, over time, lead to serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys and nerves. Diabetes is therefore not only a disease in itself but also an intermediate stage for many other serious conditions.
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Sodium Benchmarks for Packaged Foods
The Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies is a collaborative partnership which supports and promotes evidence-based health policy... making in the Asia Pacific Region. Based in WHO’s Regional Office for South-East Asia, it brings together governments, international agencies, foundations, civil society and the research community with the aim of linking systematic and scientific analysis of health systems in the Asia Pacific Region with the decision-makers who shape policy and practice.
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Virtually all (99.9 percent) of Southeast Asia’s 656.1 million people live in areas where particulate pollution exceeds the World ...tribute-to-highlight medbox">Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 μg/m³. Despite the lockdowns of the pandemic, pollution continued to rise in much of Southeast Asia in 2020. This pollution cuts short the life expectancy of the average Southeast Asian person by 1.5 years, relative to what it would be if the WHO guideline was met. That’s a total of 959.8 million person-years lost to pollution in the eleven countries that make up this region. Some countries in the region experience greater impacts from pollution.
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Interim Framework for the South-East Asia Region 28 October 2020
Training Modules for climate change and Health - WHO