In response to COVID-19, UNICEF continues to support the Ministry of Health and Sports’ Health Literacy Promotion Unit to translate and disseminate messages including in ethnic languages for the border areas on good hygiene and handwashing. Social media boosting and message dissemination reach app...roximately 15 million people countrywide.
more
According to the United Nations, Yemen has been the "Worst humanitarian crisis in the world," for the past two years. Despite the Hudaydah Agreement signed in December 2018, the fighting continued in many areas of the country, such as Hajjah in the north, Al Dhale' e in the south and Hudaydah along ...the west coast. Within a year, another 400,000 Yemenis were forced to flee their homes, eventually adding up to one-eighth of the entire Yemeni population who had become displaced at least once, over the last five years.
In 2019, unprecedented heavy rain and flooding from May onwards caused catastrophic damage to homes and the families’ livelihoods, adding to their misery. Thousands of families who had already lost their home due to the fighting had yet again, their temporary shelters, beddings and essential kitchen supplies, destroyed.
more
To support countries’ preparedness effort on the COVID-19 outbreak, the Department of Health Security Preparedness at the WHO headquarters has developed various COVID-19 tabletop exercise (TTX) and Drills (DR) packages .
If you need technical support to implement any of the exercises listed on th...is page, please contact your WHO country office or regional office focal point.
more
The Ghanaian Cabinet approved the antimicrobial resistance (AMR)Policy and Implementation plan(hereafter referred to as the national action plan or NAP)in December 2017, whilst the country case study was in progress. This has set in motion the implementation phase for Ghana, which is a long awaited... event since the drafting of the Policy started in 2011. This case study, whilst limited in its ability to interact with all stakeholders, has identified entrypoints within the operational divisions of Ghana Health Services,as potential areas where the AMR policy platform may seek to embed AMR activities. Much work has already been done within Ghana to identify the key entrypoints within the various ministries and government agencieswhere AMR can be incorporated. These stakeholders already form part of the AMR Policy Platform which is the governance structure for AMR and have been participating actively in the development of the AMR Policy and NAP activities formulation.
more
Nepal has only recently started its journey on the path to an integrated response to the challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Despite this, it is notable that the Nepal Health Sector Strategy Plan (HSSP)-2 mentions growing antibiotic resistanceas a public health challenge.
Produced by Training and Research Support Centre for the Regional Network for Equity in Health in east and southern Africa (EQUINET), March 20, 2020.
This brief summarises and provides links to official, scientific and other resources to support an understanding of and individual to regional level... responses to the epidemic of ‘novel coronavirus’, also known as COVID-19.
more
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) and leaders can play a major role in saving lives and reducing illness related to COVID-19. They are a primary source of support and comfort for their members. Often trusted more than governments or health-agencies, faith leaders can share health information to prot...ect their communities that will be more likely to be accepted than from other sources.
By sharing simple steps to prevent COVID-19 faith organizations can promote helpful information, reduce fear and stigma, and provide reassurance to people in their communities. Because faith leaders are integrated into their communities through service and compassionate networks, they are often able to reach the most vulnerable among us with assistance and health information. In short, they are a critical link in the safety net for vulnerable people in their communities.
more
This course is designed for anyone with an interest in antibiotic resistance, no matter if you are a member of the public, a student, a health professional or any other expert.
Our focus is to provide an overview of antibiotic resistance from several different angles. An important aim is to give an... understanding of the mechanisms behind the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance worldwide, but also what the society and you as an individual can do to control and prevent further emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
more
The product of all this work is the Standard Treatment Guideline and Essential Medicines List of Common Medical Conditions in the Kingdom of Swaziland. These systematically developed statements are designed to assist practitioners in making decisions about appropriate treatment for specific clinical... conditions. They are meant to reflect expert consensus based on a review of current and published scientific evidence of acceptable approaches to diagnosis, man-agement, or prevention of specific conditions.It is enlightening to note that section A of the document contains the STG, and effort has been made to have the conditions commonly encountered in Swaziland classified according to systems. Written in simple, clear language, each section consists of a short definition followed by common symptoms and signs of the disease or condition and then management (pharmacological and nonpharmacological)
more
While infections that develop during hospitalization may appear to be an uncommon but recognized risk of hospital care today, the incidence of these infections has been increasing dramatically during the last 2 to 3 decades, and the risk of acquiring an organism that is resistant to 1 or more antibi...otics is becoming increasingly common.
more
The Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship provides a framework for antibiotic stewardship for outpatient clinicians and facilities that routinely provide antibiotic treatment. This report augments existing guidance for other clinical settings. In 2014 and 2015, respectively, CDC release...d the Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs and the Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship for Nursing Homes. Antibiotic stewardship is the effort to measure and improve how antibiotics are prescribed by clinicians and used by patients. Improving antibiotic prescribing involves implementing effective strategies to modify prescribing practices to align them with evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and management.
more
The spread of antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms poses anincreasing threat to affordable modern health care. In the Netherlands, efforts to control the dispersal of known and novel antimicrobial-resistant organisms have been mostly implemented at the hospital level. However, recent studies have ...recommended shifting the focus of control strategies fromsingle hospitals toward larger healthcare networks. These networks consist of clusters of hospitals that are connected viashared patients. Several studies have shown that patients transferred from one hospital to another can spread antimicrobial-resistant pathogens across the healthcare network
infection control & hospital epidemiology july 2016, vol. 37, no. 7
more
Updated 8 June 2021. Coronavirus is spreading globally. How can individuals, communities, humanitarian actors, local and national authorities best respond to uphold the rights of all affected people?
The Coronavirus is spreading globally. How can individuals, communities and humanitarian actors best respond to the COVID-19 outbreak? How can the Sphere Handbook guide our response?
These guidelines are available in different languages
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS) in 2015, there has been rapidly growing awareness among many African countries that they need to be doing more to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The Africa Centres fo...r Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was officially inaugurated in January 2017 and will support countries commencing surveillance for serious infectious disease threats in Africa, including resistance. Review of the recent WHO GLASS report suggests that, while certain nations do have some surveillance systems in place, very few countries in Africa currently conduct effective routine surveillance.
African Journal of Laboratory MedicineISSN: (Online) 2225-2010, (Print) 2225-2002
more
Global actions to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR) include optimising the use of antimicrobial medicines in human and animal health. In countries with weak healthcare regulation, this requires a greater understanding of the drivers of antibiotic use from the perspective of providers and consume...rs. In Bangladesh, there is limited research on household decision-making and healthcare seeking in relation to antibiotic use and consumption for humans and livestock. Knowledge is similarly lacking on factors influencing the supply and demand for antibiotics among qualified and unqualified healthcare providers. The aim of this study is to conduct integrated research on household decision-making for healthcare and antibiotic use, as well as the awareness, behaviours and priorities of healthcare providers and sellers of antibiotics to translate into policy development and implementation
more
Stenotrophomonas maltophiliais a nonfermenting Gram-negative rod that is ubiquitous in nature (predominantly occurring in aquatic environments and on plants). Biochemically, it iscatalase positive and oxidase negative, and it produces acid frommaltose (hence the name“maltophilia”). Due to it...s chargedcell wall surface and biofilm production, it may attach to and survive on abiotic surfaces in clinical settings (eg, central venouscatheters, disinfectant and hand-washing solutions, solutions for hemodialysis, endoscopes, inspiration/expiration circuits of ventilators, nebulizers, tap water, and showerheads).
Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology Volume 6: 1-9ªThe Author(s) 2019
more
Historically, the discovery of the sulfa drugs in the 1930s and the subsequent development of penicillin during World War II ushered in a new era in the treatment of infectious diseases. Infections that were common causes of death and disease in the pre-...antibiotic era - rheumatic fever, syphilis, cellulitis and bacterial pneumonia - became treatable, and over the next 20 years most of the classes of antibiotics that find clinical use today were discovered and changed medicine in a profound way. The availability of antibiotics enabled revolutionary medical interventions such as cancer chemotherapy, organ transplants and essentially all major invasive surgeries from joint replacements to coronary bypass. Antibiotics, though, are unique among drugs in that their use precipitates their obsolescence. Paradoxically, these cures select for organisms that can evade them, fueling an arms race between microbes, clinicians and drug discoverers.
Wright BMC Biology 2010, 8:123 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/12
more
Antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents are invaluable life savers, particularly in resource-limited countries where infectious diseases are abundant. Both uncomplicated and severe infections are potentially curable as long as the aetiological agents are susceptible to the ...antimicrobial drugs. The rapid rate with which antimicrobial agents are becoming ineffective due to resistance acquired as a result of unchecked overuse and misuse threatens to undo the benefit of controlling infections. The evidence for resistant microorganisms, many times to more than a single antimicrobial agent, has been observed globally. In Tanzania, there is evidence in the form of few scattered studies conducted in different parts of the country in a multitude of settings including health care facilities, the community, domesticated animals and wild animals
more