This topic brief highlights how nutrition and healthy diets support the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school ...and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
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While there has been real progress in addressing the burden of disease in the WHO African region, the...span> COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the link between health, economics and security, as the region saw decades of progress threatened, including positive trends in decreasing inequality. In the African Region the momentum towards achieving the 2030 SDG disease burden reduction targets (SDG targets 3.3, 3.4 and 3B) has stalled.
The COVID-19 pandemic was also a major threat to gains made, such as the eradication of polio in the region, declared in 2020; reduced numbers of new HIV infections in 2021 compared to 2010; and passing the 2020 milestone of the End TB Strategy, with a 22% reduction in new cases compared with 2015. However, the pandemic also disrupted essential health services in 92% of countries globally, 22.7 million children missed basic immunization, there was an increase in malaria and TB, and global deaths from TB rose for the first time since 2015.
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Including a Tool to Assess the Adolescent Health and Development Component in Pre-Service Education of Health-Care Providers
Working document from an informal consultation of experts. A Protocol for risk assessment at the field level. The purpose ...-highlight medbox">of document is to provide guidance on the methodology to be used for assessing, at field level, the yellow fever virus circulation in areas at risk, and is primarily intended for public health specialists
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These guidelines provide new and updated recommendations on the use of point-of-care testing in children under 18 months ...highlight medbox">of age and point-of-care tests to monitor treatment in people living with HIV; the treatment monitoring algorithm; and timing of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among people living with HIV who are being treated for tuberculosis.
New recommendations launched today outline key new actions that countries can take to improve the delivery of HIV testing, treatment and care services by providing greater options for differentiated approaches such as, supporting HIV treatment start in the community, ensuring that children are diagnosed and treated early, and that viral load treatment monitoring is more accessible, focused and triggers clinical action
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Today there are Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in a large number of countries. In many countries, the CBR approach is a part of ...pan class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">the national rehabilitation services. However, there is a lack of reliable data about persons with disabilities who benefit from CBR and the kind of benefits they receive. This article reviews the disability data collection systems and presents some case studies to understand the influence of operational factors on data collection in the CBR programmes. The review shows that most CBR programmes use a variable number of broad functional categories to collect information about persons with disabilities, combined occasionally with more specific diagnostic categories. This categorisation is influenced by local contexts and operational factors, including the limitations of human and material resources available for its implementation, making it difficult to have comparable CBR data. Therefore, any strategies to strengthen the data collection in CBR programmes must take these operational factors into account.
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TNew data from the World Health Organization reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted malaria services, leading to a marked increase in cases and deaths.
According to WHO’s latest World ma...laria report, there were an estimated 241 million malaria cases and 627 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2020. This represents about 14 million more cases in 2020 compared to 2019, and 69 000 more deaths. Approximately two-thirds of these additional deaths (47 000) were linked to disruptions in the provision of malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment during the pandemic.
As in past years, the report provides an up-to-date assessment of the burden of malaria at global, regional and country levels. It tracks investments in malaria programmes and research as well as progress across all intervention areas. This latest report draws on data from 87 countries and territories with ongoing malaria transmission.
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Lessons and best practices in empowering pastoralist communities to prevent HIV infection and reduce the impact of AIDS in Ethiopia. Briefing Paper
Outstanding child and adolescent TB priorities include the need to: find the missing children with active TB and link them to TB care; prevent TB in children who are in contact with infectious TB ca...ses (through implementation of active contact investigation and provision of preventive treatment); and advance integration within general child health services, including maternal and child health/ reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, HIV, nutrition and other programmes.
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This module has been developed to provide training and guidance to improve the quality of care and human rights conditions in inpatient, outpatient and community based mental health and related serv...ices, following the conduct of a comprehensive assessment using the WHO QualityRights assessment toolkit.
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Flooding following Cyclone Idai in mid-March has now affected 270,000 people as of 30 March 2019.
• The most heavily affected areas are the dist...ricts of Chimanimani and Chipinge in Manicaland which have been isolated due to roads and bridges being washed away. Mashonaland East (Chikomba district) and Masvingo (Zaka and Bikita districts) have also been affected.
• The flood response is being led by the Department of Civil Protection at the national and provincial levels.
• Two district command centres have been set up in Chimanimani and Chipinge. A logistics base has been set up in Mutare.
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A qualitative assessment of knowledge gaps about female genital schistosomiasis among communities living in Schistosoma haematobium endemic districts of Zanzibar and Northwestern Tanzania.
PloS Neg...lected Tropical Diseases September 30, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009789
Schistosoma haematobium causes urogenital schistosomiasis and is widely distributed in Tanzania. In girls and women, the parasite can cause Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS), a gynecological manifestation of schistosomiasis that is highly neglected and overlooked by public health professionals and policy makers. This study explored community members’ knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) on and health seeking behavior for FGS.
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A practical approach for developing policy and strategy to improve quality of care
The handbook outlines an approach for the development ...ass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">of national policies and strategies to improve the quality of care. Such policy and strategy can help clarify the structures, roles and responsibilities within national quality efforts, support the institutionalization of a culture of quality, and secure buy-in from health system leaders and stakeholders
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A guide to increasing coverage and equity in all communities in the African Region
Expanded Programs on Immunization (EPI) is responsible for vaccines and vaccination to control, eliminate and eradicate vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs). Havi...ng strong immunization systems to deliver vaccines to those who need them most will play a significant role in achieving the health, equity and economic objectives of several global development goals.
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Progress in prevention and treatment is faltering around the world, putting millions of people in grave danger. Eastern Europe and central Asia, Latin America, and ...t medbox">the Middle East and North Africa have all seen increases in annual HIV infections over several years. In Asia and the Pacific, UNAIDS data now show new HIV infections are rising where they had been falling. Action to tackle the inequalities driving AIDS is urgently required to prevent millions of new HIV infections this decade and to end the AIDS pandemic
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An Infographic Guide to Technology-facilitated Gender-based Violence (TFGBV) offers a visually engaging toolkit designed to raise awareness and deepen understanding of the pervasive and harmful impa...ct of TFGBV on women and girls in all their diversity.
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Just about everyone has experienced the joy that a healthy newborn child brings to parents, families and communities. But the arrival of a newborn ...who is small or sick often results in immediate worry and sadness. When the infant is at high risk of death or disability, these concerns can be a tremendous additional burden.
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Women have less access to the development services and support – such as adequate healthcare, education and
modern technology – that make people more resilient to climate change and other shocks and stressors.2
Women’s unequal access to reso...urces, their disproportionate responsibility for care of dependents (typically unpaid),
and the insecurity and precariousness of their paid labour all contribute to the feminisation of poverty and women’s
heightened vulnerability to climate hazards. Climate change is a multiplier of existing vulnerabilities and threatens to
reverse hard-earned development gains for all people, and particularly for women.
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This FY 2019 Malaria Operational Plan presents a detailed implementation plan for Burkina Faso, based on the strategies of PMI and the National Mal...aria Control Program (NMCP). It was developed in consultation with the NMCP and with the participation of national and international partners involved in malaria prevention and control in the country. The activities that PMI is proposing to support fit in well with the national malaria control strategy and plan and build on investments made by PMI and other partners to improve and expand malaria-related services, including malaria grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. This document briefly reviews the current status of malaria control policies and interventions in Burkina Faso, describes progress to date, identifies challenges and unmet needs to achieving the targets of the NMCP and PMI, and provides a description of activities that are planned with FY 2019 funding.
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This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing—including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing—from China to 138 countries between 2000 and ...2014. We use these data to investigate whether and to what extent Chinese aid affects economic growth in recipient countries. To account for the endogeneity of aid, we employ an instrumental-variables strategy that relies on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese aid over time resulting from changes in Chinese steel production. Variation across recipient countries results from a country’s probability of receiving aid. Controlling for year- and recipient-fixed effects that capture the levels of these variables, their interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Our results show that Chinese official development assistance (ODA) boosts economic growth in recipient countries. For the average recipient country, we estimate that one additional Chinese ODA project produces a 0.7 percentage point increase in economic growth two years after the project is committed. We also benchmark the effectiveness of Chinese aid vis-á-vis the World Bank, the United States, and all members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
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