The World Health Organization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are part of a group of agencies working together to accelerate progress towards the health-related SDGs through the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All. Understanding patterns of inequal...ities in these diseases is essential for taking strategic, evidence-informed action to realize our shared vision of ending the epidemics of HIV, TB and malaria.
This report presents the first comprehensive analysis of the magnitude and patterns of socioeconomic, demographic and geographic inequalities in disease burden and access to services for prevention and treatment.
The results confirm there have been improvements in service coverage and decreased disease burden at the national level over the past decade. But they also reveal an uncomfortable reality: unfair inequalities between population subgroups within countries are widespread and have remained largely unchanged over the past decade. For some disease indicators, inequalities are even worsening.
Moreover, the report points to the persistent lack of available data to fully understand inequality patterns in HIV, TB and malaria. Collecting data to improve the monitoring of inequalities in these diseases is vital to develop targeted responses for impact.
There are, encouragingly, isolated successes in reducing inequities. Change is possible when deliberate action is taken to reach disadvantaged populations.
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Development of one or more vaccines for Neisseria gonorrhoeae is an important objective for sexual and reproductive health worldwide, and for the fight against antimicrobial resistance.
WHO preferred product characteristics (PPCs) provide strategic guidance as to WHO’s preferences for new vacci...nes in priority disease areas. PPCs are intended to encourage innovation and development of vaccines for use in settings most relevant to the global unmet public health need.
Gonococcal vaccine PPCs describe global public health goals for gonococcal vaccines and preferred parameters pertaining to vaccine indications and target populations, safety and efficacy considerations, and immunization strategies.
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The Infant and young child feeding counselling: an integrated course includes this Director’s guide, a Trainer’s guide and Participant’s manual. Additional tools include: Course handouts; Guidelines for follow-up after training; Supportive supervision/mentoring and monitoring and an accompanyi...ng toolkit; a slide set for the trainer; a set of 24 Counselling cards and Guidance on the use of counselling cards. The course includes 79 sessions arranged within 8 modules, covering a range of topics, including breastfeeding, complementary feeding, growth assessment and monitoring, HIV and infant feeding, and infant and young child feeding counselling. Course facilitators can decide which sessions to cover, depending on the specific learning needs of the health workers in your community.
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The Participant’s manual contains summaries of information presented by the trainers, copies of worksheets and checklists for the clinical practice and practical sessions, and exercises that participants will do during the course. One manual should be provided for each participant, using the modul...es selected, for use during the course and can be used as a reference after the course. child feeding counselling. Course facilitators can decide which sessions to cover, depending on the specific learning needs of the health workers in your community.
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The Director’s guide contains all the information that the course director needs in order to plan and prepare for the course, to decide which modules and sessions will be included in the training, and to select trainers and participants, starting several months before the actual training. It conta...ins lists of the materials and equipment needed, and sample timetables. Copies of the forms to be photocopied and used during the course can be found in the Course handouts. The Director’s guide also describes the director’s role during the course itself.
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Cancer centres are a major resource in ensuring a comprehensive approach to cancer treatment and its planning. As part of a new roadmap developed by WHO and IAEA to help countries design national cancer control programmes, this publication proposes a framework to develop a cancer centre and/or to st...rengthen the provision of services in an existing cancer centre. The publication provides the features of multidisciplinary cancer care and details the infrastructure, human resources and equipment for different services. This framework is expected to be used as a guide to implementation, taking into consideration the local context and resources.
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The substantial burden of death and disability that results from interpersonal violence, road traffic injuries, unintentional injuries, occupational health risks, air pollution, climate change, and inadequate water and sanitation falls disproportionally on low- and middle-income countries. Injury Pr...evention and Environmental Health addresses the risk factors and presents updated data on the burden, as well as economic analyses of platforms and packages for delivering cost-effective and feasible interventions in these settings. The volume's contributors demonstrate that implementation of a range of prevention strategies-presented in an essential package of interventions and policies-could achieve a convergence in death and disability rates that would avert more than 7.5 million deaths a year.
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The practical guidance in the operational handbook aims to inform the development or revision of national policies and related implementation guidance on the management of TB in children and adolescents under programmatic circumstances and at different levels of the health system. The operational ha...ndbook can also help countries adequately plan for the uptake of interventions to better address the specific needs of children and adolescents with or at risk of TB. It can contribute to national efforts to build capacity among national and subnational programme managers and among health workers at all levels of the health care system.
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Mental health is critically important to everyone, everywhere. All over the world, mental health needs are high but responses are insufficient and inadequate. The World mental health report: transforming mental health for all is designed to inspire and inform better mental health for everyone everyw...here. Drawing on the latest evidence available, showcasing examples of good practice from around the world, and voicing people’s lived experience, it highlights why and where change is most needed and how it can best be achieved. It calls on all stakeholders to work together to deepen the value and commitment given to mental health, reshape the environments that influence mental health, and strengthen the systems that care for mental health.
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Despite its rich culture, great economic potential, high level of education and last but not least its sheer size – it is the largest state whose borders lie entirely within Europe and is 1.7 times the size of the Federal Republic of Germany – Ukraine seems far away in perception and awareness. ...Publications on recent dramatic events, such as the Ukraine conflict or the Crimea crisis, have done little to change this. In fact, the armed conflict in the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, which has been ongoing since February 2014, is still a burdening feature of many political and economic difficulties destabilizing the country. News coverage of health issues in Ukraine has recently been dominated by highly critical reports on the handling of the Covid 19 pandemic. This pandemic exacerbated existing weaknesses in the Ukrainian health care system, but at least it did not create any new ones.
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The sixteenth meeting of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Neglected Tropical Diseases (STAG-NTD) was held as a hybrid meeting, 27–28 September 2022.
Dr Ren Minghui, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage/Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases, welcomed participan...ts to the meeting. He said the World Health Organization’s Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (WHO/NTD) was in a state of transition. Following the death of the late esteemed Director Dr Mwelecele Ntuli Malecela earlier in the year, Dr Gautam Biswas had taken over as Acting Director but would soon retire; the appointment of a new Director was under way. Owing to rotation of STAG-NTD members, this would be the last meeting for some and the first meeting for several new participants. The work however would continue with the same commitment. Discussions over the next two days would focus on critical issues regarding recovery of NTD services following the disruptions caused by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which had impacted many health services worldwide. He looked forward to receiving the advice and guidance of STAG-N
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Access to health workers who are fit for purpose, motivated and protected is a fundamental force of health service delivery and the achievement of universal health coverage and the health and health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Data and knowledge of the distribution, skill mix and future d...evelopment needs of the health workforce can mean the difference between enabling or impeding health systems performance, inclusive economic growth and global health security preparedness and response
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Die steigende Zahl der Menschen in Berlin ohne bzw. mit geringen Deutschkenntnissen führt zu einem wachsenden Mehrbedarf an Dolmetschleistungen in der Stadt. Sprachliche Hilfe bei der Verständigung in zahlreichen Lebensbereichen wird nötig – ob auf dem Amt, bei Arzt/Ärztin, vor Gericht oder de...m Standesamt. Beim Dolmetschen im Gemeinwesen stehen demnach gesellschaftliche Teilhabe und Inklusion im Mittelpunkt. Da Geflüchtete überdies oftmals von gewaltvollen Erfahrungen in den Heimatländern oder auf der Flucht erzählen müssen, kommt den Dolmetscher*innen und anderen beteiligten Akteur*innen hier eine besondere Verantwortung im Umgang mit ihnen zu. Nicht selten werden in diesem Kontext die Grenzen zwischen der beruflichen und der persönlichen Position der Dolmetscher*innen überschritten.
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This fourth WHO report on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) reviews the progress made towards achieving the Roadmap targets for 2020, noting the remaining challenges, then looks beyond 2020 to evaluate the changing global health and development landscape, considering the implications of integrating... these diseases into the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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The 2030 health-related Sustainable Development Goals call on countries to end AIDS as a public health threat and also to achieve universal health coverage. The World Health Organization (WHO) promotes primary health care (PHC) as the key mechanism for achieving universal health coverage, and the PH...C approach is also essential for ending AIDS and reaching other Sustainable Development Goal targets.
The PHC approach is defined as a whole-of-society approach to health that aims to maximize the level and distribution of health and well-being through three components: (1) primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services; (2) multisectoral policy and action; and (3) empowered people and communities.
This publication helps decision-makers to consider and optimize the synergies between existing and future assets and investments intended for both PHC and disease-specific responses, including HIV. Specifically, it aims to:
• provide guidance to policy-makers, health system managers and programmatic leads from both PHC and HIV backgrounds regarding opportunities to jointly advance their respective efforts to strengthen PHC and end AIDS as a public health threat; and
• provide a resource for all stakeholders who seek to contribute to strengthening PHC and ending AIDS as a public health threat in a synergistic manner, including people living with HIV, members of key and vulnerable populations, community and civil society representatives, people working in all areas of health systems, researchers, funders and private-sector decision-makers.
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The world has been turned on its head by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This has provided a stark wakeup call on the severe under-financing of health systems around the world. It has laid bare the inequalities and limitations in the capacities of countries at all levels of develop...ment to prevent major health crises or respond to them. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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Six months after its launch on 24 April, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator has already delivered concrete results in speeding up the development of new therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines. Now mid-way through the scale-up phase, the tools we need to fundamentally change the course o...f this pandemic are within reach. But to deliver the full impact of the ACT-Accelerator – and ultimately an exit to this global crisis – these tools need to be available everywhere. On behalf of the ACT-Accelerator Pillar lead agencies – CEPI, Gavi, the Global Fund, FIND, Unitaid, Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – I am pleased to share this document setting out the near-term priorities, deliverables and financing requirements of the ACT-Accelerator Pillars and Health Systems Connector. Urgent action to address these financing requirements will boost the impact of the ACTAccelerator achievements to date, fast-track the development and deployment of additional game-changing tools, and mitigate the risk of a widening gap in access to COVID-19 tools between low- and high-income countries. Delivering on this promise requires strong political leadership, financial investment, and incountry capacity building. COVID-19 cannot be beaten by any one country acting alone. We must ACT now, and ACT together to end the COVID-19 crisis.
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Building on the 2021 Interim guidance, this second version and update, incorporates the lessons and feedback from the hepatitis pilots that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of measuring hepatitis B and C impact targets to demonstrate elimination, whilst highlighting challenges caused by hig...h disease burden in some countries, as well as delays in reaching mortality targets due to the long natural history of disease progression to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
The path to elimination provides a framework with 3 levels of achievements for which WHO certification is available. Each stepwise progression from bronze to silver to gold tiers will promote an iterative expansion of prevention, diagnosis and treatment services for viral hepatitis services and strengthen measurement systems to support attainment of the 2030 elimination goals.
This updated version also includes changes, clarifications and new guidance on alternative measurement approaches for country validation of elimination. Through the validation process, WHO and partners continue to provide country support for strengthening health system capacity and patient-centred services that respect and protect the human rights of people living with viral hepatitis and ensures meaningful engagement of communities in the national, regional and global viral hepatitis response.
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