EU Compass for Action on Mental Health and Well-being
These guidelines – an update to the World Health Organization’s 2015 publication Consolidated strategic information guidelines – present a set of essential aggregate indicators
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and guidance on choosing, collecting and systematically analysing strategic information to manage and monitor the national health sector response to HIV.
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The World Health Organization provides regional and national strategies and operational plans that aim to support countries in work to achieve meas
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les control and elimination. These are guided by high level frameworks including the Immunization Agenda 2030 and the Measles and Rubella Strategic Framework 2021–2030. These frameworks promote improvements in routine immunization programmes to reach all children, reduce immunity gaps and prevent outbreaks within the context of universal health care.
This interim guidance on Targeted and selective strategies in measles and rubella vaccination campaigns adds to the suite of guidance documents. It provides expanded description of methods to determine age groups for inclusion in preventive and outbreak response measles and rubella vaccination campaigns; and operational considerations that are specific to targeted and selective strategies in measles and rubella vaccination campaigns. This guidance also updates definitions for tailored, targeted and selective campaigns.The World Health Organization provides regional and national strategies and operational plans that aim to support countries in work to achieve measles control and elimination. These are guided by high level frameworks including the Immunization Agenda 2030 and the Measles and Rubella Strategic Framework 2021–2030. These frameworks promote improvements in routine immunization programmes to reach all children, reduce immunity gaps and prevent outbreaks within the context of universal health care.
This interim guidance on Targeted and selective strategies in measles and rubella vaccination campaigns adds to the suite of guidance documents. It provides expanded description of methods to determine age groups for inclusion in preventive and outbreak response measles and rubella vaccination campaigns; and operational considerations that are specific to targeted and selective strategies in measles and rubella vaccination campaigns. This guidance also updates definitions for tailored, targeted and selective campaigns.
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National-scale databases and reliability issue
Background report
The main message emerging from this new comprehensive global assessment is that premature death and disease can be prevented through healthier environments – and to a significant degree. Analysing
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the latest data on the environment-disease nexus and the devastating impact of environmental hazards and risks on global health, backed up by expert opinion, this report covers more than 100 diseases and injuries.
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Using the WHO model list of essential medicines to update a national essential medicines list
Since 1977, WHO has been working with countries to design the package of essential medicines as an inte
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gral component of treatment within the continuum of care, developing and disseminating the Model List of Essential Medicines (Model List). WHO is committed to supporting Member States in sharing best practices in selecting
essential medicines, and in developing processes for the selection of medicines for national essential medicines lists (national EMLs, or NEMLs) consistent with the evidence-based methods used for updating the WHO Model List.
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Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. The disaster uncovered the realities of a non-existent mental h
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ealth care system with only ten psychiatrists nationwide. Attempts were made to assess the increased prevalence of mental illness, likely due to the trauma to which many were exposed. Several interventions were carried out with aims to integrate mental health into primary health care services. The interplay between socio-cultural beliefs and health (both mental and physical) in Haiti has been widely commented upon by both foreign aid and local caregivers. Observations frequently highlight barriers to the willingness of patients to seek care and to their acceptance of biomedicine over traditional Vodou beliefs. The perception of Haitian beliefs as barriers to the availability and acceptance of mental health care has intensified the difficulty in providing effective recommendations and interventions both before and after the earthquake. Argued in this review is the importance of considering the interactions between socio-cultural beliefs and mental health when developing models for the prevention, screening, classification and management of mental illness in Haiti. These interactions, especially relevant in mental health care and post-disaster contexts, need to be acknowledged in any healthcare setting. The successes and failures of Haiti’s situation provide an example for global consideration.
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Mpox is an emerging zoonotic disease caused by the mpox virus, a member of the Orthopoxvirus genus closely related to the variola virus that causes smallpox. Mpox was first discovered in 1958 when outbreaks
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of a pox-like disease occurred in monkeys kept for research. The first human case was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a period of intensified effort to eliminate smallpox and since then the infection has been reported in a number of African countries. Mpox can spread in humans through close contact, usually skin-to-skin contact, including sexual contact, with an infected person or animal, as well as with materials contaminated with the virus such as clothing, beddings and towels, and respiratory droplets in prolonged face to face contact. People remain infectious from the onset of symptoms until all the lesions have scabbed and healed. The virus may spread from infected animals through handling infected meat or through bites or scratches. Diagnosis is confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of material from a lesion for the virus’s DNA. Two separate clades of the mpox virus are currently circulating in Africa: Clade I, which includes subclades Ia and Ib, and Clade II, comprising subclades IIa and IIb. Clade Ia and Clade Ib have been associated with ongoing human-to-human transmission and are presently responsible for outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while Clade Ib is also contributing to outbreaks in Burundi and other countries.
In 2022‒2023 mpox caused a global outbreak in over 110 countries, most of which had no previous history of the disease, primarily driven by human-to-human transmission of clade II through sexual contact. In just over a year, over 90,000 cases and 150 deaths were reported to the WHO. For the second time since 2022, mpox has been declared a global health emergency as the virus spreads rapidly across the African continent. On 13 Aug 2024, Africa CDC declared the ongoing mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS), marking the first such declaration by the agency since its inception in 2017.7 This declaration empowered the Africa CDC to lead and coordinate responses to the mpox outbreak across affected African countries. On August 14, 2024, the WHO declared the resurgence of mpox a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) emphasizing the need for coordinated international response.
As of August 2024, Mpox has expanded beyond its traditional endemic regions, with new cases reported in countries including Sweden, Thailand, the Philippines, and Pakistan. Sweden has confirmed its first case of Clade 1 variant, which has been rapidly spreading in Africa, particularly in DRC. The emergence of this new variant raises concerns about its potential for higher lethality and transmission rates outside Africa.
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Rabies is fatal, vaccine-preventable disease responsible for an estimated 59,000 human deaths each year. Most cases are transmitted by dogs, and most deaths occur in underserved populations in Africa and
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Asia. Approximately 40% of deaths occur in children.
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The roadmap describes the actions needed to
achieve the three development goals for TB
vaccines set by the WHO:
1. A safe, effective and affordable TB vaccine
for adolescents and adults.
2. An
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affordable TB vaccine for neonates and
infants with improved safety and efficacy.
3. A therapeutic vaccine to improve TB
treatment outcomes
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nt. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, 11(12), 13097-13116; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph111213097
Climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude
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of extreme weather events and create risks that will impact health care facilities. Health care facilities will need to assess climate change risks and adopt adaptive management strategies to be resilient, but guidance tools are lacking. In this study, a toolkit was developed for health care facility officials to assess the resiliency of their facility to climate change impacts. A mixed methods approach was used to develop climate change resiliency indicators to inform the development of the toolkit. The toolkit consists of a checklist for officials who work in areas of emergency management, facilities management and health care services and supply chain management, a facilitator’s guide for administering the checklist, and a resource guidebook to inform adaptation. Six health care facilities representing three provinces in Canada piloted the checklist. Senior level officials with expertise in the aforementioned areas were invited to review the checklist, provide feedback during qualitative interviews and review the final toolkit at a stakeholder workshop. The toolkit helps health care facility officials identify gaps in climate change preparedness, direct allocation of adaptation resources and inform strategic planning to increase resiliency to climate change.
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In this review, the editors will investigate the impact of eight WASH interventions in preventing (reducing the risk of) and controlling outbreaks
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in LMIC, with particular focus on three diseases of current concern to the response community – cholera, Ebola, and Hepatitis E. Additionally, we will explore economic outcomes related to WASH interventions within an outbreak
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One billion people around the world live with disabilities. This report makes the case that they are being “left behind” in the global community’s work on health. This lack of access not only
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violates the rights of people with disabilities under international law, but UHC and SDG 3 cannot be attained without better health services for the one billion people with disabilities.
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The Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action specifies that the mandate of the Global Education Monitoring Report is to be ‘the mechanism for monitoring
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and reporting on SDG 4 and on education in the other SDGs’ with the responsibility to ‘report on the implementation of national and international strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account for their commitments as part of the overall SDG follow-up and review.’ It is prepared by an independent team hosted by UNESCO.
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The 2020 Financing for Sustainable Development Report, the fifth report of the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, provides a comprehensive assessment of the state
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of sustainable finance. Prepared by more than 60 agencies of the United Nations system and partner international organizations, the report brings together a wide range of expertise and perspectives. It puts forward a set of policy recommendations to mobilize financing flows, and align them with economic, social and environmental priorities. These recommendations should assist Member States and all other stakeholders as they work toward fully implementing the Addis Agenda and achieve the SDGs.
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This toolkit is designed to help you plan and implement a Patient Navigation program with the best chance of reducing health disparities
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and improving health outcomes for your patients. It contains evidence-based and experience-based examples, case studies, practical tools, and resources to help you:
1. Establish an evidence-based patient navigation program tailored to reduce barriers for your patients
2. Incorporate best practices to enhance current patient navigation programs or services
3. Implement a patient navigation model to address any targeted medical condition
where disparities exist
4. Hire, prepare, supervise, support and retain effective Patient Navigators
5. Navigate patients who experience health disparities
6. Evaluate patient navigation programs with the aim of continuous quality
improvement
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Strategic communication is at the heart of public health and more important than ever in the digital age. Using communication strategically require
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s expertise, skills and resources to plan, implement and evaluate interventions that encourage governments to implement policies that improve people’s lives and well-being, that empower health workers to deliver the best care possible, and that encourage people to take actions that protect and improve their health and that of their family and community. This Regional Action Framework on Communication for Health (C4H) aims to support Member States in implementing the C4H approach. It outlines steps to be taken by WHO and Member States to use C4H to achieve shared public health goals in the Western Pacific.
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