In many humanitarian emergencies, there is a serious lack of access to even the most basic materials needed for managing the blood in addition to a lack of appropriate sanitation facilities (includ...ing water), which are critical for addressing menstrual hygiene. Privacy in emergencies is often scarce, and even if toilets are available they often lack locks, functioning doors, lighting and separation between genders. These barriers are often intensified by cultural beliefs and taboos surrounding menstruation which can restrict the movements and behaviors of girls and women
more
The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2023 highlights that the number of people experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity and requiring urgent food and livelihood assistance increased for ...the fourth consecutive year in 2022. Over a quarter of a billion people were estimated to face acute hunger, with economic shocks and the Ukraine war contributing to the increase. In 2022, around 258 million people across 58 countries and territories faced acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels (IPC/CH Phase 3-5), up from 193 million people in 53 countries and territories in 2021.
more
This document contains guidance for strengthening the disability inclusiveness of MHPSS responses and programmes in emergency settings. It is intended to supplement the IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings ...(2007).
Overall Objective
To consider and address the mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) requirements of persons living in emergency settings with all types of disabilities on an equal basis to the MHPSS requirements of all persons, using a human rights-based approach and implementing social-ecological frameworks.
more
Evidence-based psychological interventions are an important part of health, social, protection and education services and can help increase access to effective mental health treatments and progression towards universal health coverage.
This manua...l provides managers and others responsible for planning and delivering services with practical guidance on how to implement manualized psychological interventions for adults, adolescents and children. It covers the five key implementation steps: make an implementation plan; adapt for context; prepare the workforce; identify, assess and support potential beneficiaries; and monitor and evaluate the service.
more
A discussion paper on the scope of the problem, its drivers, and strategies for moving forward for policy, practice, and research
In many protracted emergencies, the prevalence rates of global acut...e malnutrition (GAM) regularly exceed the emergency threshold of > 15% of children with acute malnutrition (< -2 weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) or with nutritional edema), despite ongoing humanitarian interventions. The widespread scale and long-lasting nature of “persistent GAM” means that it is a policy and programming priority.
more
There has been important progress for the rights of adolescent girls and women in recent decades, yet millions still struggle to
access the nutritious diets, essential nutrition services and nutrition and care practices they need to prevent malnutr...ition.
Undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia amplify gender inequalities by lowering learning potential, wages and life opportunities for adolescent girls and women, weakening their immunity to infections, and increasing their risk of lifethreatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
more
A Reference Guide for Program Managers and Policy Makers. Recently, a renewed interest in large-scale community health worker (CHW) programs has been seen globally. This renewal provides an opportune moment to take stock of issues and challenges suc...h programs face and what can be done to make them as effective as possible. With this in mind, this manual is intended to be used a practical guide for policymakers and program managers wishing to develop or strengthen a CHW program, drawing lessons from other countries that have implemented CHW programs at-scale
more
A Focus on the Journey to Self-Reliance for Preventing Child and Maternal Deaths . June 2018
The 2018 Acting on the Call report focuses on 25 countries’ journeys to self-reliance for preventing child and maternal deaths. Self-reliance is a country’s ability to finance and implement solution...s to its own development challenges. Understanding where countries lie on this effort - known as the journey to self-reliance - helps USAID to best partner with countries and support their efforts.
The report looks at the health status of 25 priority countries as well as the current capacity of the health system to meet the needs of women and children. In the report, we recount progress since the 2012 Call to Action as well as identify gaps in order to inform future programming and areas that need strengthening during the journey to self-reliance. For the first time ever, we’ve calculated the return on our investment to eliminate bottlenecks to improving health services.
more
Recently, a renewed interest in large-scale community health worker (CHW) programs has been seen globally. This renewal provides an opportune moment to take stock of issues and challenges such programs face and what can be done to make them as effec...tive as possible. With this in mind, this manual is intended to be used a practical guide for policymakers and program
managers wishing to develop or strengthen a CHW program, drawing lessons from other countries that have implemented CHW programs at-scale. Throughout, we discuss major policy and programmatic issues that decision-makers and planners need to consider when designing, implementing, scaling up or strengthening a national-level CHW program. We offer an overview
of specific challenges CHW programs face, country lessons, tools, and other resources that may be helpful, while incorporating relevant programmatic examples as much as possible.
more
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 and reporting on SDG 4 and on education in the other SDGs’ with the respo...nsibility 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.
more
A national overview with a case study from Cam Le district
The overall aims of this study are (1) to assess the extent to which social protection systems in Vietnam address the needs of people ...with disabilities; and (2) to identify and document elements of good practice, as well as challenges, in the design and delivery of social protection for people with disabilities. As most social protection programmes in Vietnam are targeted to various vulnerable groups (e.g. orphans, widows, single parents), the research mainly focuses on disability-specific schemes, as they are relevant to a higher proportion of people with disabilities.
more
Today there are Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in a large number of countries. In many countries, the CBR approach is a part of 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.
more
The infectious disease burden in India is among the highest in the world. A large amount of antibiot-ics are consumed in fighting infections, some of them saving lives, but every use adding to antib...iotic resistance in bacteria. Antibiotic use is increasing steadily (table 1), particularly certain antibiotic classes (beta-lactam antibacterials), most notably in the more prosperous states. Resistance follows in lock-step.
more
The Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP)-Mozambique team, in partnership with the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP), has produced this report as part of a solid com-mitment to develop actionable policy proposals to t...ackle antibiotic resistance and improve appropriate antibiotic access. It is the result of a thorough review of published and unpublished data on antibiotic resistance and a long internal consultation effort that engaged academic scientists, health professionals and other stakeholders within Mozambique.
more
Measuring progress towards universal health coverage.
This sixth edition of Health at a Glance Asia/Pacific presents a set of key indicators of he...alth status, the determinants of health, health care resources and utilisation, health care expenditure and financing and quality of care across 27 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. It also provides a series of dashboards to compare performance across countries and territories, and a thematic analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Asia/Pacific health systems.
more
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(12), 2626; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15122626
Climate change is increasing risks to human health and to the health systems that seek to protect the safety and well-being of populations. Health autho...rities require information about current associations between health outcomes and weather or climate, vulnerable populations, projections of future risks and adaptation opportunities in order to reduce exposures, empower individuals to take needed protective actions and build climate-resilient health systems. An increasing number of health authorities from local to national levels seek this information by conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments. While assessments can provide valuable information to plan for climate change impacts, the results of many studies are not helping to build the global evidence-base of knowledge in this area. They are also often not integrated into adaptation decision making, sometimes because the health sector is not involved in climate change policy making processes at the national level. Significant barriers related to data accessibility, a limited number of climate and health models, uncertainty in climate projections, and a lack of funding and expertise, particularly in developing countries, challenge health authority efforts to conduct rigorous assessments and apply the findings. This paper examines the evolution of climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments, including guidance developed for such projects, the number of assessments that have been conducted globally and implementation of the findings to support health adaptation action. Greater capacity building that facilitates assessments from local to national scales will support collaborative efforts to protect health from current climate hazards and future climate change. Health sector officials will benefit from additional resources and partnership opportunities to ensure that evidence about climate change impacts on health is effectively translated into needed actions to build health resilience.
more
This fourth annual report monitors global progress towards the 2023 target for global elimination of industrially produced trans-fatty acids (TFA), highlighting achievements during the past year (October 2021 – September 2022). Countries are respo...nding to the World Health Organization (WHO) call to action by putting into place best-practice TFA policies. Mandatory TFA policies are currently in effect for 3.4 billion people in 60 countries (43% of the world population); of these, 43 countries have best-practice policies in effect, covering 2.8 billion people (36% of the world population).
Over the past year, several additional countries took action to eliminate industrially produced TFA: best-practice policies came into effect in India in January 2022, Uruguay in May 2022 and Oman in July 2022. Best-practice policies were passed in Bangladesh in November 2021 (to come into effect in December 2022) and in Ukraine in September 2020 (to come into effect in October 2023), best-practice TFA policies are projected to pass soon in Mexico, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.
more
This fourth annual report monitors global progress towards the 2023 target for global elimination of industrially produced trans-fatty acids (TFA), highlighting achievements during the past year (October 2021 – September 2022). Countries are respo...nding to the World Health Organization (WHO) call to action by putting into place best-practice TFA policies. Mandatory TFA policies are currently in effect for 3.4 billion people in 60 countries (43% of the world population); of these, 43 countries have best-practice policies in effect, covering 2.8 billion people (36% of the world population).
Over the past year, several additional countries took action to eliminate industrially produced TFA: best-practice policies came into effect in India in January 2022, Uruguay in May 2022 and Oman in July 2022. Best-practice policies were passed in Bangladesh in November 2021 (to come into effect in December 2022) and in Ukraine in September 2020 (to come into effect in October 2023), best-practice TFA policies are projected to pass soon in Mexico, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.
more
With this World Health Day, WHO is drawing attention to a group of diseases that are spread by insects and other vectors, the heavy health and economic burdens they impose, and what needs to be done to reduce these burdens. Many ...te-to-highlight medbox">of these diseases have been historically confined to distinct geographical areas, but this situation has become more fluid due to a host of ills, including climate change, intensive farming, dams, irrigation, deforestation, population movements, rapid unplanned urbanization, and phenomenal increases in international travel and trade. The control of vector-borne diseases can make a major contribution to poverty reduction, as it precisely targets the poor
more
The new Global Strategy aims to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all women, children and adolescents, transform the future and ensure that every newborn, mother and child not only survives, but thrives.