The risk of increasing rates of acute malnutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the urgent need to adapt,
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and expand access to, acute malnutrition diagnosis and treatment services in humanitarian and fragile contexts.
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Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has depended on international donor support to fund essential services like health care. But this donor support has been falling for years and will likely to c
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ontinue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by United States President Joe Biden that the US will withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. This decline in funding has already had a harmful—and life-threatening—impact on the lives of many Afghan women and girls, as it affects access to, and quality of, health care.
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In the last quarter of 2019 Southern African Regional Interagency Standing Committee Africa (RIASCO) reported that more than 11 million people were experiencing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity in nine Southern African countries1 due to
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deepening drought and climate related crisis. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) urged for urgent humanitarian action, and at the beginning of November 2019 Angola, Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia had declared states of drought emergencies, requiring international assistance to address the worsening food insecurity situation.
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INEE pocket gu ide to inclusive education.
This guide is aimed at anyone working to provide, manage or support education services in emergencies and complements the INEE Minimum Standards.
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The Pocket Guide to Inclusive Education outlines useful principles for an inclusive education approach in emergencies and provides advice for planning, implementing and monitoring. The guide also looks at the issue of resistance to inclusion, and highlights ways in which organisations can support their emergency staff to develop more inclusive education responses. Available in Arabic, English, Indonesia, French, Spanish
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In this report a nutrition governance framework was applied to research and analyse the provincial experience with nutrition policy in Pakistan, looking both at chronic
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and acute malnutrition. Twenty-one in-depth interviews with key stakeholders were also conducted along with a review of published and grey literature. Findings were validated and supplemented by consultative provincial roundtable meetings. Punjab’s nutritional puzzle is that it has high levels of chronic malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies despite a surplus production of food and a low poverty level. Under-nutrition is mainly linked to insufficient attention to preventive health strategies and to a lack of connection between relevant sectors such as Education, Health, Poverty, Safe Water and Sanitation, and Food. Strategic opportunities are recommended which include cross-party political support and ownership for nutrition, with steering by executive leadership; multi-sectoral action and functional integration of various departments and programmes with the creation of a central convening structure for effective cross-sectoral coordination; broadening of nutritional activities beyond salt iodization and vitamin A coverage; central co-ordination of monitoring and evaluation and effective partnerships between the state and non-state sector around data production, awareness, advocacy, and monitoring.
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This special issue on Newborn Health in Global Health Action is being launched to share the experience of how to scale up a cost-effective package of newborn care that involves families, community health workers
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and health facilities. The results of this community randomized trial, the Uganda Newborn Study (UNEST), show that home visits in pregnancy and soon after delivery resulted in improved breastfeeding practices, skin-to-skin care immediately after birth, delaying a baby’s first bath, and hygienic care of the baby’s umbilical cord among the poorest households with lowest access to care.
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In April and May 2015, Nepal was hit by two major earthquakes killing around 9,000 people and leaving many thousands more injured and homeless.
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To optimize the speed and volume of critical humanitarian assistance, the HCT has developed this Plan to:
1. Reach a common understanding of earthquake risk to ensure early action is taken when required.
2. Establish a minimum level of earthquake preparedness across clusters.
3. Build the basis for a joint HCT response strategy to meet the needs of affected people in the first 6 weeks to 3 months of a response.
4. Define considerations for detailed contingency planning on the basis of the worst-case scenario, especially around access and logistics.
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Ending Cholera—A Global Roadmap to 2030 operationalises the new global strategy for cholera control at the country level and provides a concrete
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path toward a world in which cholera is no longer a threat to public health
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In line with the National Mental Health Strategy for Lebanon (2015-2020), this guide answers the objective of the Mental Health
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and Psychosocial Support task force: “Development and provision of staff care interventions for persons working in the MHPSS and Protection sectors”. It aims at preventing burnout, improving the wellbeing of staff, and managing difficult situations resulting from work conditions.
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This 3rd edition of Guidelines for medicine donations has been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in cooperation with major international agencies active in humanitarian relief and dev
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elopment assistance. The guidelines are intended to improve the quality of medicine donations in international development assistance and emergency aid. Good medicine donation practice is of interest to both donors and recipients...
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The plan contains the latest available evidence on the extent of insecticide resistance around the
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world, and puts forward a strategy for global and country levels, identifying clear roles and timelines for all stakeholders. The GPIRM also summarizes information about innovative new products being developed and sets out the immediate research and development priorities.
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A key purpose of the Recovery Toolkit is to support countries in the reactivation of health services which may have suffered as a result of the eme
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rgency. These services include ongoing programmes such as immunization and vaccinations, maternal and child health services, and noncommunicable diseases.
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The strategic priorities of the CCS 2014–2018 are:
(1) Strengthening the health system.
(2) Enhancing
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the achievement of communicable disease control targets.
(3) Controlling the growth of the noncommunicable disease burden.
(4) Promoting health throughout the life course.
(5) Strengthening capacity for emergency risk management and surveillance systems for various health threats.
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The Call to Action on Protection from GBV in Emergencies, formally launched in 2013 by the United Kingdom and Sweden, aims to fundamentally transfo
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rm the way GBV is addressed in humanitarian operations via the collective action of numerous partners, each bringing our various strengths and capacities to the table. Our goal is to drive change and foster accountability within the humanitarian sphere. The commitment to act and to hold ourselves accountable for action is what binds us together under the Call to Action.
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When terrible things happen in our communities, countries and the world, we want to reach out a helping hand to those who are affected. This guide covers
psychological first aid which involves hum
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ane, supportive and practical help to fellow human beings suffering serious crisis events. It is written for people in a position to help others who have experienced an extremely distressing event. It gives a framework for supporting people in ways that respect their dignity, culture and abilities. Despite its name, psychological first aid covers both social and psychological support.
Available in various languages: http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/guide_field_workers/en/
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The report covers possible developments in Indonesia over the next 10 months (to end 2016). Four scenarios are outlined:
Delayed Second Crop Harvest
Delayed
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and Reduced Second Crop Harvest
La Niña disrupts main rural sources of income
Soaring rice prices
The scenarios were developed during a two-day workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia involving 21 organisations. Scenarios are a description of situations that could occur; a set of informed assumptions about a development that may require humanitarian action to support strategic planning, create awareness, provide early warning and promote preparedness activities for those responding to the crisis.
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his revision to the Disaster Management Team’s (DMT) multi-sector response plan for COVID-19 is meant to align the multi-sector plan with the Dep
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artment of Health’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Plan issued on 24 April 2020. Additionally, at the time of this version, the Department of Education and Department for Community Development and Religion have also issued their own national COVID-19 response and recovery plans.
The Government’s plan maintains a health sector focus and plans for a ‘worst case’ scenario, articulating the process of progressing into containment and subsequently mitigation of community transmission and on to recovery. It presents an opportunity to improve the core capacities of the whole of government, to see where both health and non-health sectors fit in and respond in the immediate and medium terms, and to adapt to the ‘new normal’ that this coronavirus has inevitably presented
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Here you can download the latest Situation Reports
Weekly updates on the current situation in Ukraine and refugee-receiving countries, priority pu
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blic health concerns and WHO’s actions to rapidly respond to the health emergency triggered by the conflict and to minimize disruptions to the delivery of critical health services.
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This paper is Oxfam’s essential guide for WASH staff and partners. It describes the processes and standards that Oxfam WASH programmes should fol
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low if they are to be carried out effectively, consistently and in a way which treats affected communities with respect.
All WASH staff members are expected to understand and follow these Minimum Requirements. However, it is recognised that in acute emergencies it is preferable to start work on the basics immediately, and build up a comprehensive, quality programme in the following days and weeks. There will, therefore, be some programmes in which certain individual requirements are not appropriate or relevant; in such cases staff members responsible should be able to justify why she/he did things differently, or how the minimum requirement was achieved over time.
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The greatest risk to persons engaging in international medical emergency response is poor preparation.
The In Control handbook hopes to provide a remedy.
At
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the time of writing, we are living through the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a health emergency that disregards physical borders, brings into focus social inequalities and affects people on every continent. This shared challenge requires unprecedented measures and the collaboration of the brightest minds to support global health protection through this crisis and beyond. Healthcare infrastructures have to be strengthened, public health capacities and processes upgraded, medical countermeasures and vaccinations found and psychosocial side-effects treated.
Solidarity is the normative order of the day and the human species has to collaborate to face this invisible threat. Hiding and living in fear is not an option in this interconnected world. We have both a responsibility and an opportunity to make substantial contributions to a safer, healthier and more sustainable future for us all.
The existence of this handbook is an impressive example of solidarity. Over 50 authors from more than 15 institutes and organisations have come together voluntarily within a very short time to make their expertise available and enable cross-sectoral thinking. Knowledge is bundled, resources are combined, information gaps are filled. The In Control handbook is not a theoretical treatise of possible dangers, but a collection of subject-matter expertise, written by experts and practitioners who have shaped health topics over the past 20 years in the most diverse corners of the world.
The Centre for International Health Protection at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is collaborating with its partners and investing heavily in the build-up of operational know-how and capacity to support health crisis response abroad. This is done by preparing and enabling professionals to deploy safely across the world to assist those in need. In Control addresses the multi-faceted challenges of an international deployment. Readers will find not only technical medical information, but also insights into, for example, the fragility of our environment, the cultural differences that influence risk communication or the dilemmas arising from social distancing. Legal principles are highlighted, along with ethical guidance to ensure that our actions and decisions correspond to the highest moral standards.
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