The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated,
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describes current healthcare waste management systems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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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 health care system with only ten psychiatrist
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s 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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From Participation to Partnerships (September 2020)
Despite the COVID-19 challenges, children around the world have found meaningful ways to support and protect their peers, families,
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and communities. Children are on the frontlines of innovative responses and are working closely with their adult allies. The leadership demonstrated through these child-adult partnerships is the underlying inspiration for this guide.
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Equity and Quality in Health: a People's Right
Guidance for School-Based Psychosocial
Programmes for Teachers, Parents and Children
in Conflict and
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Postconflict Areas
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The safety of medicines in Zambia - why health workers need to take action | Produced by the National Pharmacovigilance Unit (NPVU)
Zambia has about 1.2 physicians, nurses, and midwives per 1000 population while the minimum acceptable density threshold is 2.3 per 1000 population. The estimated shortage of doctors, nurses and mid
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wives in Zambia is about 14,960. However, with the projected population growth the deficit more than doubles disproportionately to, 25,849 in 2020, and 46,549 in 2035, at the current rate of HRH production. Worryingly, the human resources for health crisis has persisted for over 20 years. The efforts before and leading up to the development and implementation of the 2013 – 2016 National Training Operational Plan (NTOP) and the National Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan (2011 – 2016) yielded certain achievements, however, the HRH numbers and skill-mix gap remained disturbingly enormous.
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Policy and systems. Global Mental Health(2017),4, e7, page 1 of 6. doi:10.1017/gmh.2017.3
This concept report was prepared by Faith for Earth Initiative in support of the efforts of the Government of Iceland to put forth a new resolution during UNEA 5.2 1
A Toolkit for Implementation. Module 5: Finalizing, monitoring and evaluating the IFC action plan
Regional Network for Equity in Health in east and southern Africa (EQUINET): Disussion Paper 110
This report compiles evidence from published,
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grey literature and key informants on the UNMHCP
since its introduction in Uganda’s health system, and findings were further validated during a oneday
national stakeholder meeting.
Three main factors motivated introduction of the UNMHCP. First, Uganda, along with other lowincome countries, was unable to implement holistically the primary healthcare (PHC) concepts as set out in the Alma Ata Declaration. Second, the macro-economic restructuring carried out in the 1990s, which was an international conditionality for low-income countries to access development financing, influenced the trend towards more stringent prioritisation of health interventions as a means of rationing and targeting use of resources. Third, the government sought to achieve equity with a service package that would be universally available for all people.
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A toolkit for Implementation. Module 3: Participatory community assessment in maternal and newborn health
The main aim of these guidelines is to enable the central units of national TB and HIV/AIDS programmes to support districts to plan, coordinate and
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implement collaborative TB/HIV activities. These guidelines reinforce current medical understanding, that highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) has decreased TB incidence of people living with HIV/AIDS. They are comprehensive, giving an overview of the range of activities that could be undertaken in high burden TB/HIV countries or where a rising prevalence of HIV might fuel TB. Activities highlight the need for comprehensive care, prevention and support for adults living with HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive TB and HIV care and prevention rely on full implementation of the DOTS strategy as part of a wide ranging HIV/AIDS care and prevention programme as well as collaborative TB and HIV programme activities.
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched a new Framework for Environmental and Social Management (FESM) to ensure
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that both people and the environment are protected from any potential impacts of FAO programmes and projects.
“This Framework ensures that our projects do both “no harm” and support the transformation to more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable agrifood systems by upholding the highest international standards for risk management,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu explained during a virtual event.
The Framework, which includes key elements of a people-centered approach and establishes environmental and social performance requirements for FAO programming, is also intended to ensure that all stakeholders, including local and indigenous communities, have ample opportunities to actively participate in projects’ activities and to voice their concerns about them.
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This compendium collates current tools and resources on quality improvement developed by the WHO Service Delivery and Safety Department and provide
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s examples of how the tools and resources have been applied in country settings. The target audience for this document are ministries of health, facility quality improvement teams, researchers and development agencies. WHO technical programmes, regional and country offices can also use the document in their technical cooperation work with the identified audience. Those working to improve the quality of health service delivery can also make good use of this resource
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The TB section of the toolkit presents selected (a) programmatic output and (b) outcome and impact indicators for TB. In addition to recommended mo
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nitoring programs and measuring the outcomes and impact of TB programs, indicators for the strengthening of health systems, strengthening of community systems and some indicators that measure quality of services are also included.
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This document describes the key areas that national governments should consider for the introduction and scale-up of point-of-care (POC) diagnostics within national programmes, as new innovative POC
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technologies are being introduced into the market. The next steps taken to include these new innovations within the broader context of national diagnostic networks of conventional laboratories could influence the achievement of the 2030 Fast Track targets for ending the AIDS epidemic.
POC diagnostics, when strategically introduced and integrated into national diagnostic networks, may help catalyse changes that improve the way diagnostics and clinical services are delivered. This document distils this understanding based on programmatic and market experiences of introducing POC diagnostics through catalytic investments in POC HIV technologies across numerous countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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The menu was developed using the WHO-CHOICE methodology to prepare and update, as appropriate, WHO estimates of the cost-effectiveness of a range of mental health interventions, in line with the dev
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elopment of Appendix 3 to the global action plan for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases 2013–2020.
WHO-CHOICE is a programme that helps countries to identify priorities based on health impact and cost-effectiveness. It can be applied to a wide range of strategies relevant to policies affecting health outcomes. All options are compared to a common comparator, a null scenario in which the impacts of currently implemented interventions are removed, thereby enabling comparison of interventions across geographical areas and aspects of health.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is the deadliest infectious disease in most low- and middle-income countries, claiming more than 4,000 lives each day. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted people with pre-existing
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health conditions. People with TB are usually more vulnerable to other infections, including the novel coronavirus, due to pre-existing lung damage. They are also at higher risk of developing complications from COVID-19.
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2016 data
The report was coordinated by Anastasia Pharris and Annemarie Stengaard.
Report review and production support were provided by Andr
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ew J. Amato-Gauci, Mike Catchpole, Denis Coulombier, Masoud Dara, Nedret Emiroglu, Rachel Katterl, Shahin Khasiyev, Valentina Lazdina, Teymur Noori, Marc Rondy, Chantal Quintin, Phillip Zucs.
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