his Inter Action Review report for the COVID-19 outbreak in Mauritius documents and assesses the country’s capacity to respond to the outbreak and identifies the best practices, strengths, gaps and challenges of the national response. Areas requiring improvements or sustained actions have been ide...ntified across the 9 strategic pillars of World Health Organization (WHO)’s COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan and an additional pillar for the country’s response beyond health. On an overall, the review aims to enhance and sustain the national response with a particular focus on strengthening the health systems.
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his document, a first of its kind, clearly sets out the standards for rehabilitation and provides guidance on building or strengthening the capacity of EMTs in this area.The importance of early rehabilitation for functional outcomes is well documented. Rehabilitation needs can pe...rsist far beyond the departure of EMTs; therefore, close, supportive collaboration must be established with local services. Emergency response presents an opportunity to rebuild devastated health systems and build local rehabilitation capacity. This document emphasizes the importance of aligning practices to the local context and maximizing opportunities for training and mentorship. The minimum standards and recommendations described will result in faster access of patients to rehabilitation services and equipment and a better transition between EMTs and local health facilities.
Available in English, German, Arabic, Chinese
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Member States have requested WHO policy guidance on how to facilitate the implementation of national AMS activities in an integrated and programmatic approach. This policy guidance responds to that demand from Member States and is anchored in public health guiding principles in the human health sect...or. It aims to provide a set of evidence-based and pragmatic recommendations to drive comprehensive and integrated AMS activities under the purview of a central national coordination unit, National AMR steering or coordinating committees or other equivalent national authorities.
Available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese
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More than 700 000 people lose their life to suicide every year. The world is not on track to reach the 2030 suicide reduction targets. WHO advocates for countries to take action to prevent suicide, ideally through a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. Governments and communities can ...contribute to suicide prevention by implementing LIVE LIFE – WHO’s approach to starting suicide prevention so that countries can build on it further to develop a comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. The guide is for all countries, with or without a national suicide prevention strategy; national or local focal points for suicide prevention, mental health, alcohol or NCDs; and community stakeholders with a vested interest or who may already be engaged in implementing suicide prevention activities.
Excecutive Summary available in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanisch here:
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No country can claim to be free from health-care associated infections, therefore, improvement of infection prevention and control (IPC) strategies is essential. WHO recommends the use of multimodal improvement strategies to implement IPC interventions. These include each item of standard and transm...ission-based precautions according to national guidelines or standard operating procedures and under the coordination of the national IPC focal point (or team, if existing). This publication consists of three focused improvement tools, called “aide-memoires”, which focus on 1) respiratory and hand hygiene, 2) personal protective equipment, and 3) environmental cleaning, waste and linen management, all elements of standard, droplet/contact and airborne precautions.
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Ghana's attempt to regulate health care waste management started in 2002 with the development of guidelines on health care waste manage-ment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2006, the Ministry of Health developed the health care waste policy and guidelines. This guidance document im...proved health care waste management in the country.
With support from the UNDP-GEF medical waste management project, the Ministry of He lth has revised the existing National Health Care Waste Management (HCWM), policy and guideline, 2006 and has produced two separate documents- A National Health Care Waste Management Policy and a National Guideline for Health Care Waste Management
countrywide. This policy is replacing the 2006 policy and introduces new technical and administrative policy issues to enhance waste management in health care facilities.
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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 continue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by United States President Joe Bide...n 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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The internationally recognized criteria for diagnosis of neurocysticercosis include a requirement for neuroimaging techniques, such as computerized tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ideally supported by serology. These facilities are not available in all settings, especially i...n rural areas of low-income countries, making it difficult to identify and treat patients. Additionally, there is controversy about the role, type and duration of anthelmintic, antiinflammatory and antiepileptic drug (AED) treatments for different forms of neurocysticercosis.
These guidelines were developed to assist health-care providers in appropriate, evidence-based management of parenchymal neurocysticercosis. The guidelines do not address other forms of neurocysticercosis and do not include management of extraparenchymal disease (including cysticerci in the cerebral ventricles or subarachnoid space). The aim of the guidance is to improve decision-making to ensure appropriate patient care and to avoid misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment of patients with neurocysticercosis.
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The Planetary Health Report Card is a student-driven, metric-based initiative to inspire planetary health and sustainable healthcare education engagement in medical schools. In addition to inspiring expansion of medical school curricula, we hope to inspire medical schools to expand research efforts,... engage with communities most affected by climate change and environmental injustice, support passionate medical students who are trying to organize around planetary health at the institutional level, and implement sustainable practices. A set of metrics in these five category areas allows students and faculty to conduct a needs assessment at their medical school.
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1.1 Why this course is needed
The first few hours and days of a newborn baby’s life are a critical window for establishing breastfeeding and for providing mothers with the support they need to breastfeed successfully. Since 1991, the Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) has helped to motivate... facilities providing maternity and newborn baby services worldwide to better support breastfeeding. It has been adopted by many countries and organizations. The BFHI aims to provide a health-care environment that supports mothers to acquire the skills necessary to exclusively breastfeed for six months, and to continue breastfeeding for two years or beyond.
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These guidelines form part of efforts to institutionalize the prevention and containment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in healthcare facilities in South Africa, as outlined in the Antimicrobial Resistance Strategic Framework and Implementation Plan. The focus of these guidelines is on two interr...elated aspects of prevention of healthcare associated infections (HAIs) and their spread; and the application of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) practices at hospital level. They aim to serve as a practical, step-by-step or ‘how-to’ guide, addressing the infection prevention and AMS components of a robust response in a hospital. They draw on
evidence from various international guidance documents and standards for interventions that have been shown to be successful in infection
prevention and AMS programmes. These interventions have been customised to the South African hospital setting based on local
experiences in the public and private health sectors. This was done through a series of workshops and requests for comment involving
country-level experts.
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Health in All Policies (HiAP) is not a new concept. While the term “HiAP” has received much attention since the 1990s, the concept
of working across sectors of government for improved population health and wellbeing is much older than that. Over the last few decades the term has been applied t...o multiple health topics and challenges – whetherimplicitly or explicitly.
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Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(23), 8849; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238849
The aim of building climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities is: (a) to enhance their capacity to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable... and changing climate; and (b) to empower them to optimize the use of resources and minimize the release of pollutants and waste into the environment. Such health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services and, by helping reduce facility costs, also ensure better affordability. They are an important component of universal health coverage.
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22 April 2022, This document provides updated interim recommendations on the use of masks by health workers providing care to patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. This update is prompted by new evidence around mask use and COVID-19 transmission, as well as the emergence of variants of conc...ern including Omicron. Masks continue to be a critical tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These interim guidelines supersede the recommendations provided in the WHO recommendations on mask use by health workers, in light of the Omicron variant of concern published on 22 December 2022.
WHO continually evaluates the emerging evidence and will review these interim recommendations within two months and issue new guidance as needed.
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Injection Safety and Safe Disposal of Medical Waste National Communication Strategy and Health Care Waste Management Standard
Operating Procedures (SOPs).
The overall objective of the consultancy was to review and align the three national technical and communication guiding documents on HCWM to th...e WHO Blue Book and other global standards and recommendations. The specific objectives of the assignment were ; to establish how well aligned the Kenya Healthcare Waste Management Guidelines, 2011, are to the WHO Blue Book on healthcare waste management, global recommendations and other global conventions on environmental protection; to establish the extent to which the Kenya Injection Safety and Safe Disposal of Medical Waste National Communication Strategy is aligned to the National Health Communication Guidelines, 2013; to determine the extent to which the current Standard Operating Procedures are aligned to the best available technologies (BAT) and best environmental practices (BEP) and international practices; and to assess current health care waste management practices at the health facilities supported by the GEF project.
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Due to the particular Amazonian situation of vectorial transmission based mostly on the wild cycle of Trypanosoma cruzi with diversity of triatomine vectors involved in effective transmission, and the variety of eco-epidemiological situations that facilitate such transmission, the countries of the A...mazon agreed that the development and strengthening of preventive actions based on comprehensive surveillance and detection of effective vectorial transmission, based on mandatory notification of acute or chronic cases, was required. In addition, it was recommended that surveillance and prevention and/or vector control actioDue to the particular Amazonian situation of vectorial transmission based mostly on the wild cycle of Trypanosoma cruzi with diversity of triatomine vectors involved in effective transmission, and the variety of eco-epidemiological situations that facilitate such transmission, the countries of the Amazon agreed that the development and strengthening of preventive actions based on comprehensive surveillance and detection of effective vectorial transmission, based on mandatory notification of acute or chronic cases, was required.
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Human rights-based approaches to the creation of knowledge involve application of human rights principles to both the content and process of knowledge creation. Human rights-based approaches have special significance for the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of all people, in particul...ar for women and girls, people living with disability, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer or Intersex (LGBTQI) populations, refugees, migrants and other marginalised populations.
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Les modules de formation et d’orientation QualityRights ont été élaborés pour renforcer les connaissances, les compétences et la compréhension des principales parties prenantes sur la manière de promouvoir les droits des personnes en situation de handicap psychosocial, intellectuel ou cogni...tif, d'améliorer la qualité des services et des aides fournis dans le domaine de
la santé mentale et dans les domaines connexes, conformément aux normes internationales en matière de droits humains, et en particulier la Convention des Nations unies relative aux droits des personnes handicapées et l'approche du rétablissement.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has raised profound ethical challenges on an unprecedented global scale. These challenges include how to allocate scarce resources (especially vaccines and therapeutics), both within and between countries, whether and when to mandate vaccines and/or masks, whether and how to co...nduct public health surveillance, whether to issue vaccine passports, and how to address stark international and intranational inequities. In addition, there have been ethical concerns about the conduct of COVID-19 research, such as the appropriateness of challenge studies.
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Today, patient harm due to unsafe care is a large and growing global public health challenge and is one of the
leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Most of this patient harm is avoidable. As countries strive to
achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, t...he beneficial effects of improved
access to health services can be undermined by unsafe care. Patient safety incidents can cause death and
disability, and suffering for victims and their families. The financial and economic costs of safety lapses are high.
There is often reduced public confidence and trust in local health systems when such incidents are publicized.
Health workers involved in serious incidents involving death or serious harm to a patient can also suffer lasting
psychological harm and deep-seated feelings of guilt and self-criticism.
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