WHO recently conducted a survey to assess the availability and cost of a national tracer list of essential medicines in the outpatient sector in Ukraine using a new collection tool – the WHO Essential Medicines and Health Products Price and Availability Monitoring Mobile Application. This tool fac...ilitates rapid and inexpensive data collection at the facility level.
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This report - the largest of its kind to date - draws on the experiences of over 8,500 women and 300 health professionals across eight countries. It exposes the aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry, and highlights impacts on families’ decisions about how to feed their b...abies and young children.
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The Ideal Clinic Realisation and Maintenance (ICRM) programme was initiated by the National Department of Health in July 2013 in order to systematically improve primary health care (PHC) facilities and the quality of care they provide. The Ideal Clinic framework/dashboard sets out the standards for ...PHC facilities to provide good-quality health services. An Ideal Clinic is defined as a clinic with good infrastructure, adequate staff, adequate medicines and supplies, good administrative processes, and sufficient adequate bulk supplies. Applicable clinical policies, protocols and guidelines are adhered to, and it harnesses partner and stakeholder support.
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Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) describes a set of principles and procedures that, when followed, ensure that medicines and related substances are of high quality, safety and efficacy. SAHPRA is a
participating authority of the Pharmaceutical Inspection Cooperation Scheme (jointly known as PIC/S).... PIC/S aims to develop international standards between countries and pharmaceutical inspection
authorities, to provide harmonised and constructive co-operation in the field of GMP. PIC/S affiliation is subject to initial and periodic assessment of the participating authority to ensure that it has equivalent legislation, regulatory and enforcement procedures and inspection capacity.
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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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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a multifaceted, international public health problem, which poses a direct threat to the safety of the population of South Africa. A national response is required to complement the development of a global plan, as articulated in the WHO’s draft resolution EB134/37 ...“Combating antimicrobial resistance including antibiotic resistance”, adopted by theWorld Health Assembly in May 2014. The overuse of antimicrobials is driving resistance. A return to appropriate, targeted antimicrobial use in humans, animals and the environment is critical if we are to conserve the antimicrobial armamentarium. Various interventions have been put in place to address antimicrobial resistance in South Africa. However, these are insufficient to effectively tackle the threat faced by the country. The strengths of the current system are outweighed by its weaknesses.
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Communication to Healthcare Professionals Mar-2020
This guideline is intended to assist healthcare professionals in the participation of very important process of continuous surveillance of safety and efficacy of the health products which are used in their clinical practice. Continuous evaluation o...f medicines’ benefit and harm help to achieve the ultimate goal of safe and effective treatments available to patients.
The guideline is intended to assist healthcare professionals in the reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with the use of all registered health products, including medicines, old medicines, medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics (IVDs).
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This report reviews and analyses the Affordable Medicines Programme, which was introduced in Ukraine in April 2017 to provide patients with improved access to 23 outpatient medicines for the treatment of chronic noncommunicable diseases. The evaluation combines both quantitative and qualitative anal...ysis. The findings confirm that the Programme has contributed to a significant increase in access to needed outpatient medicines in Ukraine. Further, while implementation was successful overall, uptake across regions was uneven. The report concludes by listing a number of policy options to support the sustainability and expansion of the Affordable Medicines Programme.
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March 2022. This report on good practices to combat AMR focuses on activities across human, animal, and environmental health in European countries. The report provides a description of practices, how they were implemented, achievements, and why the practice was unique.
Event-based surveillance (EBS) is defined as the organized collection, monitoring, assessment and interpretation of mainly unstructured ad hoc information regarding health events or risks, which may represent an acute risk to health. Both indicator-based and event-based surveillance components serve... the early warning and response (EWAR) function of the public health surveillance system. The Framework for Event-based Surveillance offers guidance to public health practitioners seeking to implement EBS at each administrative level in healthier countries.
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a major public health concern, around which the international leadership has come together to form strategic partnerships and action plans. The main driving force behind the emergence of AMR is selection pressure created due to consumption of antibiotics.... Consumption of antibiotics in human as well as animal sectors are driven by a complex interplay of determinants, many of which are typical to the local settings.
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Antibiotics 2022, 11(3), 329; https://doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics11030329.
The authors found that the most-represented antibiotics on the Rwandan market were amoxicillin, co-trimoxazole and cloxacillin. No counterfeit antibiotics were found in this study. However, substandard batches with moderate ...deviations were found, suggesting that regular quality control of antibiotics is needed in Rwanda.
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Waste Management & Research 39(1) DOI: 10.1177/0734242X211029175
A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. The Lancet Vol.399 Issue 10341 p.2129-2154
Human resources for health (HRH) include a range of occupations that aim to promote or improve human health. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the WHO Health Workforce 2030 s...trategy have drawn attention to the importance of HRH for achieving policy priorities such as universal health coverage (UHC). Although previous research has found substantial global disparities in HRH, the absence of comparable cross-national estimates of existing workforces has hindered efforts to quantify workforce requirements to meet health system goals. We aimed to use comparable and standardised data sources to estimate HRH densities globally, and to examine the relationship between a subset of HRH cadres and UHC effective coverage performance.
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The COVID-19 HEalth caRe wOrkErs Study (HEROES): Regional Report from the Americas is a multicenter prospective cohort study to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of health care workers in 26 countries on four continents and how it is affected by several factors at diffe...rent interrelated levels: individual, family, occupational, and social. This brief report presents the evidence generated from the baseline survey of 11 participating countries in the Region of the Americas. Using validated scales, the findings show high rates of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and psychological distress in several countries of the Region. The spirit of the project is not only to generate quality scientific evidence on the mental health of health care workers, but also to help develop interventions (both individual and institutional) and policies to address the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.
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Policy Brief. 24 June 2022. This policy brief, one of two on the updated hepatitis C (HCV) guidelines, focuses on the new recommendations on simplified service delivery for a public health approach to HCV testing, care and treatment. These recommendations include decentralization, integration and ta...sk-sharing, in addition to the use of point-of-care (POC) HCV viral load assays and reflex viral load testing.
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