Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug approved for the treatment of parasitic infections, including strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis in humans. There is a reported increase in the use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 by the public in African Union Member States.
Currently..., there is:
1. No scientific evidence from pre-clinical studies on the therapeutic effect of ivermectin for the management of COVID-19;
2. No evidence of its clinical efficacy for the management of patients with asymptomatic, mild, moderate or severe COVID-19; and
3. No safety data regarding the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 in the majority of the published studies.
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L’ivermectine est un médicament antiparasitaire approuvé pour le traitement des infections parasitaires, y compris la strongyloïdose et l’onchocercose, chez l’être humain. Récemment, on a indiqué une augmentation de l’utilisation de l’ivermectine pour la prévention et le traitement ...de la COVID-19 par le public dans les États membres de l’Union africaine. Actuellement, il n’y a : 1. Aucune preuve scientifique provenant d’études précliniques sur l’effet thérapeutique de l’ivermectine pour le traitement de COVID-19 2. Aucune preuve de son efficacité clinique pour la prise en charge de patients présentant une COVID-19 asymptomatique, légère, modérée ou sévère 3. Aucune donnée de sécurité concernant l’utilisation de l’ivermectine pour la COVID-19 dans la majorité des études publié
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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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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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This 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 p...ersist 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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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance plays an important role in the early detection of resistant strains of public health importance and prompt response to outbreaks in hospitals and the community. Surveillance findings are needed to inform medical practice, antibiotic stewardship, and policy... and interventions to combat AMR. Appropriate use of antimicrobials, informed by surveillance, improves patients’ treatment outcomes and reduces the emergence and spread of AMR. This protocol describes the steps and procedures to establish/enhance AMR surveillance in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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27 May 2021
This is a document to support the use of pulse oximeter for assessment of suspected and confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the community.
It is a well-known fact that Covid-19 can present as “happy hypoxia” with minimum symptoms of severe respiratory distress despite significant low ox...ygen levels in the blood. The use of pulse oximeter for clinical assessment significantly augments decision making, save lives and provide high quality care. It allows for early detection of patients with hypoxia requiring either close monitoring in the community or timely referral for hospital care.
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Many critical questions remain about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in real-world settings. These questions can only be answered in post-introduction vaccine effectiveness studies.This guidance document outlines an approach to leverage existing surveillance systems for Severe Acute Respirato...ry Infection (SARI) to estimate COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) in preventing SARI associated with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 using existing SARI surveillance systems. The approach uses the test-negative design to evaluate VE; cases are SARI patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and controls are SARI patients who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.
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On 9 February 2021, a first webinar entitled “Expanding our understanding of Post COVID-19 condition” was held under the auspices of WHO and in consultation with the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium(ISARIC), Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Dis...ease Preparedness (GloPID-R), National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIH/NIAID), Long Covid SOS and patient representatives.
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This SOP describes specific step by step procedures in clinical management like OPD, IPD Housekeeping, Emergency services, OT services, Radiology Services & Pathology services. It should be used as a hands-on reference for service providers providing services, thereby helping to standardize the prac...tice in all hospitals, with the ultimate goal of optimizing the quality & standard patient care. The manual may also be used as a reference for health service providers for effective health management.
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There are many calls for improved integration between
primary care and public health, but also sizeable obstacles to achieving
this, such as differences in the ways the two sectors are organised and
financed, as well as differences in education, culture and approach.
This article, based on a new... Observatory policy brief, describes the
types of interventions that come into consideration, the principles
that should be followed, and the factors that can facilitate successful
collaboration. While there is no universal template that can be followed
by all countries, improved integration promises to yield substantial
benefits to patients and wider populations.
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Primary health care, as outlined in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and again 40 years later in the 2018 WHO/UNICEF document A vision for primary health care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society a...pproach to health that combines the following three components: multisectoral policy and action; empowered people and communities; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services.(1) Primary health care-oriented health systems are health systems organized and operated so as to make the right to the highest attainable level of health the main goal, while maximizing equity and solidarity. They are composed of a core set of structural and functional elements that support achieving universal coverage and access to services that are acceptable to the population and that are equity enhancing. The term “primary care” refers to a key process in the health system that supports first-contact, accessible, continued, comprehensive and coordinated patient-focused care.
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Healthcare 2020, 8(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8010026
The current article is an integrative and analytical literature review on the concept and meaning of empathy in health and social care professionals. Empathy, i.e., the ability to understand the perso...nal experience of the patient without bonding with them, constitutes an important communication skill for a health professional, one that includes three dimensions: the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. It has been proven that health professionals with high levels of empathy operate more efficiently as to the fulfillment of their role in eliciting therapeutic change.The empathetic professional comprehends the needs of the health care users, as the latter feel safe to express the thoughts and problems that concern them. Although the importance of empathy is undeniable, a significantly high percentage of health professionals seem to find it difficult to adopt a model of empathetic communication in their everyday practice. Some of the factors that negatively influence the development of empathy are the high number of patients that professionals have to manage, the lack of adequate time, the focus on therapy within the existing academic culture, but also the lack of education in empathy. Developing empathetic skills should not only be the underlying objective in the teaching process of health and social care undergraduate students, but also the subject of the lifelong and continuous education of professionals
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For the primary health worker in a low/middle-income country (LMIC) setting, delivering quality primary care is challenging. This is often complicated by clinical guidance that is out of date, inconsistent and informed by evidence from high-income countries that ignores LMIC resource constraints and... burden of disease. The Knowledge Translation Unit (KTU) of the University of Cape Town Lung Institute has developed, implemented and evaluated a health systems intervention in South Africa, and localised it to Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Brazil, that simplifies and standardises the care delivered by primary health workers while strengthening the system in which they work. At the core of this intervention, called Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK), is a clinical decision support tool, the PACK guide. This paper describes the development of the guide over an 18-year period and explains the design features that have addressed what the patient, the clinician and the health system need from clinical guidance, and have made it, in the words of a South African primary care nurse, ‘A tool for every day for every patient’. It describes the lessons learnt during the development process that the KTU now applies to further development, maintenance and in-country localisation of the guide: develop clinical decision support in context first, involve local stakeholders in all stages, leverage others’ evidence databases to remain up to date and ensure content development, updating and localisation articulate with implementation.
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Mosby’s Pocket Guide to Nursing Skills and Procedures, eighth edition, is
a practical, portable reference for students and practitioners in the
clinical setting. Grouped alphabetically, 85 commonly performed skills
are presented in a clear, step-by-step format that includes:
■ Purpose for pe...rforming each skill
■ Guidelines to help students in delegating tasks to assistive
personnel
■ List of equipment required
■ Rationales to explain why specific techniques are used
■ Full-color photographs and drawings to provide visual
reinforcement
In addition, Safety Alerts are included in the skills to highlight important
information about patient safety and effective performance.
Current Standard Precautions guidelines from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention are incorporated throughout. Preprocedure
and postprocedure protocols are conveniently located on the inside
back cover.
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BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3379
Rapid Recommendation and visual graph. This is the fifth version (update 4) of the living guideline (BMJ 2020;370:m3379). When citing this article, please consider adding the update number and date of access for clarity. The publication of the RE...COVERY and REMAP-CAP randomised controlled trials triggered this guideline update, resulting in a strong recommendation for interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor blockers (tocilizumab or sarilumab) in patients with severe or critical covid-19.
Prior recommendations: (a) A recommendation not to use ivermectin in patients with covid-19, regardless of disease severity, except in the context of a clinical trial; (b) a strong recommendation against the use of hydroxychloroquine in patients with covid-19, regardless of disease severity; (c) a strong recommendation against the use of lopinavir-ritonavir in patients with covid-19, regardless of disease severity; (d) a strong recommendation for systemic corticosteroids in patients with severe and critical covid-19; (e) a conditional recommendation against systemic corticosteroids in patients with non-severe covid-19; and (f) a conditional recommendation against remdesivir in hospitalised patients with covid-19.
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The goal of this best practice guideline is to strengthen collaborative practice among nurses, because effective collaborative practice is essential for working in health-care organizations.
In this guideline, we focus on collaborative practice amongst three types of nursing professionals – reg...istered nurse (RN), registered practical nurse (RPN) and nurse practitioner (NP) – and explore what fosters healthy work environments for them, aware that collaboration must align with the needs of the patient or client.
This best practice guideline was developed to assist nurses, nursing leaders, other health professionals and senior managers to enhance positive outcomes for patients/clients individual/family/group/community), nurses, and the organization through intra-professional collaborative practice.
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Med Princ Pract 2021;30:17–28
An overview of ethics and clinical ethics is presented in this review. The 4 main ethical principles, that is beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice, are defined and explained. Informed consent, truth-telling, and confidentiality spring from the ...principle of autonomy, and each of them is discussed. In patient care situations, not infrequently, there are conflicts between ethical principles (especially between beneficence and autonomy). A four-pronged systematic approach to ethical problem-solving and several illustrative cases of conflicts are presented. Comments following the cases highlight the ethical principles involved and clarify the resolution of these conflicts. A model for patient care, with caring as its central element, that integrates ethical aspects
(intertwined with professionalism) with clinical and technical expertise desired of a physician is illustrated
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In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the world beyond imagination. To date, it has infected more than 135 million people, killed over 2.9 million people, and is projected to plunge up to 115 million people into extreme poverty.1 As countries have gone into lockdown, gender-based violence has incr...eased, unemployment has soared, and access to health care for the poorest and most vulnerable has been cut. COVID-19 has made people less likely to seek health care because they are afraid of getting infected with the virus. Fear and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 have also increased stigma and discrimination. As frontline workers without enough access to personal protective equipment (PPE) risk their lives to treat patients, the virus pushes already fragile health systems to the brink.
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EID Journal , Volume 27, no.12 , Dec. 2021. Early Release
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections may be underestimated because of limited access to testing. We measured SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in South Africa every 2 months during July 2020–March 2021 in randoml...y selected household cohorts in 2 communities. We compared seroprevalence to reported laboratory-confirmed infections, hospitalizations, and deaths to calculate infection–case, infection–hospitalization, and infection–fatality ratios in 2 waves of infection. Post–second wave seroprevalence ranged from 18% in the rural community children <5 years of age, to 59% in urban community adults 35–59 years of age. The second wave saw a shift in age distribution of case-patients in the urban community (from persons 35–59 years of age to persons at the extremes of age), higher attack rates in the rural community, and a higher infection–fatality ratio in the urban community. Approximately 95% of SARS-CoV-2 infections were not reported to national surveillance.
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