The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG target 3.8) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has i
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ncreased.
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The key actions, activities, and approaches in this document are organized within each of the 5Cs (see Table 1 in the PDF) and those of the Strategic preparedness and response plan (SPRP) pillars as follows:
National action plan key activities, prioritized for the current context and the current
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understanding of the threat of SARS-CoV-2
A. Transition from emergency response to longer term COVID-19 disease management.
B. Integrate activities into routine systems.
C. Strengthen global health security.
Special considerations for fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable (including humanitarian) settings
WHO global and regional support to Member States to implement their national action plans
Key guidance documents for reference
This is a living document that will be updated to incorporate new technical guidance in response to the evolving epidemiological situation. National plans should be implemented in accordance with the principles of inclusiveness, respect for human rights, and equity.
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Background
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are one of the global leading causes of concern due to the rising prevalence and consequence of mortality and disability with a heavy economic burden. The objective of the current study was to analyze the trend in CVD incidence, mortality, and mortality-to-
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incidence ratio (MIR) across the world over 28 years.
Methods
The age-standardized CVD mortality and incidence rates were retrieved from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2017 for both genders and different world super regions with available data every year during the period 1990–2017. Additionally, the Human Development Index was sourced from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) database for all countries at the same time interval. The marginal modeling approach was implemented to evaluate the mean trend of CVD incidence, mortality, and MIR for 195 countries and separately for developing and developed countries and also clarify the relationship between the indices and Human Development Index (HDI) from 1990 to 2017.
Results
The obtained estimates identified that the global mean trend of CVD incidence had an ascending trend until 1996 followed by a descending trend after this year. Nearly all of the countries experienced a significant declining mortality trend from 1990 to 2017. Likewise, the global mean MIR rate had a significant trivial decrement trend with a gentle slope of 0.004 over the time interval. As such, the reduction in incidence and mortality rates for developed countries was significantly faster than developing counterparts in the period 1990–2017 (p < 0.05). Nevertheless, the developing nations had a more rather shallow decrease in MIR compared to developed ones.
Conclusions
Generally, the findings of this study revealed that there was an overall downward trend in CVD incidence and mortality rates, while the survival rate of CVD patients was rather stable. These results send a satisfactory message that global effort for controlling the CVD burden was quite successful. Nonetheless, there is an urgent need for more efforts to improve the survival rate of patients and lower the burden of this disease in some areas with an increasing trend of either incidence or mortality.
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Humanitarian crises exacerbate nutritional risks and often lead to an increase in acute malnutrition. Emergencies include both manmade (conflict) and natural disasters (floods, drought, cyclones, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Complex emergencies are combinations of both manmade a
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nd natural disasters, often of a protracted nature. Millions of people are affected by humanitarian crises every year. The increasing frequency and scale of emergencies requires nutrition to be addressed in all phases of a response.
Crisis situations, whether acute or protracted, impact on a range of factors that can increase the risk of undernutrition, morbidity, and mortality. They may involve: the large-scale destruction of property and infrastructure; the erosion of livelihood strategies and purchasing power; a breakdown of and reduced access to essential services, including health services, water supply, and sanitation; and the displacement of large numbers of people. Emergencies can also disrupt social systems and the quality of care/feeding practices. Household access to food may be negatively affected and people may find themselves in overcrowded settlements with their families divided. As a result, at the individual level, there is often an increased risk of deteriorating health and nutritional status, resulting in a greater likelihood of death.
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Through technical consultations with countries and partners, WHO has led the development of Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics. Version 1.0. The Module, currently available as an advanced draft, builds on previous pandemic lessons a
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nd guidance, and has the following new elements:
It presents an integrated and efficient respiratory pathogen pandemic planning approach covering both novel pathogens and those known to have pandemic potential;
It enables coherence in addressing pathogen-agnostic and pathogen-specific elements for better preparedness;
It gives an organizing framework including operational stages and triggers for escalation and de-escalation between pandemic preparedness and response periods;
It contextualizes 12 IHR (2005) core capacities within the five components of health emergency preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR), from the respiratory threats perspective; and
It describes the critical sectors for respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness to trigger multisectoral collaboration.
WHO will finalize and publish this Module after a global technical meeting that will be held on 24-26 April 2023.
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This is an update (third edition) of the BACPR Standards & Core Components and represents current evidence-based best practice and a pragmatic overview of the structure and function of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation Programmes (CPRPs) in the UK. The previously described seven standards
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have now been reduced to six but without sacrificing any of the key elements and with a greater emphasis placed on measurable clinical outcomes, audit and certification. Similarly, the second edition provided an overview of seven core components felt to be essential for the delivery of quality prevention and rehabilitation, and this too has been reduced to six. The interplay between cardio-protective therapies and medical risk factors is almost impossible to disentangle for the vast majority of patients and even if specific drug therapies are deployed exclusively for risk factor modulation, the indirect effect will also be cardio-protective. Thus, these have been combined into a single core component – medical risk management.
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This Guidance was developed in response to the increase in HIV-related human rights crises and the shrinking civic space for rights-related responses to HIV in recent years across the world. This document builds upon existing guidance documents, offering updated guidance for country-based United Nat
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ions staff (United Nations Country Teams) and partners to use their respective mandates to coordinate effective responses to human rights-related crises within the framework of the Resident Coordinator system, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, global HIV and human rights strategies and frameworks.
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Air pollution is a major environmental risk factor and contributor to chronic, noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). However, most public health approaches to NCD prevention focus on behavioural and biomedical risk factors, rather than environmental risk factors such as air pollution. This article discus
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ses the implications of such a focus. It then outlines the opportunities for those in public health and environmental science to work together across three key areas to address air pollution, NCDs and climate change: (a) acknowledging the shared drivers, including corporate determinants; (b) taking a ‘co-benefits’ approach to NCD prevention; and (c) expanding prevention research and evaluation methods through investing in systems thinking and intersectoral, cross-disciplinary collaborations.
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Public health emergencies, including pandemics, highlight the need for health systems and services that are prepared, resilient and ready to respond to health security threats. Endorsed by Member States in 2023, the Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APHSAF) is designed to engage m
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ultisectoral actors in health security, and to reflect the complex nature of current and future public health emergencies. The Framework presents six interconnected, multisectoral domains of work that together form a comprehensive, multi-hazard health security system — emphasizing the One Health approach. The Framework also supports progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and universal health coverage while meeting the responsibilities and obligations of the International Health Regulations (2005).
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PLoS Med 16(3): e1002768. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002768
Home delivery and late and infrequent attendance at antenatal care (ANC) are responsible for substantial avoidable maternal and pediatric morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. This cluster-randomized trial aimed to de
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termine the impact of a community health worker (CHW) intervention on the proportion of women who visit ANC fewer than 4 times during their pregnancy and deliver at home.
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MEASURE Evaluation PRH Working Paper Series
Good mental health is integral to human health and well being. A person’s mental health and many common mental disorders are shaped by various social, economic, and physical environments operating at different stages of life. Risk factors for many common mental disorders are heavily associated wit
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h social inequalities, whereby the greater the inequality the higher the inequality in risk.
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Primary care - Putting people first: This chapter describes how primary care brings promotion and prevention, cure and care together in a safe, effective and socially productive way at the interface between the population and the health system.
The WHO Global Health Estimates show that nearly half a million deaths (493 471) occurred in the WHO European Region due to violence and injuries in 2016. This represents a decline of 29% from 2000. Injuries account for 5.3% of all deaths and 9.6 of all years of life lost. They are a leading cause o
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f death in people aged 15–29 years and the second leading cause of death for young people aged 5–14. The three leading causes of injury deaths are self-directed violence (141 089), falls (83 325) and road-traffic injuries (78 198). Inequalities in injury deaths exist in the Region, with mortality rates 2.4 times higher in males than in females and 1.5 times higher in middle-income compared to high-income countries.
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Financing Global Health 2015 is the seventh edition of IHME’s annual series on global health financing. This report captures trends in development assistance for health (DAH) and government health expenditure as source (GHE-S) in low- and middle-income countries. Annually updated GHE-S and DAH est
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imates are produced to aid decision-makers and other global health stakeholders in identifying funding gaps and invesment opportunities vital to improving population health. This year, IHME made a number of improvements to the data collection and methods implemented to generate Financing Global Health estimates.
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The power relations around global decisions which shape population health can be changed through new alliances and information flows. The Democratising Global Health Governance Initiative, of which WHO Watch is a project, is designed to contribute to improved population health (and health equity) th
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rough new alliances and information flows.
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