This report presents three scenarios on the impact of COVID-19 in Africa using economic growth forecasts, mortality and efforts to ameliorate impac
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t through social grants. Likely effects are examined on per capita income, poverty and the attainment of selected Sustainable Development Goals targets. Africa’s development trajectory has suffered a severe setback, with extreme poverty rising in all the scenarios. The pandemic threatens Africa in several ways, and the report provides policy recommendations to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience.
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The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH, developed in
2018, built on UNU-IIGH’s strategic advantage and
position vis-à-vis
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the UN and global health ecosystem.
The Strategy set a goal to advance evidencebased policy on key issues related to sustainable
development and health and shifted the Institute’s
body of work from investigator-driven global health
projects to three priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars
of work, each reflecting UNU-IIGH’s unique value
position.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the
Institute adapted and reprioritised its areas of work
while continuing to deliver on the main strategic
objectives of translating evidence to policy, generating
policy-relevant analyses on gender and health, and
strengthening capacity for local decision making
especially in the Global South.
The new strategic plan encompasses four work packages:
1. Gender Equality and Intersectionality: through this work, we will aim to improve the quality of health care through a human-centred approach, by ensuring the health system is responsive to the needs of structurally excluded individuals and communities; and by advancing a positive and enabling environment for the frontline health workforce—e.g. addressing the experience of gender-based violence.
2. Power and Accountability: through this work, we will catalyse equitable shifts in power and address key accountability deficits that prevent the equitable and effective functioning of the global health system and prevent adequate responsiveness to the needs of states and populations in the Global South.
3. Digital Health Governance: through this work, we will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that negatively impact robust digital health governance, identify ways to strengthen health data governance with a particular focus on SRHR and promote diversity in technology design and development.
4. Climate Justice and Determinants of Health: through this work we will leverage UNU-IIGH's position within the UN and network of UNU institutes, network experts, practitioners, policy-makers, and academics to advance evidence-based policy on the different dimensions of the climate emergency and its impact on health.
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In the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Issue-based Coalition on He
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alth and Well-being for All at All Ages in Europe and Central Asia
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English Analysis on World about Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment, Epidemic and more; published on 15 Dec 2021 by FAO and UNICEF
This assessment tool for HIV and internally displaced persons (IDPs) is an outcome of multisectoral, multi-agency assessment missions in Côte d’Ivoire,
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the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Nepal and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) first global consultation on HIV and internally displaced persons held in April 2007 in Geneva.
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The ECA, says over 300,000 Africans could lose their lives due to COVID-19. This, as the pandemic continues to impact on the Continent’s struggl
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ing economies whose growth is expected to slow down from 3.2 percent to 1.8 percent in a best-case scenario, pushing close to 27 million people into extreme poverty.
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A new reportshows that people in some 25 countries are set to face devasting levels of hunger in coming months due to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. While
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the greatest concentration of need is in Africa, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the Middle East and Asia – including middle-income countries - are also being ravaged by crippling levels of food insecurity
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The war in Ukraine has had devasting impact on women and girls
worldwide, widening gender gaps and increasing rates of food insecurity, malnutriti
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on and energy poverty. This brief reviews the available evidence of that impact, recommending urgent attention to its consequences for women and girls. Its findings underline the global impacts on gender equality and women’s rights that have been compounded by climate change, environmental degradation and the COVID-19 pandemic,
demonstrating further entrenched inequalities and human rights violations.
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Millennium Development Goal 8E aims for affordable access to essential medicines. Essential medicines, as defined by WHO, are those that “satisfy the health-care needs of
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the majority of the population” and that should therefore “be available at all times in adequate amounts”. However, there is a category of medicines that faces a unique challenge in terms of availability. These are the medicines governed by the international conventions on narcotic and psychotropic substances. “Controlled medicines” is the common definition for pharmaceuticals whose active principles are listed under the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as amended by the 1972 Protocol, such as morphine and methadone; the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, such as diazepam and buprenorphine; and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, such as ergometrine and ephedrine. The conventions list substances in “Schedules” according to their different levels of potential for abuse and harm, and the commensurate severity of control measures to be applied by countries.
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This Technical Brief focuses on appraising and prioritising options for climate resilience with a view to informing water, sanitation and hygiene (
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WASH) programme and project design.
This Technical Brief:
- provides a simple scorecard/checklist approach to use as a starting point for appraising and prioritising options, and as an awareness-raising activity - covers all aspects of WASH
- has a predominantly rural focus, to align with the rest of the Strategic Framework and Technical Briefs
- focuses on current and near future options over the next 15–20 years, which fits in with WASH programming timescales and development
- includes WASH examples to show how the approach can be applied.
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In 2015, the United Nations set important targets to reduce premature
cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths by 33% by 2030. Africa disproportionatel
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y
bears the brunt of CVD burden and has one of the highest risks of dying
from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide. There is currently
an epidemiological transition on the continent, where NCDs is projected
to outpace communicable diseases within the current decade. Unchecked
increases in CVD risk factors have contributed to the growing burden of three
major CVDs—hypertension, cardiomyopathies, and atherosclerotic diseasesleading to devastating rates of stroke and heart failure. The highest age
standardized disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) due to hypertensive heart
disease (HHD) were recorded in Africa. The contributory causes of heart failure
are changing—whilst HHD and cardiomyopathies still dominate, ischemic
heart disease is rapidly becoming a significant contributor, whilst rheumatic
heart disease (RHD) has shown a gradual decline. In a continent where health
systems are traditionally geared toward addressing communicable diseases,
several gaps exist to adequately meet the growing demand imposed by CVDs.
Among these, high-quality research to inform interventions, underfunded
health systems with high out-of-pocket costs, limited accessibility and
affordability of essential medicines, CVD preventive services, and skill
shortages. Overall, the African continent progress toward a third reduction
in premature mortality come 2030 is lagging behind. More can be done in
the arena of effective policy implementation for risk factor reduction and
CVD prevention, increasing health financing and focusing on strengthening
primary health care services for prevention and treatment of CVDs, whilst
ensuring availability and affordability of quality medicines. Further, investing
in systematic country data collection and research outputs will improve the accuracy of the burden of disease data and inform policy adoption on
interventions. This review summarizes the current CVD burden, important
gaps in cardiovascular medicine in Africa, and further highlights priority
areas where efforts could be intensified in the next decade with potential
to improve the current rate of progress toward achieving a 33% reduction
in CVD mortality.
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A practical guide to meaningfully engage adolescents in the AIDS response
UNAIDS 2016 reference
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, health is receiving unprecedented public and political attention. Yet
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the fact that climate change also presents us with a health crisis deserves further recognition. From more deaths due to heat stress to increased transmission of infectious diseases, climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health in ways that are profound and far-reaching. The fundamental interdependency of human health and the health of the environment is encapsulated in the concept of planetary health, a scientific field and social movement that has been gaining force since the 2015 publication of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission report “Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch”.
We see an urgent need for strategic communication to raise awareness of climate-health synergies in order to overcome the misperception that climate and health are two independent agendas. The fragmented and sector-focused nature of thinking and action remains a significant barrier to integrating health considerations into climate planning and project development. Inevitably, collaboration across sectors requires a community of practice. Despite recent efforts focused on the climate-health nexus, much work remains to be done to translate scientific findings for policymakers, mobilise climate financing resources in support of health co-benefits, and promote genderjust solutions within climate change projects.
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More than three months since the start of the war in Ukraine, people globally are facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in more than a generation, with escalating price shocks in
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the global food, energy and fertilizer markets - in a world already grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
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In the region, it is estimated that there are over 650 million persons with disabilities. However, without accurate, timely and disaggregated data, countries are unable to develop effective policies
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and programmes, monitor the wellbeing of persons with disabilities and evaluate the equity and impact of development efforts. This endangers country commitments to ‘leave no one behind’ and undermines their obligations to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
This groundbreaking report demonstrates the importance of ensuring data is inclusive and provides recommendations for immediate action in order to improve the collection, analysis and reporting of disability data. We hope this report will be used as a tool for future advocacy and ultimately better data for all.
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The English terminology, and its translations into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish, are available on
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the UNISDR website at: www.unisdr.org/publications and on PreventionWeb at: www.preventionweb.net
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This technical brief was developed by the UNFPA Global Ageing Network to complement the UN Department of Economic
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and Social Affairs' (UN DESA) Issue Brief: Older Persons and COVID-19, which emphasized the humanitarian imperative of addressing older persons' specific needs within preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The report “Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region” provides ground breaking insights into the state of
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health inequities in the Region and urges countries to take action to address the social determinants of health to reverse the worsening trend of inequity – aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflict, mass movements of people, environmental challenges, gender inequities and unemployment.
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