The World Health Organization’s comprehensive antenatal care (ANC) guideline WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy exper...ience was published in 2016 with the objective of improving the quality of routine health care that all women and adolescent girls receive during pregnancy. The overarching principle – to provide pregnant service users with a positive pregnancy experience – aims to encourage countries to expand their health-care agendas beyond survival, with a view to maximizing health, human rights and the potential of their populations. Recognizing that ANC provides a strategic platform for important health-care functions, including health promotion and disease prevention, 14 out of the 49 recommendations in the WHO 2016 ANC guideline relate to nutrition in pregnancy.
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The availability of controlled medicines is crucial for patients requiring palliative care, pain relief and symptom management. Many individuals worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, continue to experience limited access to thes...e essential medicines. Enhancing access to controlled medicines is paramount in promoting universal health coverage. This report offers a detailed situational analysis of policies and programmes aimed at improving access to affordable, high-quality controlled medicines for pain management in the WHO South-East Asia Region. The report identifies the existing barriers, challenges and possible solutions to facilitate access to such medicines across all Member States.
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Strengthening competency based training of health care providers for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child & Adolescenct Health (RMNCH + A) services
The primary audience for this guideline includes health-care professionals who are responsible for developing national and local health-...="attribute-to-highlight medbox">care protocols and policies, as well as managers of maternal and child health programmes and policy-makers in all settings. The guideline will also be useful to those directly providing care to pregnant women and preterm infants, such as obstetricians, paediatricians, midwives, nurses and general practitioners. The information in this guideline will be useful for developing job aids and tools for pre- and in-service training of health workers to enhance their delivery of maternal and neonatal care relating to preterm birth.
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at the national and acute health care facility level
National Guidelines for HIV & AIDS Care and Treatment (5th Edition)
These guidelines aim to guide all health care providers in Myanmar, accommodating the situation of different settings in the context of progressive decentralization of HIV services. Notable changes ...from the previous edition include:
• diagnosis of HIV
• update on the initiation of ART
• new ARV drugs and regimens
• new recommendation on infant prophylaxis
• PrEP and PEP updates
• updates on co-infections and comorbidities management
It should be noted that these guidelines are meant for the operational level and are adapted and adopted in line with existing Myanmar context.
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Technical package for cardiovascular disease management in primary health care.
WHO published guidance for clinicians and health care decision-makers on the use of corticosteroids in patients with COVID-19.
We recommend systemic corticosteroids for the treatment of patients ...with severe and critical COVID-19. We suggest not to use corticosteroids in the treatment of patients with non-severe COVID-19 as the treatment brought no benefits, and could even prove harmful. Treatment should be under supervision of a clinician.
Corticosteroids are listed in the WHO model list of essential medicines, readily available globally at a low cost. WHO encourages countries to maintain sufficient stocks of corticosteroids to treat COVID-19 and the other disease for which they are effective, while not maintaining excessive stocks which could deny other countries access.
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Antibiotics use with care
A practical approach for developing policy and strategy to improve quality of care
The handbook outlines an approach for the development of national policies and strategies to improve the quality of care.... Such policy and strategy can help clarify the structures, roles and responsibilities within national quality efforts, support the institutionalization of a culture of quality, and secure buy-in from health system leaders and stakeholders
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Guidance on TB and TB/HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care in the workplace
WHO has issued a new recommendation on the length of bladder catheterization following surgical repair of a simple obstetric urinary fistula. Currently the length of catheterization is not standard and ranges from 5 to 42 days. The new guidance recommends a 7–10 day period of bladder catheterizati...on to allow complete healing. Longer periods of catheterization can be inconvenient for the woman, her family and care providers as it is associated with more discomfort and inconvenience. It also increases the risk of infection and erosion related to catheterization; requires more intensive nursing care and costs more per patient.
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Humanitarian emergencies result in a breakdown of critical health-care services and often make vulnerable communities dependent on external agencies for c...are. In resource-constrained settings, this may occur against a backdrop of extreme poverty, malnutrition, insecurity, low literacy and poor infrastructure. Under these circumstances, providing food, water and shelter and limiting communicable disease outbreaks become primary concerns. Where effective and safe vaccines are available to mitigate the risk of disease outbreaks, their potential deployment is a key consideration in meeting emergency health needs. Ethical considerations are crucial when deciding on vaccine deployment. Allocation of vaccines in short supply, target groups, delivery strategies, surveillance and research during acute humanitarian emergencies all involve ethical considerations that often arise from the tension between individual and common good. The authors lay out the ethical issues that policy-makers need to bear in mind when considering the deployment of mass vaccination during humanitarian emergencies, including beneficence (duty of care and the rule of rescue), non-maleficence, autonomy and consent, and distributive and procedural justice
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A quick reference guide for health authorities and health-care workers
Revised 2015
This document is part of the process for improving the quality of care in family planning. Medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use (MEC), the first edition of which was published in 1996, prsents current World ...ghlight medbox">Health Organization (WHO) guidance on the safety of various contraceptive e-
methods for use in the context of specific health conditions and characteristics. This is the fifth edtion of the MEC –the latest in the series of periodic updates
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The aim of the Annual Inspection Report is to present findings of public sector health establishments inspected by the OHSC to monitor compliance with the National Core Standards (NCS) during the 2016/2017 financial year in South Africa.
The NCS de...fine fundamentals for quality of care based on six dimensions of quality: Acceptability,Safety, Reliability, Equity, Accessibility, and Efficiency.
The NCS structured assessment tools were used to collect data during inspections across the seven domains namely: Patient Rights; Patient Safety, Clinical Governance and Clinical Care; Clinical Support Services; Public Health; Leadership and Governance; Operational Management and Facilities and Infrastructure. A total of 851 routine inspections were conducted with 201 of these facilities re-inspected. Inspection data was captured on District Health Information System (DHIS) data entry forms and exported for analysis to Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) version 9.4.
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Cryptococcal disease is one of the most common opportunistic infections among people living with advanced HIV disease and is a major contributor to severe illness, morbidity, and mortality, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
These guidelines update the recommendations that were first released i...n 2018 on diagnosing, preventing, and managing cryptococcal disease. In response to important new evidence that became available in 2021, these new guidelines strongly recommend a single high dose of liposomal amphotericin B as part of the preferred induction regimen for the treatment of cryptococcal meningitis in people living with HIV. This simplified regimen - a single high dose of liposomal amphotericin B paired with other standard medicines (flucytosine and fluconazole) - is as effective as the previous WHO standard of care, with the benefits of lower toxicity and fewer monitoring demands.
The objective of these guidelines is to provide updated, evidence-informed recommendations for treating adults, adolescents and children living with HIV who have cryptococcal disease. These guidelines are aimed at HIV programme managers, policymakers, national treatment advisory boards, implementing partners and health-care professionals providing care for people living with HIV in resource-limited settings with a high burden of cryptococcal disease.
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Assessing and improving quality and human rights in mental health and social care facilites
Q3: What approaches are available to enable non-specialized health care providers to identify children with intellectual disabilities, including intellectual disabilities due to specific causes?