Small drinking-water supplies commonly experience operational, managerial, technical and resourcing challenges that impact their ability to deliver safe and reliable services. The needs and opportunities associated with these supplies therefore warrant explicit consideration in policies and regulati...ons.
These Guidelines, specifically tailored to small water supplies, build on over 60 years of guidance by the World Health Organization (WHO) on drinking-water quality and safety. They focus on establishing drinking-water quality regulations and standards that are health based and context appropriate; on proactively managing risks through water safety planning and sanitary inspections; and on carrying out independent surveillance. The guidance is intended primarily for decision-makers at national and subnational levels with responsibility for developing regulatory frameworks and support programmes related to these activities. Other stakeholders involved in water service provision will also benefit from the guidance in this document.
Designed to be practical and accessible, these Guidelines offer clear guidance that is rooted in the principle of progressive improvement. State-of-the-art recommendations and implementation guidance are provided, drawn from a comprehensive evidence review and established good practices. Additionally, case examples are provided from countries and areas around the world to demonstrate how the guidance in this publication has been implemented in practice in a wide variety of contexts.
Together with WHO’s 2024 Sanitary inspection packages – a supporting tool for the Guidelines for drinking-water quality: small water supplies, these Guidelines update and supersede WHO’s 1997 Guidelines for drinking-water quality. Volume 3: surveillance and control of community supplies. Key changes to this updated publication include a greater focus on preventive risk management and a broader range of small water supplies covered, including those managed by households, communities and professional entities.
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For thousands of years, humans have been using wildlife for commercial and subsistence purposes. Wildlife trade takes place at local, national and international levels, with different forms of wildlife, such as live animals, partly processed product...s and finished products. Wildlife is a vital source of safe and nutritious food, clothing, medicine, and other products, in addition to having religious and cultural value. Wildlife trade also contributes to livelihoods, income generation and overall economic development.
However, wildlife trade can have detrimental effects on species conservation, depleting natural resources, impoverishing biodiversity and degrading ecosystems (Morton et al., 2021). Wildlife trade, whether legal or illegal, regulated or unregulated, can pose threats to animal health and welfare. It also presents opportunities for zoonotic pathogens to spill over between wildlife and domestic animals, and for diseases to emerge with serious consequences for public or animal health and profound economic impacts (IPBES, 2020; Swift et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2009; Gortazar et al., 2014; Stephen, 2021; Stephen et al., 2022; FAO, 2020). The risk of pathogen spillover and disease emergence is amplified with increased interaction between humans, wildlife and domestic animals. The risk of pathogen spillover has also been exacerbated by climate change, intensified agriculture and livestock production, deforestation, and other land-use changes. Wildlife trade is also a risk to ecosystem biodiversity via the introduction of invasive species (Wikramanayake et al., 2021). Therefore, increased effort must be put into understanding the potential consequences of the wildlife trade, mapping and analysing the adjacent risks, and implementing strategies to manage those risks. Reducing wildlife-trade risks not only helps to limit disease but also minimises the negative effects of invasive species. Between 1960 and 2021, invasive alien species caused estimated cumulative damage of around 116 billion euros across 39 countries in the European Union alone, despite strict import regulations (Haubrock et al., 2021). The effect of invasive species is extremely apparent.
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The Global status report on violence prevention 2014, which reflects data from 133 countries, is the first report of its kind to assess national efforts to address interpersonal violence, namely child maltreatment, youth violence, intimate partner a...nd sexual violence, and elder abuse. Jointly published by WHO, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the report reviews the current status of violence prevention efforts in countries, and calls for a scaling up of violence prevention programmes; stronger legislation and enforcement of laws relevant for violence prevention; and enhanced services for victims of violence.
You can download summaries in different languages, single chapters and graphics
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A survey was conducted in countries in all six WHO regions and focused on the building blocks that are considered prerequisites to combat antimicrobial resistance: a comprehensive national plan, laboratory capacity to undertake surveillance for resi...stant microorganisms, access to safe, effective antimicrobial medicines, control of the misuse of these medicines, awareness and understanding among the general public and effective infection prevention and control programmes.
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The main objective of this self learning programme is to understand the purpose of biostatistics through realistic cases and to acquire basic biostatistics skills that can be applied to your work.
The target audiences of this training are medical a...nd biomedical students, laboratory specialists and other professionals who need to use or understand basic biostatistics. However, it may also be a helpful reminder to epidemiologists.
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You can order the biostatistics CD-ROM free of charge by sending an e-mail to: ihrinfo@who.int
Download the contents of the Biostatistics CD-ROM free of charge [zip 9.64MB]
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This document presents a strategic framework, aimed towards the development of sustainable global, regional and national plans relating to laboratory biorisk management.
"Achieving, maintaining and improving accuracy, timeliness and reliability are major challenges for health laboratories. Countries worldwide committed themselves to build national capacities for the... detection of, and response to, public health events of international concern when they decided to engage in the International Health Regulations implementation process. Only sound management of quality in health laboratories will enable countries to produce test results that the international community will trust in cases of international emergency. This handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive reference on Laboratory Quality Management System for all stakeholders in health laboratory processes, from management, to administration, to bench-work laboratorians. This handbook covers topics that are essential for quality management of a public health or clinical laboratory. They are based on both ISO 15189 and CLSI GP26-A3 documents"--Page 7.
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This document provides a generic model that can be used for risk assessment of exposure to insecticide products applied as indoor residual sprays. It aims to harmonize the risk assessment of such insecticides for public health use in order to genera...te comparable data for their registering and labelling by national regulatory authorities. The assessment considers both adults and children (all age groups) as well as people in the following specific categories:
- those preparing the spray;
- those applying the spray;
- residents living in the treated houses;
- residents who participate in preparing and applying insecticides.
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Fostering resilient development through integrated action plan
The Myanmar Action Plan on Disaster Risk Reduction, 2017 is a comprehensive and unified action plan for disaster risk reduction with prioritized interventions across Myanmar till 2020. With a long term vision and considering deep-root...ed underlying drivers of disaster risk, it has set an overall target for 2030. it aims to provide a base for mobilizing and leveraging, primarily, national and external resources and will provide a basis for result printed outcomes.
The action plan identifies 32 priority actions under four pillars: risk information and awareness; risk governance; risk mitigation; and preparedness and response, rehabilitation and reconstruction. For each priority action, objectives, activities, outputs, duration, lead agencies, and supporting partners have been identified.
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This document aims to provide concrete, pragmatic guidance for how TB modelling and related technical assistance is undertaken to support country decision-making. The target audience for this document are the participants and stakeholders in country...-level TB modelling efforts, including the individuals who build and apply models; policy-makers, technical experts and other members of the TB community; international funding and technical partners; and individuals and organizations engaged in supporting TB policy-making.
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Policy brief. HIV testing services (HTS) and anti-retroviral therapy (ART) have been scaled up substantially. It is estimated that, globally, nearly 80% of people with HIV now know their status. With the offer of immediate ART initiation and improved treatment options, access to and uptake of treatm...ent have increased, too. Now, most people with HIV who know their status are obtaining treatment and care.
In response to these changes in the global HIV epidemic, WHO is encouraging countries to use three consecutive reactive tests for an HIV-positive diagnosis as their treatment-adjusted prevalence and national HTS positivity fall below 5% .
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The GAP articulates five objectives for tackling AMR, and sets out the tasks required to achieve them, highlighting
roles and responsibilities for country governments, the One Health Tripartite organizations (FAO, OIE and WHO) and other ...="attribute-to-highlight medbox">national and international partners. To ensure that all stakeholders assume their roles and responsibilities, and to assess whether they are collectively effecting the necessary change in AMR, the implementation of the GAP needs to be routinely monitored and evaluated. To that end, the Tripartite organizations co-developed a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework for the GAP, as outlined in this document
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WHO would like to express its gratitude and appreciation to all Member States that provided information to the WHO survey on policies and activities at the national level in the area of antimicrobial resistance. The contribution of staff in WHO Regi...onal and Country Offices has been invaluable: in gather-ing original data and information from Member States, in supporting the process of aggregation of these data; and in reviewing the regional analysis of the findings that reflect the country situation at the point when the survey was conducted. The support and commitment of the members of the WHO Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance, comprising WHO staff from Headquarters and Regional Offices has, is also acknowledged.
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7 April 2021
The holy month of Ramadan (mid-April to mid-May 2021) is marked by social and religious gatherings. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to observe the holiday with caution and care. This document provides up-to-date public ...ox">health advice that can be applied across different national contexts to make Ramadan-related activities safer.
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This guidance is intended to be used by programme managers following the decision to introduce human papillomavirus (HPV) virological testing as a screening assay in their national cervical cancer prevention and control programme. The guidance inclu...des a step-by-step process to be followed after the decision has been made to specifically introduce and/or scale-up HPV virological testing for screening, which would be followed up with adequate management within the context of cervical cancer prevention
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The WHO SAGE values framework for the allocation and prioritization of COVID-19 vaccination is intended to offer guidance on the prioritization of groups for vaccination when vaccine supply is limited. It provides a values foundation for the objectives of COVID-19 vaccination programmes and links t...hose to target groups for vaccination. This information is valuable to countries and globally while specific policies will be developed once vaccines become available.
This document it available in Arabic, Chinese and Russian
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These guidelines group all recommendations on TB care and support in one document and are complemented by an operational handbook. The guidelines are to be used primarily by national TB programmes, or their equivalents in Ministries of ...ass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">Health, stakeholders and technical organizations working on TB care in the public and private sectors and in the community.
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Pharmaceutical regulators are at the forefront of ensuring that only safe and effective medicines are authorized and available in the market. This document builds on the recommendations in the above publication and has been prepared to specifically assist ...national medicines regulatory authorities to understand the nature and extent of oxytocin quality issues and to provide key technical information and quality requirements for oxytocin products in dossier assessments. Furthermore, this document also presents recommendations on other regulatory actions needed to ensure that only quality-assured oxytocin products are authorized and made available to women.
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This first edition of our national neonatal care clinical guidelines is an initiative that aims to ensure that all the neonates in the Kingdom of Eswatini are offered standard, best quality of care and the best possible start in life. The guidelines... have been formulated from various global sources and tailored to the needs and health practises of the country. They are designed to serve as a guide to all healthcare providers in the country to provide standardized quality neonatal care.
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The recommendations cover the level of blood pressure to start medication, what type of medicine or combination of medicines to use, the target blood pressure level, and how often to have follow-up checks on blood pressure. In addition, the guidelin...e provides the basis for how physicians and other health workers can contribute to improving hypertension detection and management.
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