This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing—including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing—from China to 138 countries between 2000 and ...2014. We use these data to investigate whether and to what extent Chinese aid affects economic growth in recipient countries. To account for the endogeneity of aid, we employ an instrumental-variables strategy that relies on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese aid over time resulting from changes in Chinese steel production. Variation across recipient countries results from a country’s probability of receiving aid. Controlling for year- and recipient-fixed effects that capture the levels of these variables, their interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Our results show that Chinese official development assistance (ODA) boosts economic growth in recipient countries. For the average recipient country, we estimate that one additional Chinese ODA project produces a 0.7 percentage point increase in economic growth two years after the project is committed. We also benchmark the effectiveness of Chinese aid vis-á-vis the World Bank, the United States, and all members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
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Addressing comorbidities and risk factors for TB is a crucial component of Pillar one of the End TB Strategy, which focuses on integrated patient-c...entred care and prevention, including action on TB and comorbidities. The Framework for collaborative action on TB and comorbidities aims to support countries in the evidence-informed introduction and scale-up of holistic people-centred services for TB, comorbidities and health-related risk factors, with the goal of comprehensively addressing TB and other co-existing health conditions. It should be used in conjunction with relevant WHO guidelines. The Framework is intended for use by people working in ministries of health, other relevant line-ministries, policymakers, international technical and funding organizations, researchers, nongovernmental and civil society organizations, as well as primary care workers, specialist health practitioners, and community health workers who support the response to TB and comorbidities in both the public and private sectors.
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The report summarizes the estimates of the burden of disease attributable to unsafe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene for the year 2019 ... class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">for four health outcomes - diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, soil-transmitted helminthiases, and undernutrition - which are included in the reporting of the Sustainable Development Goal indicator 3.9.2. The report includes estimates at global, regional and country level for 183 WHO Member States.
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This report makes the case for a major new initiative—to rapidly recruit, train and deploy 2 million community health workers in Africa. Drawing on a vast body of evidence and substantial regional... experience, the report shows how community health workers save lives and improve quality of life and how investments in community health workers effectively harness the demographic dividend, reduce gender inequality and accelerate economic growth and development. Indeed, the benefits of community health workers stretch from one end of the Agenda for Sustainable Development to the other.
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Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Over 2 million children die from pneumonia each year, accounting for almost 1 in 5 under five deaths worldwide. Yet, little attention is paid to t...his disease. This joint UNICEF/WHO report examines the epidemiological evidence on the burden and distribution of pneumonia and assesses current levels of treatment and prevention. It is a call to action to reduce pneumonia mortality, a key step towards the achievement of the millennium development goal on child mortality.
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The main purpose of the meeting was to review tsetse control tools, activities and their contribution to the elimination of gHAT and the monitoring thereof. Seven endemic countries provided reports ...on recent and ongoing vector control interventions at the national level (Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea and Uganda). Country reports focused on the in situations implementing and supporting vector control activities, the tools and the approaches in use, the coverage of the activities in space and time and their impacts on tsetse populations. Future perspectives for vector control in the respective countries were also discussed, including opportunities and challenges to sustainability.
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This paper focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty, economic growth, inequality, health, food production and the environment. It presents concrete examples of the underlying ...and complex aspects of antibiotic resistance and its impacts across different Sustainable Development Goals. The aim of this paper is to inform and stimulate discussions on how to further advance the implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, National Action plans on Antimicrobial Resistance, as well as work within all sectors that affect and are affected by antibiotic resistance
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The Global Campaign Against Epilepsy “Out of the Shadows”
The domestic regulation of public health emergencies (PHEs) is inextricably linked to the regulation of other types of disaster. PHEs are usually g...overned at least partly by general disaster and emergency laws. Moreover, there is significant overlap in the legal mechanisms used to respond to PHEs and other types of disaster, including the declaration of a state of disaster or emergency and the use of emergency powers. Even where PHEs are regulated by separate instruments, those instruments must surmount many of the same policy and practical challenges as general disaster laws, such as finely balancing competing considerations (e.g. speedy response versus due process), facilitating the coordination of a multitude of actors, and protecting the most vulnerable within society. Finally, many contemporary developments in disaster risk management (DRM), such as a greater emphasis on risk reduction and preparedness, are just as pertinent to PHEs as to other types of disaster.
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This is the first global report on epilepsy summarizing the available evidence on the burden of epilepsy and the public health response required at global, regional and national levels.
The reports highlights major gaps in awareness, diagnosis, t...reatment, and health policies through a series of appalling numbers. With around 50 million people affected worldwide, epilepsy is one of the most common and serious brain disorders. Nearly 80% of people with epilepsy live in low-income and middle-income countries
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UNFPA launches Journalist’s Handbook: Reporting on Gender-Based Violence in Syria Crisis
Amman, 9 March 2015 – Under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Rym Ali, UNFPA launched a handbook on Reporting on Gender-Based Violence in the ...Syria Crisis to help journalists better understand issues surrounding gender-based violence (GBV) and to write about it more effectively and sensitively.
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The GHS Index is intended to be a key resource in the face of increasing risks of high-consequence and globally catastrophic biological events and in light ...">of major gaps in international financing for preparedness. These risks are magnified by a rapidly changing and interconnected world; increasing political instability; urbanization; climate change; and rapid technology advances that make it easier, cheaper, and faster to create and engineer pathogens.
Key findings from the study of 195 countries:
• Out of a possible 100 points, the average GHS Index score across 195 countries was 40.2.
• The majority of high- and middle-income countries do not score above 50.
• Action is urgently needed to improve countries’ readiness for high-consequence infectious disease outbreaks.
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Robust clinical research capacity in low- and middle-income countries is key to stemming the spread of epidemics, according to a new report from the International Vaccines Task Force (IVTF). The rep...ort lays out how to develop the political support, financing and coordination required to build this capacity as a crucial component of global epidemic preparedness. The IVTF was convened by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in October 2017.
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n 2015, Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its accompanying Sustainable ...bute-to-highlight medbox">Development Goals (SDGs), with the third goal of the agenda focusing on health – good health and well-being. This has the attainment of universal health coverage (UHC) as its umbrella target. Since then, the WHO Regional Office for Africa has been supporting countries plan, and monitor progress towards this goal. This report represents an analysis of the evidence so far countries are making towards this goal, and includes the effect COVID-19 has had on its attainment so far. It also makes recommendations on how countries can prioritize their health actions post COVID-19, in a manner that allows acceleration of progress towards UHC.
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The Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action specifies that the mandate of the Global Education Monitoring Report is to be ‘the mechanism ...box">for monitoring and reporting on SDG 4 and on education in the other SDGs’ with the responsibility to ‘report on the implementation of national and international strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account for their commitments as part of the overall SDG follow-up and review.’ It is prepared by an independent team hosted by UNESCO.
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A practioner's guide, based on lessons from Ebola.
This guide is a compilation of best practices and key lessons learned through Oxfam’s experience of community engagement during the 2014–15 Eb...ola response in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It aims to inform public health practitioners and programme teams about the design and implementation of community-centred approaches
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This year marked the beginning of the WHO biennium 2016-2017 action plan; this annual report highlights WHO’s key achievements in 2016
It also documents the extraordinary efforts by a broad coalition o...f government ministries, municipalities, international agencies, community groups, women’s organizations, religious and traditional leaders, media, private sector and donors towards restoration and improving health indicators.
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This is a pre-deployment training, tailored specially to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, offered to WHO personnel, consultants, and key partners. The material covered in modules 1-4 is applicable and useful to frontline response workers, national and in...ternational. Only Module 5, which focuses on operational aspects - the code of conduct for international civil servants and human resources arrangements for WHO deployees, are specifically geared to all internationally recruited personnel and to WHO deployees respectively
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