22 Sept. 2021
The rapid development of effective Covid-19 vaccines in 2020 gave hope to the world in the darkest days of the deadly pandemic. However, the vaccine roll-out has been massively skewed... towards wealthy nations. While rich states have hoarded vaccines, companies have also played a decisive role in restricting fair access to a life-saving health product. This report focuses on six leading vaccine developers, AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer, assessing each company’s human rights policy, pricing structure, records on intellectual property, knowledge and technology sharing, allocation of available vaccine doses and transparency.
Available in Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish
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UNAIDS 2016 / Meeting Report
This guide presents information about the 2030 Agenda, how it connects to the United Nations Convention on the Rights ...hlight medbox">of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) and explores ways for persons with disabilities to be influential and participate in how they are achieved.
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The Quadripartite Organizations – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the ...ox">United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, founded as OIE), and the World Health Organization (WHO) – collaborate to drive the change and transformation required to mitigate the impact of current and future health challenges at the human–animal– plant–environment interface at global, regional and country level.
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Listening to what children in crisis have to say is not only a moral and ethical responsibility for donor and humanitarian actors, it is also a humanitarian obligation. Children’s right to participation is recognised in the United ...ribute-to-highlight medbox">Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (UNCRC), which provides rights for children to express their views and ‘be heard and taken seriously’.
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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 mortalit...y 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-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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Children continue to be exposed to powerful food marketing, which predominantly promotes foods high in saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, free sugars and/or sodium and uses a wide variety of marketing strategies that are likely to appeal to c...hildren. Food marketing has a harmful impact on children’s food choice and their dietary intake, affects their purchase requests to adults for marketed foods and influences the development of their norms about food consumption. Food marketing is also increasingly recognized as a children’s rights concern, given its negative impact on several of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.This WHO guideline provides Member States with recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, based on evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing. Guidelines on other policies to improve the food environment are currently under development.
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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global human, animal, plant and environment health threat that needs to be addressed by every country. The impacts of AMR are wide-ranging in terms ...ttribute-to-highlight medbox">of human health, animal health, food security and safety, environmental effects on ecosystems and biodiversity, and socioeconomic development. Just like the climate crisis, AMR poses a significant threat to the delivery of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The response to the AMR crisis has been spearheaded through the global action plan on antimicrobial resistance (GAP-AMR), developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015, in close collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and formally endorsed by the three organizations’ governing bodies and by the Political Declaration of the high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on AMR in 2016. In 2022, the three organizations officially became the Quadripartite by welcoming the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) into the alliance “to accelerate coordination strategy on human, animal and ecosystem health”.
The aim of the GAP-AMR is to ensure the continuity of successful treatment with effective and safe medicines.
Its strategic objectives include:
• improving the awareness and understanding of AMR;
• strengthening the knowledge and evidence base through surveillance and research;
• reducing the incidence of infection through effective sanitation, hygiene and infection prevention measures; optimizing the use of antimicrobial medicines in human and animal health; and
• developing the economic case for sustainable investment that takes account of the needs of all countries and increasing investment in new medicines, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other interventions.
With the adoption of the GAP-AMR, countries agreed to develop national action plans (NAPs) aligned with the GAP-AMR to mainstream AMR interventions nationally. Individually, the Quadripartite took action to advance AMR interventions in their respective sectors. FAO adopted a resolution on AMR recognizing that it poses an increasingly serious threat to public health and sustainable food production, and developed an AMR action plan to support the resolution’s implementation. For its part, WOAH developed a strategy on AMR aligned with the GAP-AMR, acknowledging the importance of a One Health approach to AMR. Similarly, more recently, UNEP’s governing body, the United Nations Environment Assembly, recognized that AMR is a current and increasing threat and a challenge to global health, food security and the sustainable development of all countries, and welcomed the GAP-AMR and the NAPs developed in accordance with its five overarching strategic objectives
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Taking a multisectoral, One Health approach is necessary to address complex health threats at the human-animal-environment interface, such as rabies, zoonotic influenza, anthrax, and Rift Valley fever. Such zoonotic diseases continue to have major i...mpacts on health, livelihoods, and economies, and cannot be effectively addressed by one sector alone.
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Textes du Codex concernant la résistance aux antimicrobiens d’origine alimentaire
Textos del Codex sobre la resistencia a los antimicrobianos transmitida por los alimentos
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global public health concern and a food safety issue. When pathogens become r...esistant to antimicrobial agents they can pose a greater human health risk as a result of potential treatment failure, loss of treatment options and increased likelihood and severity of disease
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This document provides a snapshot view of Rwanda in terms of key socio-economic indicators, political and economic context and the situation of chi...ldren. It also gives an overview of UNICEF's Country Programme and key achievements.
Rwanda has made significant progress towards economic prosperity and human development over the past two decades. Rwanda has one of the fastest growing economies in central Africa, and was one of the few countries to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Political stability, strong governance, fiscal and administrative decentralization, and zero tolerance for corruption are among the key factors supporting the country’s inclusive growth and development.
Rwanda still faces some significant development challenges. Chronic malnutrition (stunting), early childhood development, neonatal mortality, the quality of education, and prevention of violence against children require continued attention.
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Census data shows that Myanmar can harness a double dividend – both youth and gender. This year’s annual report provides many facets of the journey to gender equality. It tells a story of wideni...ng horizons for women and girls who are capable in their own right. It is also a story of women fulfilling their reproductive rights, and of couples having access to family planning choices.
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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 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 Instit...ute’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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Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has depended on international donor support to fund essential services like health care. But this donor support has been falling for years and will likely to continue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by ...ght medbox">United States President Joe Biden that the US will withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. This decline in funding has already had a harmful—and life-threatening—impact on the lives of many Afghan women and girls, as it affects access to, and quality of, health care.
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On February 29, 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement outlining a phased withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments not to allow attacks on th...e US or its allies from Afghan territory. The troop withdrawal is expected to take place in parallel with negotiations between representatives from the Afghan government and other Afghan political groups and Taliban leaders aimed at achieving a political settlement after decades of armed conflict.
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Climate change is one of the most urgent challenges for people and ecosystems worldwide. The recently published sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ...stresses the occurrence of widespread adverse impacts of climate change. Increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, as well as slow-onset processes cause enormous losses and damages to human and natural systems. Marginalized groups and people in vulnerable situations are often disproportionally affected. While the impacts of climate change already become more tangible and threatening, action for addressing them remains insufficient. Adaptation to climate change is, thus, becoming a necessity for governments, companies, and private citizens.
To provide practical and scientifically sound guidance on how to conduct vulnerability assessments, GIZ published its Vulnerability Sourcebook in 2014. The Vulnerability Sourcebook was used in over twenty different GIZ partner countries and provides a step-by-step guidance for designing and implementing a vulnerability assessment. It is also one of the methodological foundations for the ISO 14091:2021 standard on vulnerability, impacts and risk assessment for climate change adaptation.
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