The COVID-19 pandemic’s immediate costs, measured in lives lost and damaged, have been appalling and continue to rise. In addition, its effects on individuals’ livelihoods and economies around the world have been deep and are likely to be long lasting. While saving lives was the near-exclusive f...ocus during the first phase of the crisis, governments are now trying to strike a delicate balance between preventing further economic damage by reopening parts of their economies, while managing the obvious health risks of doing so.
In the international mobility and migration arenas—policy areas enormously affected by the health and economic effects of the pandemic—this reflection considers both how these fields have fared thus far and the challenges that lay ahead
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Background paper 10
The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
May 2021
New funding requirements: CHF 2.8 billion IFRC-wide of which CHF 670 million is channelled through the IFRC Emergency Appeal in support of National Societies
The Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected more than 30 million people in the world, having major impact on global health with collateral damage. In Mozambique, a public state of emergency was declared at the end of March 2020. This has limited people's movements and reduced public services, leading ...to a decrease in the number of people accessing health care facilities. An implementation research project, The Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital, has been promoting access to maternal and child health care, in Natikiri, Nampula, for the last four years. Nampula has the second highest incidence of Covid-19. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions on access to maternal and child healthcare services. We compared health centres in Nampula city with healthcare centres in our research catchment area. We wanted to see if our previous research interventions have led to a more resilient response from the community.
METHODS: Mixed-methods research, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, using a review of patient visit documentation. We compared maternal and child health care unit statistical indicators from March-May 2019 to the same time-period in 2020. We tested for significant changes in access to maternal and child health services, using KrushKall Wallis, One-way Anova and mean and standard deviation tests. We compared interviews with health professionals, traditional birth attendants and patients in the two areas. We gathered data from a comparable city health centre and the main city referral hospital. The Marrere health centre and Marrere General Hospital were the two Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital intervention sites.
RESULTS: Comparing 2019 quantitative maternal health services access indicators with those from 2020, showed decreases in most important indicators: family planning visits and elective C-sections dropped 28%; first antenatal visit occurring in the first trimester dropped 26%; hospital deliveries dropped a statistically significant 4% (p = 0.046), while home deliveries rose 74%; children vaccinated down 20%.
CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated the negative collateral effects of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions, on access to maternal and child healthcare services, and highlighted the need to improve the health information system in Mozambique.
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IBOGA Review No.1 Revue Scientifique du Jésuites d'Afrique de l'Ouest
Five years after a global commitment to Fast-Track the HIV response and end AIDS by 2030, the world is off track. A promise to build on the momentum created in the first decade of the twenty-first century by front-loading investment and accelerating HIV service provision has been fulfilled by too fe...w countries.
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24 Nov. 2021
Action against gender-based violence being pushed to the outlying margins of the global COVID-19 response
A new Oxfam report shows an undeniable increase in gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world to which too many governments and donors are not doi...ng enough to tackle.
The report, The Ignored Pandemic: The Dual Crisis of Gender-Based Violence and COVID-19, showed the number of calls made by survivors to domestic violence hotlines in ten countries during the first months of lockdown. The data reveals a 25 – 111 percentage surge; in Argentina (25%), Colombia (79%), Tunisia (43%), China (50%), Somalia (50%), South Africa (69%), UK (25%), Cyprus (39%), Italy (73%) and the largest increase in Malaysia where calls surged by over 111%.
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Available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. You can download a summary of the main report and background documents!
The report demonstrates that the current system—at both national and international levels— was not adequate to protect people from COVID-19. The time it t...ook from the reporting of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in mid-late December 2019 to a Public Health Emergency of International Concern being declared was too long. February 2020 was also a lost month when many more countries could have taken steps to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and forestall the global health, social, and economic catastrophe that continues its grip. The Panel finds that the system as it stands now is clearly unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic.
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This resource pack was developed for the country offices of the World Health Organization and national Public Health institutions, as an overview of the key information needed for advising their Member States in response to questions raised on human health due to influenza outbreaks or detections in... animals. It assembles the available information from WHO, FAO and WOAH, on recommendations and guidelines on influenza that might be relevant to a country experiencing detections or outbreaks of influenza in animals or facing suspicion of human infections with animal-origin influenza viruses. This resource pack updates the information provided in the Summary of Key Information Practical to Countries Experiencing Outbreaks of A(H5N1) and Other Subtypes of Avian Influenza, published in 2016. Additionally, the scope of this current document was broadened to address the risks to public health from all animal influenza viruses, not only avian influenza. Links to existing resources were updated and new resources were added where available.
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Der Artikel "Händedesinfektion unter den Bedingungen der SARS-CoV-2-Pandemie" war am 4.5.2020 online vorab erschienen und ist nun in der regulären Ausgabe des Epidemiologischen Bulletins 19/2020 zu finden.
While much progress has been achieved over the past year, the Region of the Americas has stubbornly remained the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. PAHO is launching its 2021 COVID-19 Response Strategy and Donor Appeal to continue supporting Latin American and Caribbean countries and territories i...n their fight against COVID-19. This document outlines PAHO’s regional strategy for the year 2021 to sustain and scale-up the response to COVID‑19 pandemic in the Americas, suppress the community transmission of the virus and mitigate the longer-term health impact of the pandemic.
US$ 239 million is needed to support critical response efforts in the Americas between 1 January and 31 December 2021
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