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 these essential medicines. Enhancing access to controll...ed 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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This checklist is for any organization or person supporting the routine use of evidence in
the process of policy-making. Evidence-informed policy-making (EIPM) is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and universal health coverage (UHC). Its importance is emphasized in WH...O’s Thirteenth General Programme of
Work 2019–2023 (GPW13). This checklist was developed by the WHO Secretariat of Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) to assist its Member countries in institutionalizing EIPM. Government agencies (i.e. the staff of the Ministry of Health),
knowledge intermediaries and researchers focused on strengthening EIPM will find in this checklist some key steps and tools to help their work. While the health sector is a key target group for EVIPNet, this tool can be applied by stakeholders from
different social sectors
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Safe drinking-water management must consider drinking-water quality, acceptability and quantity in the context of public health protection. In this manual, the term “safety” encompasses these three elements. Although the principles in this manual can be broadly applied to all types of drinking-w...ater supplies, the guidance is primarily intended for piped water supplies that are professionally managed (by a water supplier or equivalent management entity).The guidance may be applied to existing drinking-water supplies, or adapted for water supplies that are in the planning stage before construction.
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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 children. Food marketing has a harmful impact on chi...ldren’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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This report is the annual global monitoring report documenting progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 targets 2.1 and 2.2. This year’s report explores the links between urbanization and changing food systems and how these changes are impacting the availability, affordability and des...irability of healthy diets, food security and malnutrition in all its forms. It shows that understanding the ways in which urbanization is shaping food systems will require using a rural-urban continuum lens. By mapping the interlinkages across the rural-urban continuum, governments can identify challenges created by urbanization and suitable policies, technologies, investments and governance mechanisms to help address them.
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To assess national-level responses to NCDs, WHO has implemented NCD country capacity surveys periodically since 2001. This report is the latest in that series. Since the first survey round, the NCD Country Capacity Survey (NCD CCS) has been conducted a further seven times, most recently in 2021. In ...the survey, completed by the NCD focal point within each country’s ministry of health or similar agency, countries are asked to report on the following topics relating to NCDs: (i) public health infrastructure, partnerships and multisectoral collaboration; (ii) policies, strategies and action plans; (iii) health information systems and surveillance; (iv) health system capacity for detection, treatment and care; and, added for 2021, (v) the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on NCD-related resources and activities. The questionnaire is web-based and requires supporting documentation wherever possible. In the 2021 round, data were collected from May onwards, with the last survey responses arriving in September. Validation was carried out by WHO regional offices and WHO headquarters. Country responses to previous rounds of the survey were incorporated into the analysis to assess progress since 2010. Although all 194 Member States responded to the survey, data comparisons were restricted to the 160 countries that had responded to all rounds of the survey since 2010.
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The ninth WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic tracks the progress made by countries in tobacco control since 2008 and, marks 15 years since the introduction of the MPOWER technical package which is designed to help countries implement the demand-reduction measures of the WHO Framework Conventi...on on Tobacco Control. The report shows that many countries continue to make progress in the fight against tobacco, but efforts must be accelerated to protect people from the harms of tobacco and second-hand smoke.
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This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the percentage of total fat in the diet to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain.
This guideline is intended for a wide audience involved in the development, design and implementation of policies and programmes in nutrition and pub...lic health. This guideline includes a recommended level of total fat intake which can be used by policy-makers and programme managers to address various aspects of dietary fat in their populations through a range of policy actions and public health interventions.
The guidance in this guideline replaces previous WHO guidance on total fat intake, including that from the 1989 WHO Study Group on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases and the 2002 Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. The guidance in this guideline should be considered in the context of that from other WHO guidelines on healthy diets.
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This report summarizes the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global work on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) during 2022. It describes how the Organization continued to deliver its essential WASH programming as elaborated in its 2018–2025 strategy.
In an ambitious new era for health development under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, WHO and
its partners have a solid foundation of success on which to build. Health plays a fundamental role in development
and is the central focus of Sustainable Development Goal 3, “Ensure healthy ...lives and promote well-being for all
at all ages”. It is also relevant to all the Sustainable Development Goals. Understanding the significance of the
role of health is a prerequisite for successful collective action on the social, economic and environmental
determinants of health
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This checklist is an operational tool to help national authorities develop or revise national respiratory pathogen (inclusive of influenza and coronaviruses) pandemic preparedness plans.
This technical report has been developed within the framework of the WHO Global Initiative for
Childhood Cancer. Its goal is to improve the situation of children and adolescents with cancer worldwide,
giving them the best chances of survival, living a full life and, above all, enjoying quality of ...life and dying
without suffering
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Vaccines are powerful weapons in the fight against pandemic viruses as shown by responses to both the 2009 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics. However, planning for accessing, allocating and deploying vaccines in a pandemic situation is a complex endeavour, beset with multiple challenges at a...ll levels – local, regional and global. The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have prepared this revised guidance document to assist countries update their national deployment and vaccination plans (NDVPs) by leveraging global learnings from past pandemic responses, including the recent COVID-19 vaccination effort. The development and testing of a NDVP would not only advance pandemic preparedness efforts but would also have benefits in terms of increasing national capabilities to manage other health emergencies which require emergency vaccination campaigns.
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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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The Guidelines for drinking-water quality: small water supplies have been developed to address the needs and opportunities associated with small supplies to facilitate progressive improvement towards safe and sustainable drinking-water services for all. These Guidelines are based on the principal re...commendation in the World Health Organization’s Guidelines for drinking-water quality, and they provide guidance on applying that recommendation to small water supplies in particular. These Guidelines aim to help governments and practitioners improve the safety of drinking-water delivered through small supplies.
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Through technical consultations with countries and partners, WHO has led the development of Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics. Version 1.0. The Module, currently available as an advanced draft, builds on previous pandemic lessons a...nd guidance, and has the following new elements:
It presents an integrated and efficient respiratory pathogen pandemic planning approach covering both novel pathogens and those known to have pandemic potential;
It enables coherence in addressing pathogen-agnostic and pathogen-specific elements for better preparedness;
It gives an organizing framework including operational stages and triggers for escalation and de-escalation between pandemic preparedness and response periods;
It contextualizes 12 IHR (2005) core capacities within the five components of health emergency preparedness, response and resilience (HEPR), from the respiratory threats perspective; and
It describes the critical sectors for respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness to trigger multisectoral collaboration.
WHO will finalize and publish this Module after a global technical meeting that will be held on 24-26 April 2023.
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Hepatitis B (HBV) infection is a major public health problem and cause of chronic liver disease.
The 2024 HBV guidelines provide updated evidence-informed recommendations on key priority topics. These include expanded and simplified treatment criteria for adults but now also for adolescents; expa...nded eligibility for antiviral prophylaxis for pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV; improving HBV diagnostics through use of point-of-care HBV DNA viral load and reflex approaches to HBV DNA testing; who to test and how to test for HDV infection; and approaches to promote delivery of high-quality HBV services, including strategies to promote adherence to long-term antiviral therapy and retention in care.
The 2024 guidelines include 11 updated chapters with new recommendations and also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as those on treatment monitoring and surveillance for liver cancer.
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Diabetes is a serious, chronic disease that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin (a hormone that regulates blood sugar, or glucose), or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Diabetes is an important public health problem, one of four priority noncom...municable diseases (NCDs) targeted for action by world leaders. Both the number of cases and the prevalence of diabetes have been steadily increasing over the past few decades.
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Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of disability and premature death throughout the world, and contributes substantially to the escalating costs of health care. The underlying pathology is atherosclerosis, which develops over many years and is usually advanced by the time symptoms occur, genera...lly in middle age. Acute coronary and cerebrovascular events frequently occur suddenly, and are often fatal before medical care can be given. Modification of risk factors has been shown to reduce mortality and morbidity in people with diagnosed or undiagnosed cardiovascular disease.
This publication provides guidance on reducing disability and premature deaths from coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and peripheral vascular disease in people at high risk, who have not yet experienced a cardiovascular event. People with established cardiovascular disease are at very high risk of recurrent events and are not the subject of these guidelines. They have been addressed in previous WHO guidelines.
Several forms of therapy can prevent coronary, cerebral and peripheral vascular events. Decisions about whether to initiate specific preventive action, and with what degree of intensity, should be guided by estimation of the risk of any such vascular event. The risk prediction charts that accompany these guidelinesb allow treatment to be targeted accord-
ing to simple predictions of absolute cardiovascular risk.
Recommendations are made for management of major cardiovascular risk factors through changes in lifestyle and prophylactic drug therapies. The guidelines provide a framework for the development of national guidance on prevention of cardiovascular disease that takes into account the particular political, economic, social and medical circumstances.
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One of the main aims of the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer and the CureAll Americas framework is to strengthen centers of excellence and promote the training of the health workforce, especially pediatric oncology nurses, specialized in nursing care for children and adolescents with cance...r and their families. These health personnel provide compassionate, non traumatic, complex, continuous, ethical, conscious patient- and family-centered care in order to meet the physical, emotional, psychosocial, and cultural needs of the people involved. This publication is aimed at health administration teams, hospital management teams, and professional pediatric oncology nursing groups. Its objective is to identify, systematize, and consolidate available evidence on the scope of pediatric oncology nursing practice in Latin America and the Caribbean based on core competencies, in order to incorporate them into clinical practice, teaching, and research. The preparation process included a systematic review aimed at finding the best evidence on this subject. Patient- and family centered care and the conceptual model of competencies for teenagers and young adults with cancer, developed by the Teenage Cancer Trust with the support of the Royal College of Nursing, were the theoretical foundations supporting the systematization of recommendations.
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