Herd immunity by mass vaccination offers the potential to substantially limit the continuing spread of COVID-19, but high levels of vaccine hesitancy threaten this goal. In a cross-country analysis of vaccine hesitant respondents across Latin America in January 2021, we experimentally tested how fiv...e features of mass vaccination campaigns—the vaccine’s producer, efficacy, endorser, distributor, and current population uptake rate—shifted willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. We find that citizens preferred Western-produced vaccines, but were highly influenced by factual information about vaccine efficacy. Vaccine hesitant individuals were more responsive to vaccine messengers with medical expertise than political, religious, or media elite endorsements. Citizen trust in foreign governments, domestic leaders, and state institutions moderated the effects of the campaign features on vaccine acceptance. These findings can help inform the design of unfolding mass inoculation campaigns.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world and consequently increased MHPSS needs across various contexts. While National Societies respond to the rising mental health and psychosocial support needs, they are also adapting to and implementing remote support, such as telephone hotlines or other onl...ine services. Accordingly, many trainings in psychological first aid (PFA) of staff and volunteers have moved to online platforms.
Throughout the pandemic, the PS Centre developed online approaches, guidances, adaptable tools, videos, podcasts, and other materials on MHPSS. This was to ensure easy access to tools and resources that assist National Societies in their training efforts in MHPSS during COVID-19.
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RESULTS: Between 76 and 97% of the PHCS offered RMCAH services before the lockdown. Except in antenatal, delivery and adolescent care, there was a decline of between 2 and 6% in all the services during the lockdown and up to 10% decline after the lockdown with variation across and within States. Dur...ing the lockdown. Full-service delivery was reported by 75.2% whereas 24.8% delivered partial services. There was a significant reduction in clients' utilization of the services during the lockdown, and the difference between States before the pandemic, during, and after the lockdown. Reported difficulties during the lockdown included stock-out of drugs (25.7%), stock-out of contraceptives (25.1%), harassment by the law enforcement agents (76.9%), and transportation difficulties (55.8%). Only 2% of the PHCs reported the availability of gowns, 18% had gloves, 90.1% had hand sanitizers, and a temperature checker was available in 94.1%. Slightly above 10% identified clients with symptoms of COVID-19.
CONCLUSIONS: The large proportion of PHCs who provided RMCAH services despite the lockdown demonstrates resilience. Considering the several difficulties reported, and the limited provision of primary protective equipment more effort by the government and non-governmental agencies is recommended to strengthen delivery of sexual and reproductive health in primary health centres in Nigeria during the pandemic.
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Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases and their risk factors are an increasing public health and development challenge in Kyrgyzstan. This report provides evidence through three analyses that NCDs reduce economic outp...ut and discusses potential options in response, outlining details of their relative returns on investment. An economic burden analysis shows that economic losses from NCDs are equivalent to 3.9% of gross domestic product. An intervention costing analysis provides an estimate of the funding required to implement a set of policy interventions for prevention and clinical interventions. A cost–benefit analysis compares these implementation costs with the estimated health gains and identifies which policy packages would give the greatest returns on investment.
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Hypertension and COVID-19: Scientific report - 17 June 2021
Community health worker teams are potential game-changers in ensuring access to care in vulnerable communities. Who are they? What do they actually do? Can they help South Africa realize universal health coverage? As the proactive arm of the health services, community health workers teams provide ho...usehold and community education, early screening, tracing and referrals for a range of health and social services. There is little local or global evidence on the household services provided by such teams, beyond specific disease-oriented activities such as for HIV and TB. This paper seeks to address this gap.
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Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experience a high disease burden for epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition.The authors evaluate the cost-effectiveness of community health workers (CHWs) to improve adherence to medication for epilepsy in South Africa. They found that utilizing CHWs to i...mprove medication adherence was cost-effective.
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The substantial burden of death and disability that results from interpersonal violence, road traffic injuries, unintentional injuries, occupational health risks, air pollution, climate change, and inadequate water and sanitation falls disproportionally on low- and middle-income countries. Injury Pr...evention and Environmental Health addresses the risk factors and presents updated data on the burden, as well as economic analyses of platforms and packages for delivering cost-effective and feasible interventions in these settings. The volume's contributors demonstrate that implementation of a range of prevention strategies-presented in an essential package of interventions and policies-could achieve a convergence in death and disability rates that would avert more than 7.5 million deaths a year.
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COVID-19 outbreak is associated with the generation of many types of infectious wastes, including infected masks, gloves and other protective equipment, together with a higher volume of general waste of the same nature.
The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Union together have called for a New Public Health Order which will safeguard the health and economic security of the continent as it strives to meet the aspirations of the Agenda 2063. A key pillar of this mandate seeks to expan...d the local manufacture of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Presently, less than one percent of vaccines administered on the continent are manufactured locally. This places a great burden on the health systems of African countries and reduces their ability to respond to pandemics and other health crises.
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These guidelines form part of efforts to institutionalize the prevention and containment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in healthcare facilities in South Africa, as outlined in the Antimicrobial Resistance Strategic Framework and Implementation Plan. The focus of these guidelines is on two interr...elated aspects of prevention of healthcare associated infections (HAIs) and their spread; and the application of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) practices at hospital level. They aim to serve as a practical, step-by-step or ‘how-to’ guide, addressing the infection prevention and AMS components of a robust response in a hospital. They draw on
evidence from various international guidance documents and standards for interventions that have been shown to be successful in infection
prevention and AMS programmes. These interventions have been customised to the South African hospital setting based on local
experiences in the public and private health sectors. This was done through a series of workshops and requests for comment involving
country-level experts.
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Communication to Healthcare Professionals Mar-2020
This guideline is intended to assist healthcare professionals in the participation of very important process of continuous surveillance of safety and efficacy of the health products which are used in their clinical practice. Continuous evaluation o...f medicines’ benefit and harm help to achieve the ultimate goal of safe and effective treatments available to patients.
The guideline is intended to assist healthcare professionals in the reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with the use of all registered health products, including medicines, old medicines, medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics (IVDs).
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Lancet Planet Health 2021; 5: e654–58
The “Wuppertal Call” – Contributions and Recommendations from an
International Conference on Eco-Theology and Ethics of Sustainability
Wuppertal, Germany, 16 – 19 June 2019