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 wast...e of the same nature.
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27 May 2021
All countries should increase their level of preparedness, alert and response to identify, manage and care for new cases of COVID-19. ...Countries should prepare to respond to different public health scenarios, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing cases and outbreaks of COVID-19. Each country should assess its risk and rapidly implement the necessary measures at the appropriate scale to reduce both COVID-19 transmission and economic, public and social impacts.
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This document sets out the preparedness and response plan of the Nigerian Primary Health Care System for COVID-19 Acute Respiratory Disease. It out...lines the planning scenarios, key areas of work and priority activities required for the Primary Health Care Sector to quickly scale up its core capacity to prevent, quickly detect, characterize and efficiently respond, in a coordinated manner to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include guidelines for the setup and operationalization of COVID-19 response platforms at the national and state levels, guidelines for the provision of PHC services during the pandemic to minimize transmission in PHCs as well as guidelines for preparedness and response of PHC Centres and communities for COVID-19 case detection and response.
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A Situational Assessment and Five-YearAction Plan for the Africa CDC Strengthening Regional Public Health Institutions and Capacity for Surveillanc...e and Response Program
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This I-Kit provides essential information and tools for responding to an outbreak using an SBCC approach. It presents a series of nine units, each accompanied by exercise worksheets to help link the... SBCC theory to practice.
The worksheets in each section are typically followed by a completed example. The completed examples will likely include information about an emergency that, during an actual event, might not be immediately available. This was done to illustrate the full range of information to inform a strategic communication response.
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The interim Emergency Response Preparedness (ERP) guidance is designed to be a short technical step-by-step guide aimed at non-Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) countries to support the development, ...or strengthening, of preparedness measures to ensure that country teams are operationally ready to implement activities to address the potential non-health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its compound effect on existing risks. The interim guidance is based on the IASC 2015 ERP Guidance.
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Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) is an essential part of any disease outbreak response. Risk communication in the context of an Ebola ou...tbreak refers to real time exchange of information, opinion and advice between frontline responders and people who are faced with the threat of Ebola to their survival, health, economic or social wellbeing. Community engagement refers to mutual partnership between Ebola response teams and individuals or communities in affected areas, whereby community stakeholders have ownership in controlling the spread of the outbreak.
It is intended to be used to guide RCCE work which is central to stopping the outbreak and preventing its further amplification. Unlike other areas of response, RCCE draws heavily on volunteers, frontline personnel and on people without prior training in this area. As such, the document provides basic background information, scopes the socio-economic and cultural aspects (that are known at the time of publication), and provides the latest evidence-based advice and approaches
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This document addresses preparedness as an important investment against natural and man-made disasters. Through good practices, it urges the humanitarian community, governments ...e-to-highlight medbox">and regional bodies to use preparedness thinking to be aware of risks, to reduce them and to plan ahead to combat them in order to respond more effectively and reduce the threat of hunger, disease, poverty and conflicts. It uses examples from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Colombia, Cook Islands, Ghana, Haiti, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Panama, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe
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This brief summarises key considerations about the social, political and economic context of Goma in relation to the outbreak of Ebola in the DRC as of March 2019. Goma is the administrative capital... of North Kivu province and a major urban centre in the Great Lakes Region. The city is home to an estimated 1.5 million people and serves as an important economic and transportation hub that links eastern Congo to the broader East African sub-region. The arrival of Ebola in Goma would substantially increase the at-risk population and heighten the potential for cross-border transmission to neighbouring countries, particularly Rwanda. This brief therefore focuses on local social and political structures that can be leveraged to promote preparedness and readiness actions.
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THE SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC, IRAQ, JORDAN, LEBANON, TURKEY, WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP, EGYPT
Refugees and migrants face similar health threats from COVID-19 as their host populations. However, inadequate access to essential services and exclusion may makes early detection, testing, diagnosi...s, contact tracing and seeking care for COVID-19 difficult for refugees and migrants thus increasing the risk of outbreaks in these population and presenting an additional threat to public health. This document offers guidance to Member States and partners for the inclusion of refugees and migrants, as part of holistic efforts to respond to COVID-19 epidemics in the general populations.
17 April 2020
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Updated guidance. The guidance provides useful information to staff working in prisons, as well as to health and prison authorities, explaining how to prevent and address a potential ...tribute-to-highlight medbox">outbreak of COVID-19. In addition, it aims to protect the health and well-being of all those who live and work in, and visit, these settings and the general population at large. People deprived of their liberty, and living or working in enclosed environments in close proximity, are likely to be more vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease than the general population. Moreover, correctional facilities may amplify and enhance COVID-19 transmission beyond their walls.
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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 all 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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The guide aims to provide health and DRM practitioners, planners and policymakers across sectors with targeted information to help them strengthen national health systems ...ighlight medbox">and integrate the risks of disease outbreaks in national DRR strategies
The following are some of the principles and approaches that have been based on lessons learned to date and may be considered to ensure effective all-hazards health EDRM, including prevention and preparedness for disease outbreaks, are addressed as part of the multihazard, multisectoral approach to developing or updating DRR strategies
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The Pandemic Influenza Pandemic (PIP) Framework's Partnership Contribution (PC) High-Level Implementation Plan III (HLIP III) outlines the strategy for strengthening global pandemic influenza preparedness<.../span> from 2024 to 2030. HLIP III takes into consideration the lessons learned from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the gains made over time, including from previous HLIPs, and the broader programmatic and policy context in order to address gaps in pandemic influenza preparedness. Implementation of HLIP III will strengthen global, regional, and country-level pandemic influenza preparedness.
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The purpose of this guide is to provide practical advice for health staff undertaking infectious disease preparedness and response activities to ensure that access to safe abortion care (SAC) is mai...ntained when an infectious disease outbreak occurs. It is an operational guide which can serve to support health actors to maintain SAC services during outbreaks and ensure that necessary SAC considerations are integrated within outbreak responses; it is not a clinical guide. The locational focus of this document is humanitarian and fragile settings; however, recommendations may apply to infectious disease outbreaks in all low-resource populations. This guide is intended to complement Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights During Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Operational Guidance for Humanitarian and Fragile Settings.
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Pathogen genomic surveillance has become a priority for public health systems in recent years. Genomic sequencing is increasingly being used to characterize pathogens and monitor important public health priorities (e.g. poliovirus, influenza virus, ...Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Vibrio cholerae, antimicrobial resistance (AMR)). The decrease in cost and time of sequencing and the exponential development of bioinformatic pipelines have played a critical role in integrating pathogen genomics into routine public health surveillance. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the role that sequencing plays in the surveillance of infectious diseases. Sequencing facilitates earlier detection, more accurate investigation of outbreaks, closer real-time monitoring of pathogen evolution and tailored development and evaluation of interventions to inform local to global public health decision-making and action. However, there remains a need to coordinate efforts, leverage and link existing surveillance and laboratory networks and capabilities, and systematically integrate genetic sequence data (GSD) with clinical and epidemiological data to strengthen its utility.
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This Roadmap is structured around a results-based framework of outcomes, outputs and deliveraebles, to ensure that WHO maintains appropriate levels of organizational readiness, supports country-level capacity building ...ight medbox">and preparedness, deploys efficiently and effectively to respond to outbreaks and emergencies at national and subnational levels, and engages effectively with partners and stakeholders throughout
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