Interium guidance, 25 June 2021Timely and accurate diagnostic testing is an essential tool in preventing and controlling the spread of COVID-19. Th
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is document describes recommendations for national testing strategies and the use of PCR and rapid antigen tests in different transmission scenarios of the COVID-19 outbreak, including how testing might be rationalized in low resource settings. All testing should be followed by a strong public health response including isolating those who test positive and providing them care, contact tracing and quarantine of contacts.
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Interim Guidance, 12 July 2021; This tool was developed to assess present and surge capacities for the treatment of COVID-19 in health facilities. It allows health facilities to assess the availability and
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status of stockout of critical COVID-19 medicines, equipment and supplies on site and to identify areas that need further attention to enable the facility to respond effectively to the pandemic. The tool encompasses key components that are essential to managing COVID-19 in a hospital setting, including:
health workforce (numbers, absences, COVID-19 infections, staff vaccinated for COVID-19 health workforce management, training and support);
medicines and medical supplies for management of COVID-19;
IPC capacities (protocols, safety measures, guidelines) and the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff;
diagnostic testing, imaging and patient monitoring devices and supplies
medical equipment for management of COVID-19, including O2 administration;
COVID-19 vaccine readiness ;
beds and space capacity.
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The Greater Horn of Africa is experiencing one of the worst food insecurity situations in decades. It is estimated
that more than 37 million people are in Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)1 phase 3 or above and approximately 7 mil
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lion children under the age of five are acutely malnourished in the region. While finding food and safe water is the absolute priority, the health response is essential to avert preventable disease and death.
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The Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Guidelines aim to support healthcare workers improve quality and safety health care. The Guidelines furt
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her aim to promote and facilitate the overall goal of IPC by providing evidence-based recommendations on the critical aspects of IPC, focusing on the fundamental principles and priority action areas. All health service organizations should consider the risk of healthcare-associated infection(s) (HAI) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) transmission to implement these recommendations. The IPC Guidelines also set national standards for the prevention and control of HAIs and to ensure compliance to the National Quality Standards.
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5 May 2021
This Information Note is intended to assist national TB programmes and health personnel worldwide to maintain essential tuberculosis (TB) services during the COVID-19 pandemic
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and in the recovery phase. It is important that recent progress made in TB prevention and care is not reversed by COVID-19. The WHO Global TB Programme, along with WHO regional and country offices, developed this note in response to questions received from Member States and other partners since the start of the pandemic. The note includes references to other published WHO information products relevant to TB practitioners. WHO continues to monitor the situation closely for any changes that may influence this note and will issue updates should any factors change.
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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
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and will likely to continue do so—perhaps precipitously—following the announcement by 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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Adolescence is a critical stage in life for physical, cognitive and emotional development, shaping future health and well-being. Comprehensive meas
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urement of adolescent health is essential to prioritize health issues, guide interventions and track progress. However, global, regional and national adolescent health measurement has historically been inconsistent and incomplete.
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Recovery from COVID-19 has been challenging in Guatemala. As a result of the prolonged socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the average poverty rate nationwide has increased by almost 5%. This rise in the poverty level further exacerbates preexisting vulnerabilities
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and erodes the limited safety nets available to vulnerable populations. Year after year, recurrent disasters and humanitarian crises aggravate the historic social gaps that result in high levels of vulnerability, multidimensional poverty, and overall deprivation of essential services among hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. According to the World Risk Report 2020, Guatemala is the tenth country with the highest level of exposure to disaster worldwide. Globally, it ranks 28th regarding vulnerability according to the 2021 INFORM’s risk index and 62nd in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021.
In 2020, Guatemala faced a record-breaking and devastating hurricane season with extreme rainfall, catastrophic winds, and deadly landslides, from which the country has not yet recovered. Unfortunately, recurrent extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Julia that hit Central America in early October 2022, progressively but deeply eroded a weak health infrastructure and local health systems.
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A manual intended for medical and other personnel responsible for humanitarian activities in armed conflicts. It covers the following topics: setting up a health-care system that meets the
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essential needs of war victims, particularly of displaced persons; public health tools most frequently used for evaluation, establishment of priorities, analysis of possible activities and their follow-up; protecting war victims and aspects of humanitarian law related to health; and lastly, ethical problems
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Primary care can play a significant role in the COVID-19 response by differentiating patients with respiratory symptoms from those with COVID-19, making an early diagnosis, helping vulnerable people cope with their anxiety about the virus,
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and reducing the demand for hospital services. This document provides national and subnational health managers, as well as staff at primary care facilities, with interim guidance on timely, effective and safe supportive management of patients with suspected and confirmed COVID-19 at the primary care level; and delivery of essential health services at the primary care level during the COVID-19 outbreak
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This flipbook, released in Nov. 2011, contains key messages that pregnant women and their families need in order to plan care of an infant at home right after birth. It focuses on
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essential actions families can take both to prevent newborn death and illness and to promote healthy newborn development.
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There has been important progress for the rights of adolescent girls and women in recent decades, yet millions still struggle to
access the nutritious diets, essential nutrition services
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and nutrition and care practices they need to prevent malnutrition.
Undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia amplify gender inequalities by lowering learning potential, wages and life opportunities for adolescent girls and women, weakening their immunity to infections, and increasing their risk of lifethreatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
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The WHO COVID-19 Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool (COVID-19-ESFT) is meant to help countries forecast essential supplies for their COVID-19 response including personal protective equipment (e.g.,
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masks and gloves), biomedical equipment for case management (e.g., ventilators and oxygen concentrators), diagnostic reagents and equipment, essential drugs for supportive care, and consumable medical supplies.
The tool is best suited for estimating essential supply needs over a short time period (12 weeks or fewer) but can be used for longer.
COVID-19-ESFT does not quantify or account for resources already available locally or those pending delivery. When using the ESFT to inform procurement, we recommend factoring in resources already available locally and only including the additional resources required in the forecast.
This tool is updated regularly so users should monitor the website for the latest release version.
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Full eHandbook under: http://www.msh.org/resources/health-systems-in-action-an-ehandbook-for-leaders-and-managers
Effective supply management has the potential to make a powerful contribution to the reliable availability of
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essential medicines, which are a crucial part of the delivery of highquality health care services. Because medicines are costly and poor management so often results in waste, good supply management is also crucial to the cost-effectiveness of providing medicines.
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As the culminating volume in the DCP3 series, volume 9 will provide an overview of DCP3 findings and methods, a summary of messages and substantive lessons to be taken from DCP3,
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and a further discussion of cross-cutting and synthesizing topics across the first eight volumes. The introductory chapters (1-3) in this volume take as their starting point the elements of the Essential Packages presented in the overview chapters of each volume. First, the chapter on intersectoral policy priorities for health includes fiscal and intersectoral policies and assembles a subset of the population policies and applies strict criteria for a low-income setting in order to propose a "highest-priority" essential package. Second, the chapter on packages of care and delivery platforms for universal health coverage (UHC) includes health sector interventions, primarily clinical and public health services, and uses the same approach to propose a highest priority package of interventions and policies that meet similar criteria, provides cost estimates, and describes a pathway to UHC.
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On August 13, 2024, the Africa CDC declared the mpox outbreak a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS). The following day, the WHO declared it a Public Health Emergency of Internati
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onal Concern (PHEIC). A coordinated, continent-wide response is essential, co-led by the African Union (AU) through the Africa CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO), in close collaboration with global partners working under a unified plan, budget, and monitoring framework.
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The emergence of multifrug-resistant malaria in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) has been identified as an emergency issue that may have catastrophic consequences on the future of malaria elimination in the GMS as well as globally. In recogn
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ition of the need for a cohesive regional response, GMS countries have committed to a shared goal of eliminating malaria from the GMS by 2030 working within the framework of the Strategy for Malaria Elimination in the Greater Mekong Subregion 2015-2030. Population mobility has been identified as a key concern in the context of multidrug-resistant malaria; and in a region of highly porous borders where the majority of intra-Mekong migration occurs through informal channels, addressing the health needs of migrant populations has never been more critical.
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The coronavirus outbreak that began in late 2019 (COVID-19) has evolved rapidly and globally. On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a Public Health Emerg
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ency of International Concern and a pandemic on 11 March 2020 indicating global spread of a new disease.
Addressing COVID-19 requires critical preparedness and a prepared response, particularly within places of detention (prisons). Prison staff play a crucial role in contributing to the effort of preventing the spread of the disease, promoting safer prison environments, and responding to outbreaks in a timely and effective manner.
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Primary health care, as outlined in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and again 40 years later in the 2018 WHO/UNICEF document A vision for primary health
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care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to health that combines the following three components: multisectoral policy and action; empowered people and communities; and primary care and essential public health functions as the core of integrated health services.(1) Primary health care-oriented health systems are health systems organized and operated so as to make the right to the highest attainable level of health the main goal, while maximizing equity and solidarity. They are composed of a core set of structural and functional elements that support achieving universal coverage and access to services that are acceptable to the population and that are equity enhancing. The term “primary care” refers to a key process in the health system that supports first-contact, accessible, continued, comprehensive and coordinated patient-focused care.
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The Federal Ministry of Health of Ethiopia (FMOH), the National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) and other government actors together with UN agencies (UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO and WFP)
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and nutrition development partners call for all parties involved in the response to emergencies in Ethiopia to provide appropriate, prompt support for the feeding and care of infants, young children and their mothers. This is a critical for supporting child survival, growth and development and preventing malnutrition, illness and death. This joint statement has been issued to help secure immediate, coordinated, multi- sectoral action on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) in emergencies.
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