This document provides interim guidance on the prevention, identification and management of health worker infection in the context of COVID-19. It is intended for occupational health departments,
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infection prevention and control departments or focal points, health facility administrators and public health authorities at both the national and facility level.
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This report offers a summary of the provided support and recommendations on priority activities for IPC improvement at national and facility levels. The COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted areas for improvement in the IPC programme at national and facility levels. Improvements in the IPC programme were ac
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hieved during the acute phase of the pandemic response. WHO will continue to support the Ministry Health of Ukraine and the Public Health Centre, as well as health facility managers and health-care providers, on the next steps to ensure the sustainability of progress achieved and to further enhance IPC in health-care settings.
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COVID-19 Infection Prevention and Control Sameeksha (Hindi; review) compiles recent key IPC resources on COVID from scientific journals, WHO guidelines, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare /Govern
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ment of India guidelines, and trainings and IPC resources. The intended target audience for this includes clinical and public health professionals in both public and private sector in India.
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The Government of Kenya, through the Ministry of Health, has the
constitutional obligation to provide the highest level of health care for its
citizens. The Ministry of Health’s review of the 2015 Policy document
on infection
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prevention and control (IPC) is in line with that goal.
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Interim rapid response guidance, 10 June 2022.
It includes considerations for certain populations such as patients with mild disease with considerations for community care, patients with moderate to severe disease, sexually active persons, pregnant or breastfeeding women, children and young persons
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. The guidance also addresses considerations for clinical management such as the use of therapeutics, nutritional support, mental health services, and post-infection follow-up.
The document provides guidance for clinicians, health facility managers, health workers and infection prevention and control practitioners including but not limited to those working in primary care clinics, sexual health clinics, emergency departments, infectious diseases clinics, genitourinary clinics, dermatology clinics, maternity services, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology and acute care facilities that provide care for patients with suspected or confirmed monkeypox
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Infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics are increasing in frequency, scale and impact. Health care facilities can amplify the transmission of emerging infectious diseases or multidrug-resistant organisms (MDRO) within their settings and communities. Therefore, evidence-based
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infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in health care facilities are critical for preventing and containing outbreaks, while still delivering safe, effective and quality health care. This toolkit is intended to support IPC improvements for outbreak management in all such facilities, both public and private throughout the health system. Specifically, this document systematically describes a framework of overarching principles to approach the preparedness, readiness and response outbreak management phases. The document also provides a toolkit of resource links to guide specific actions for each infectious disease and/or MDRO outbreak management phase at any health facility. This document is specifically tailored to an audience of stakeholders who establish and monitor health care facility-level IPC programs including: IPC focal points, epidemiologists, public health experts, outbreak response incident managers, facility-level IPC committee(s), safety and quality leads and managers, and other facility level IPC stakeholders.
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Those who clean are the first line of defense against health care-associated infections (HAIs), and support efforts to reduce antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Strengthening the training of this important group can contribute to resolving many of today’s public health challenges. This is importan
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t given that cleaning both surfaces and hands is vital to control the transmission of a number of HAIs.
This two-part training package targets those who clean heath care facilities.
The Trainer’s Guide takes the user through how to prepare, deliver and sustain an effective training for those who clean. The Modules and Resources provides instructions, definitions, photographs, posters and specific illustrations of recommended practices
The package can be used by those who deliver environmental cleaning training programmes and/or those with a background in IPC including ministries of health, nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, experts working in Quality of care, IPC and environmental cleaning/ Water, sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and Health facility IPC focal points and onsite cleaning supervisors
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This article summarises the process involved in developing the updated guideline and includes an infographic to highlight key IPC recommendations from the guideline, following the patient care pathway from the community to a healthcare facility to discharge.
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 cri
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teria for adults but now also for adolescents; expanded 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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The Guidelines for the Prevention, Surveillance and Management of COVID-19 Infection amongst Health Care Workers (HCW) in Zimbabwe were developed to prevent, detect and manage HCW COVID-19
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infection, an emerging pandemic affecting the whole world. The HCW is at the fore front of this pandemic, thus the need for standardised operating procedures is of utmost importance. These guidelines therefore seek to reduce the significant morbidity and mortality among the HCW, ultimately ensuring the reduction of the cost to the health care worker and the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) as a whole. The Ministry of Health and Child Care requires that all health care workers in various health care settings follow infection prevention and control procedures.
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Scientific Brief 9 July 2020
Version: 2.0 Date: 19.3.2020
According to WHO, infection prevention and control (IPC) is a scientific approach and practical solution designed to prevent harm caused by infection
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to patients and health workers. It is grounded in infectious diseases, epidemiology, social science and health system strengthening. IPC occupies a unique position in the field of patient safety and quality universal health coverage since it is relevant to health workers and patients at every single health-care encounter. Poor WASH and IPC lead to health acquired infections, transmission of diseases from health facilities to communities and increased use of antibiotics and exacerbate outbreak and spread of infections- in this case- COVID- 19. On the contrary, effective IPC reduces hospital-acquired infections by at least 30% (WHO 2016).
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In the current absence of vaccine for COVID-19, public health response target breaking the chain of infection by focusing on the mode of transmission. This paper summarizes current evidence-base around the transmission dynamics, pathogenic, and clin
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ical features of COVID-19, to critically identify if there are any gaps in the current IPC guidelines.
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Objective of this document: Present a summary of the administrative measures that serve as the basis for implementation of infection prevention and control (IPC)measures in the context of COVID-19
Guide for clinical case management and infection prevention and control during ameasles outbreak. This guide has been developed to reduce the high morbidity and mortality seen in some of the current
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outbreaks of measles. This short guide outlines practical clinical care interventions and is derived from previously published WHO documents.
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The strategic framework gives guidance to public and private health facilities and health workers on compliance with standards relating to IPC practices. To further assist health facilities to implement the IPC strategic framework, this practical implementation manual has been developed in parallel
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to accompany the document.
These implementation strategies should be read in conjunction with the National Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Strategic Framework (2020) to support an IPC programme at health facility level towards reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This manual is aligned with the World Health Organization (WHO) Core Component IPC programme recommendations and highlights the essentials for developing and improving IPC at health facility level in a systematic, stepwise manner for South Africa. It supports the Framework for the Prevention and Containment of AMR in South African Hospitals (2018).
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