Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis on 24 February 2022, WHO has supported Government-led efforts and initiatives alongside key partners on the ground. Building on efforts to date, and working alongside Bulgaria’s health authorities to bring added value to existing mechanisms, the WHO Countr...y Office Bulgaria, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the WHO Health and Migration Programme, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Bulgaria and key partners, undertook a joint review mission to support Bulgaria, with a focus on addressing the health system needs of refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and vulnerable host populations in Bulgaria.
The assessment team developed this report on the key findings and a package of potential interventions based on the opportunities identified and the need for technical support and assistance. The report summarizes concrete areas of work for which collaborations can be further strengthened. The joint review team identified key recommendations for consideration across 8 priority areas. The report and the outcomes of the review mission serve as a basis for future technical collaboration in the area of refugee health, to address the health needs of refugees and third-country nationals fleeing from Ukraine.
more
The Operational guide: use of referral laboratories for the analysis of foodborne hazards in the Pacific aims to strengthen the food analysis capacity of Pacific Island countries and areas by identifying national and reference laboratories capable of testing for priority foodborne hazards. The Pacif...ic Island countries and areas are often vulnerable to food safety incidents and emergencies due to their geographical distribution and dependence on food imports. The guide outlines key considerations for selecting referral laboratories and submitting samples to them, enabling continuous improvement of food safety systems and providing safe food for all. The target audiences are health and food safety authorities.
more
Ukraine: Russian invasion has forced older people with disabilities to endure isolation and neglect – new report
Many temporary shelters inaccessible to people with physical disabilities
Overburdened care system often provides few alternatives to institutions for older people
Authorities ...and humanitarian actors must ensure an inclusive response
Displaced older people with disabilities in Ukraine are physically and financially unable to access adequate housing and care amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, sometimes leaving few alternatives to being placed in residential institutions, Amnesty International said in a new report.
more
Food inspection is crucial for ensuring food safety, using risk-based approaches to target high-risk products and businesses. This guidance aids national authorities in designing and implementing risk-based systems, offering step-by-step instructions, examples, and tools for prioritization and inspe...ction frequency estimation. It emphasizes adapting to individual country needs and recognizing variations in food risks and production chain characteristics. The document underscores resource-efficient, risk-based food inspection systems, prioritizing high-risk products and businesses to prevent safety incidents proactively. It suggests designing models based on relevant information and periodically adjusting them for continuous improvement.
more
Mpox continues to affect people around the world. A new framework released today by WHO will guide health authorities, communities and other stakeholders in preventing and controlling mpox outbreaks, eliminating human-to-human transmission of the disease, and reducing spillover of the virus from ani...mals to humans.
Mpox is a viral illness caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV). It can cause a painful rash, enlarged lymph nodes and fever. Most people fully recover, but some get very sick. The virus transmits from person to person through close, including sexual, contact. It also has animal reservoirs in east, central and west Africa, where spillovers from animals to humans can occasionally occur, sparking further outbreaks.
There are two different clades of the virus: clade I and clade II. Clade I outbreaks are deadlier than clade II outbreaks.
A major emergence of mpox linked to clade II began in 2017, and since 2022, has spread to all regions of the world. Between July 2022 and May 2023, the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. While that outbreak has largely subsided, cases and deaths continue to be reported today, illustrating that low-level transmission continues around the world.
Currently, there is also a major outbreak of clade I virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where cases have been on the rise for decades. Since the beginning of the year, over 6500 cases and 345 deaths have been reported in the DRC. Almost half of these are among children under the age of 15 years.
The Strategic framework for enhancing prevention and control of mpox (2024–2027) provides a roadmap for health authorities, communities, and stakeholders worldwide to control mpox outbreaks in every context, advance mpox research and access to countermeasures, and to minimize zoonotic transmission.
more
The GOLD website is dedicated to providing comprehensive information on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). It offers resources and guidelines for healthcare professionals and public health authorities to improve the diagnosis, management, and prevention of COPD worldwide. The site include...s the latest reports, strategies, and updates on COPD research, emphasizing evidence-based practices for better patient outcomes. GOLD also provides educational materials, workshops, and support for implementing COPD care programs, aiming to raise global awareness and promote effective treatments for COPD.
more
UNAIDS leads the world's most extensive data collection on HIV epidemiology, programme coverage and finance and publishes the most authoritative and up-to-date information on the HIV epidemic.
Die Risiken für Kinder, Opfer sexüller Ausbeutung zu werden, haben in den vergangenen Jahren eher zu- als abgenommen. Dies stellte Ende 2013 die Sonderberichterstatterin der Vereinten Nationen zum Thema Prostitution von Kindern fest. Neben Sklaverei ist Kinderprostitution eine der offensichtlich i...llegalen Formen von Zwangsarbeit, um die es in der Studie von Autorinnen und Autoren des Südwind-Instituts geht, die von Terre des hommes herausgegeben wurde.
more
Diese Sonderkollektion enthält Cochrane Reviews zu den folgenden Themen: Medikamente; Verhaltensunterstützung; und allmähliches Aufhören. Interventionen, die den Vorgang des Rauchens imitieren, insbesondere E-Zigaretten, wurden von dieser Sonderkollektion ausgeschlossen, da die Risiken ihrer Ver...wendung vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Pandemie unklar sind. Cochrane Tobacco Addiction arbeitet daran, zu allen relevanten Informationen auf dem aktuellen Stand zu bleiben, um Menschen, die während dieser schwierigen Zeit mit dem Rauchen aufhören wollen, Unterstützung zu bieten.
more
Health Policy. 2010 Dec;98(2-3):91-7. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2010.06.004. Epub 2010 Jul 16. Only Abstract available. Please write to the Author to get the full-text
These lectures are to be freely used, copied and distributed in Developing Countries for the teaching and promotion of basic anesthesia knowledge and skills.
The purpose of these lectures are to provide developing countries with a copyright free resource. Contributors with credited pictures and ill...ustrations have graciously gave permission for their material to be used for this specific purpose. The author of these lectures or the IFNA cannot accept liability from their use and errors in translation. It is up to each translator to ensure that the translation is correct. Knowledge about the art and science of anesthesia/resuscitation continues to change. It is up to each anesthesia provider to continue to learn and upgrade their knowledge. These lectures only contains basic knowledge and are not a replacement for more comprehensive information
more
Disability, CBR & Inclusive Development, [S.l.], v. 24, n. 3, p. 112-122, nov. 2013. ISSN 2211-5242
Children with disabilities encounter more violence in their lives than their peers without disability. Organisations involved in Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) come across many cases of violen...ce against the children they work with. Many organisations have no policy on child protection since it is not within the scope of their expertise. Others work with child protection policies that are hard to apply in the realities they deal with. Through research done in Ethiopia, with a recent update, the author attempts to show that there is a need for policies in CBR, that follow a community approach rather than an individual approach to child protection.
more
BMC Medicine201210:107
https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-10-107© Katchanov and Birbeck; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012
Received: 10 July 2012Accepted: 24 September 2012Published: 24 September 2012
In 2011, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mental health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) r...eleased evidence-based epilepsy-care guidelines for use in low and middle income countries (LAMICs). From a
geographical, sociocultural, and political perspective, LAMICs represent a heterogenous group with significant differences in the epidemiology, etiology, and perceptions of epilepsy. Successful implementation of
the guidelines requires local adaptation for use within individual countries. For effective implementation and sustainability, the sense of ownership and empowerment must be transferred from the global health authorities to the local people. Sociocultural and financial barriers that impede the implementation of the guidelines should be
identified and ameliorated. Impact assessment and program revisions should be planned and a budget allocated to them. If effectively implemented, as intended, at the primary-care level, the mhGAP
guidelines have the potential to facilitate a substantial reduction in the epilepsy treatment gap and improve the quality of epilepsy care in resource-limited settings.
more
This report provides a synthesis of some of the most recent, high-quality literature on the security and political processes in Central African Republic produced up to the end of January 2016. It was prepared for the European Union’s Instrument Contributing to Stability and Peace, © European Unio...n 2016. The views expressed in this report are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of GSDRC, its partner agencies or the European Commission. This is the second review published by GSDRC on the situation in the Central African Republic. The first review of literature was published in June 2013 and provides a country analysis covering the period 2003-2013. It is available at: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/car_gsdrc2013.pdf.
more
Stenotrophomonas maltophiliais a nonfermenting Gram-negative rod that is ubiquitous in nature (predominantly occurring in aquatic environments and on plants). Biochemically, it iscatalase positive and oxidase negative, and it produces acid frommaltose (hence the name“maltophilia”). Due to it...s chargedcell wall surface and biofilm production, it may attach to and survive on abiotic surfaces in clinical settings (eg, central venouscatheters, disinfectant and hand-washing solutions, solutions for hemodialysis, endoscopes, inspiration/expiration circuits of ventilators, nebulizers, tap water, and showerheads).
Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology Volume 6: 1-9ªThe Author(s) 2019
more
The Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library is collecting COVID-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) research articles and compiling them into an easily accessible and downloadable database to help researchers find the latest COVID-19 research
This database is updated every day, Monday through Friday, by systematica...lly searching various bibliographic databases and hand searching selected grey literature sources including preprints from bioRxiv, medRxiv, chemRxiv, and SSRN. The methodology is posted on the website.
You can search the database of citations by author, keyword (in title, author, abstract, subject headings fields), journal, or abstract when available. DOI, PMID, and URL links are included when available.
more
It is often observed that educated women have lower birth rates than do the less educated, inviting a causal interpretation. However, educated women also differ from those who have never attended school in a
variety of other ways: the two factors are multiply related. This article analyzes the rela...tionship between schooling and fertility in contemporary Cameroon as both a statistical and a social phenomenon, using data from the 1998 Cameroon DHS alongside ethnographic field data collected by
the author. T
more
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(12), 2626; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15122626
Climate change is increasing risks to human health and to the health systems that seek to protect the safety and well-being of populations. Health authorities require information about current associatio...ns between health outcomes and weather or climate, vulnerable populations, projections of future risks and adaptation opportunities in order to reduce exposures, empower individuals to take needed protective actions and build climate-resilient health systems. An increasing number of health authorities from local to national levels seek this information by conducting climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments. While assessments can provide valuable information to plan for climate change impacts, the results of many studies are not helping to build the global evidence-base of knowledge in this area. They are also often not integrated into adaptation decision making, sometimes because the health sector is not involved in climate change policy making processes at the national level. Significant barriers related to data accessibility, a limited number of climate and health models, uncertainty in climate projections, and a lack of funding and expertise, particularly in developing countries, challenge health authority efforts to conduct rigorous assessments and apply the findings. This paper examines the evolution of climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments, including guidance developed for such projects, the number of assessments that have been conducted globally and implementation of the findings to support health adaptation action. Greater capacity building that facilitates assessments from local to national scales will support collaborative efforts to protect health from current climate hazards and future climate change. Health sector officials will benefit from additional resources and partnership opportunities to ensure that evidence about climate change impacts on health is effectively translated into needed actions to build health resilience.
more
In spite of the work carried out by the EU institutions, the Member States, many cities and grassroot movements in Europe, the general public is still not engaging enough in air quality policy initiatives and the level of awareness and knowledge of the effects of poor air quality on health is often ...low.
HEAL, within its work with the EU urban air quality partnership has put together a toolkit on ‘Communicating on air quality and health – Inspiring practices, challenges and tips’, providing hands-on examples of how communication on air quality, the health links and (policy and behavioural) changes takes place, as an inspiration particularly for urban authorities wanting to communicate on clean air.
The Partnership on Air Quality was founded in 2016 with the main objective of improving air quality in cities and bringing the ‘healthy city’ higher on the local, national and EU agendas as part of the urban agenda.
more
The article from The Lancet Global Health discusses the "silent epidemic" of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Africa, emphasizing its status as an under-recognized yet significant health issue. Although COPD is the third leading cause of death globally, it remains largely overlooked i...n African countries. The article highlights studies indicating varying prevalence rates of COPD across sub-Saharan Africa, with major risk factors including tobacco smoking and biomass smoke exposure. The findings suggest that COPD in Africa often affects younger age groups (30–40 years), likely due to early exposure to biomass smoke. The author calls for better education and training for healthcare providers and urges policymakers to address COPD through improved surveillance and effective prevention and treatment strategies.
more