The GHS Index is intended to be a key resource in the face of increasing risks of high-consequence and globally catastrophic biological events and in light of major gaps in international financing f...or preparedness. These risks are magnified by a rapidly changing and interconnected world; increasing political instability; urbanization; climate change; and rapid technology advances that make it easier, cheaper, and faster to create and engineer pathogens.
Key findings from the study of 195 countries:
• Out of a possible 100 points, the average GHS Index score across 195 countries was 40.2.
• The majority of high- and middle-income countries do not score above 50.
• Action is urgently needed to improve countries’ readiness for high-consequence infectious disease outbreaks.
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Addendum: 2020 mid-year COVID-19 resvision, summary of the reprioritisation & additional requirements in response to COVID-19
In June and July 2020, a mid-year revision of the 2020 South Sudan Re...gional Refugee Response Plan (RRRP) was undertaken as an inter-agency consultative process to discuss and document the reprioritization of activities and corresponding budgets for the rest of the year, taking into account the impacts of COVID-19 and other developments.
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Paying for performance (P4P) provides financial incentives for providers to increase the use and quality of care. P4P can affect health care by providing incentives for providers to put more effort into specific activities, and by increasing ...lass="attribute-to-highlight medbox">the amount of resources available to finance the delivery of services. This paper evaluates the impact of P4P on the use and quality of prenatal, institutional delivery, and child preventive care using data produced from a prospective quasi-experimental evaluation nested into the national rollout of P4P in Rwanda. Treatment facilities were enrolled in the P4P scheme in 2006 and comparison facilities were enrolled two years later. The incentive effect is isolated from the resource effect by increasing comparison facilities’ input-based budgets by the average P4P payments to the treatment facilities. The data were collected from 166 facilities and a random sample of 2158 households. P4P had a large and significant positive impact on institutional deliveries and preventive care visits by young children, and improved quality of prenatal care. The authors find no effect on the number of prenatal care visits or on immunization rates. P4P had the greatest effect on those services that had the highest payment rates and needed the lowest provider effort. P4P financial performance incentives can improve both the use of and the quality of health services. Because the analysis isolates the incentive effect from the resource effect in P4P, the results indicate that an equal amount of financial resources without the incentives would not have achieved the same gain in outcomes.
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Lancet Planet Health 2022;6: e760–68
The emergence of COVID-19 has drawn the attention of health researchers sharply back to the role that food ...systems can play in generating human disease burden. But emerging pandemic threats are just one dimension of the complex relationship between agriculture and infectious disease, which is evolving rapidly, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) that are undergoing rapid food system transformation. This changing relationship is examined through four current disease issues.
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Child sex trafficking is a severe form of trauma exposure that has significant immediate and long-term consequences for survivors. According to the United Nations International Labor Organization, in 2016 more than 1 million children worldwide were ...victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Currently, no reliable estimate of the prevalence of child sex trafficking in the US exists, in part due to its hidden nature, disparities in definitions, and methodological challenges.
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Music therapy can help traumatized children and adults to stabilize and to create a safe space for the expression of feelings and thoughts. In a 1 day international symposium on Friday May 26, presenting lectures and workshops, we’ll highlight ...an class="attribute-to-highlight medbox">the way music therapy research, methods and techniques are applied to treating childhood trauma and sexual abuse, traumatized refugees, prisoners and victims of violence.
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Water security, or having the right amount and quality of water in the right place at the right time, fosters social and economic progress. Where w...ater is sufficient to meet demand, it can promote economy wide growth and enable countries to reach their food security, energy security, and human development goals. Where it is scarce, excessive, or unclean it can exacerbate multiple dimensions of poverty. Neither of these two worlds is protected from future water crises, which are heavily influenced by changing local circumstances
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The purpose of the handbook is to provide those involved in nutrition coordination with relevant tools, guidance, information and resources to support their roles in facilitating predictable, coordi...nated and effective preparation for, and responses to, nutrition needs in humanitarian emergencies. Rather than being prescriptive, the handbook aims to raises key issues encountered to date.
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Now entering its ninth year, the crisis in north-east Nigeria has created vulnerabilities and humanitarian concerns. An estimated 7.7 million men, women, boys and girls are in acute need of protection and assistance. While ...highlight medbox">the humanitarian community has provided life-saving assistance to over 5.6 million affected people in 2017 and helped stabilise living conditions for millions of people, reducing mortality and morbidity, significant humanitarian needs still remain.
The Humanitarian Response Plan at a glance:
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE 1
Provide life-saving emergency assistance to the most vulnerable people in conflict-affected areas ensuring that assistance is timely and appropriate and meets relevant technical standards.
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE 2
Ensure that all assistance promotes the protection, safety and dignity of affected people, and is provided equitably to women, girls, men and boys.
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE 3
Foster resilience and early recovery, and strengthen the humanitarian development nexus by working towards collective outcomes.
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Every day, health-care providers are being attacked, patients discriminated against, ambulances held up at checkpoints, hospitals bombed, medical supplies looted and entire communities cut off from critical services around the world.
Between Ja...nuary 2012 and December 2014, the ICRC documented nearly 2,400 violent incidents against health care in 11 countries experiencing armed conflict or other violence. In over 90% of cases, local health-care providers were affected, seriously threatening the effectiveness and sustainability of national health-care systems. These numbers might well just be the tip of the iceberg
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