Around the world, approximately 1 in 45 children are on the move – nearly 50 million boys and girls that have migrated across borders or been forcibly displaced within their own countries.1 Climate-related events
and their impacts are already contributing significantly to these staggering numbers...,with 14.7 million people facing new internal displacement as a result of weather-related disasters in 2015 alone. The annual average
since 2008 is higher still, at 21.5 million, equivalent to almost 2,500 people being displaced every single day.2
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Version 4
The purpose of these standard operating procedures (SOPs) is to offer policy guidance and to provide performance standards on how to respond to any type of poliovirus outbreak or event in a timely and effective manner, and specifically, to stop an outbrea...k within 120 days.
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Bull World Health Organ 2018;96:450–461 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.17.206466
The aim of our study was to determine whether an intervention designed
to involve the male partners of pregnant women in Burkina Faso in facility-based maternity care influences care-seeking and healthy practi...ces after childbirth.
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The WHO End TB Strategy aims to end the global TB epidemic by 2030, in alignment with Goal 3 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN committed to ending the TB epidemic through adoption of WHO’s End TB Strateg...y and the UN SDGs in 2014 and 2015, respectivel
Almost half of the deaths worldwide caused by TB in 2019 occurred in the WHO South-East Asia Region, home to around a quarter of the global population. Maintaining robust progress in this Region is therefore essential if the global goal of ending the TB epidemic is to be realized. Despite substantial gains made in the Region, the threat to
health worldwide posed by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to reverse these gains and eclipse the focus on the global TB emergency.
While continuing to tackle COVID-19-related challenges, countries will need to rapidly and urgently deploy supplementary measures to address the large numbers of missed cases, poor treatment outcomes and, potentially, a higher TB burden.
The Regional Strategic Plan towards Ending TB in the Region 2021–2025 clearly articulates priority interventions, analyses the challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities, and focuses on implementation considerations in the Region.
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With an FGM prevalence of 75.8% among women aged 15-491, Burkina Faso is classified by UNICEF2 as a ‘moderately high prevalence’ country.
FGM is practised across all regions, ethnic groups and religions in Burkina Faso. There are distinct regional variations; FGM prevalence ranges from 54.8%... in the Centre-West to 89.5% in the Centre-East. Two-thirds of the population of Burkina Faso live in rural areas, and nearly 10% more women aged 15-49 have had FGM in rural areas (78.4%) than in urban areas (68.7%). Prevalence in the capital, Ouagadougou, is 64.8%.3
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A guide to facilitating community-managed disaster risk reduction in the Horn of Africa.
This manual describes how to help communities implement disaster risk reduction activities. It was written for development workers and community-based organizations in the Horn of Africa, but practitioners can ...use it to implement activities around the world
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FIELD GUIDE for staff at the central, intermediate and peripheral level
The strategic plan reflects shared commitments to enhance collaboration between environmental, animal (wildlife and domestic) and human health, and building new One Health workforce capacity through higher institutions of learning. The strategy also outlines interventions to be undertaken by governm...ent institutions and other partners to enhance existing structures and pool together additional resources to prevent and control zoonotic diseases and other events of public health importance. Successful implementation of the strategy will contribute to the realization of vision 2020 by improving public health, food safety and security, and hence significantly improve the socioeconomic status of the people of Rwanda. It is in this regard that we call upon implementing institutions, bilateral and multilateral partners, civil society and the private sector to join us in implementing the One Health strategy in Rwanda.
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In recent years, Rwanda has been on the fast track to achieve major health improvements for its entire population. With the support of government agencies and various non-governmental partners, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has endeavored to decentralize Rwanda’s health system and bring health serv...ices closer to the people. Guided by multitude of national and international development frameworks, Rwanda’s healthcare successes include the establishment of a community health insurance scheme (mutuelle de santé), a system of cooperative-financed community health workers in every village, and interventions for researching, preventing, and treating diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria.
As the MoH continues to design innovative means to reach and surpass its prescribed health outcome targets, it will hold as core principles the integration of service provision, the increase in healthcare capacity, and the attainment of sustainable funding sources. Rwanda is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and has declared Family Planning (FP) a national priority for poverty reduction and socioeconomic development of the country. Modern contraceptive use has more than quadrupled from 2005 to 2010, rising from 10% to 45%, but the government’s Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy calls for an increase the modern contraceptive prevalence to 70% by 2016. While structural changes in health care and supply chains have led to noteworthy improvements in FP and other services, there are still many challenges that must be overcome. As such, a strategic plan is needed to coordinate FP efforts around a well-defined set of objectives and responsibilities.
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The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste has the highest TB incidence rate in the South East Asian Region - 498 per 100,000, which is the seventh highest in the world. In Timor-Leste TB is the eighth most common cause of death.
The salient observations are as follows:
In 2018, 487 (12.5%) of the... 3906 notified TB patients were tested for RR-TB and only 12 lab confirmed RR-TB patients were initiated on standard MDR-TB treatment of 20-months duration, (a 3-fold increase in RR-TB detection compared with 2017). This amounts to treatment coverage of only 17% of 72 estimated MDR/RR-TB among notified TB patients (3906) and 5% of 240 estimated incident MDR-TB patients as compared to 62% treatment coverage of 6300 incident drug sensitive TB patients estimated in TLS. The treatment success in the 2016 annual cohort of 6 MDR-TB patients has been reported at 83%. 80% of TB patients know their HIV Status with around 1% TB-HIV co-infection, 37/ 77 (48%) TB-HIV Co-infection Detected. Of the 387 PLHIV currently alive on ART, exact status on TB screening and testing is unknown. % of PLHIV newly enrolled in HIV care who received IPT is not known.
In 2018, the mortality rate for TB was 94 deaths per 100,000 people (1200 per annum) in TL with an increasing mortality trend (Figure 1), despite TB services being available for nearly two decades.
A survey of catastrophic costs due to TB (2016) highlights that 83% of TB patients are reported to be facing catastrophic costs due to the disease. This is the highest rate in the world.
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A lack of knowledge about the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases, risks and benefits of vaccines, mistrust of government and health workers, poor service delivery and alternative health or religious beliefs play a role in lower uptake of some vaccines. These challenges underscore the importance ...of early integration and investment in a thoughtful communication plan for immunization programmes. This World Health Organization (WHO) report presents communication guidance and specific considerations for countries that plan to introduce human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into their national immunisation programme as part of an effort to prevent cervical cancer.
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This report details the nutrition situation in Namibia. It provides information on what needs to be done! The situation calls for a consorted action. Nutrition is everyone’s business.The establishment of the National Alliance for Improved Nutrition (NAFIN) is a positive response to this urgency. N...AFIN is a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder association, not for gain.
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The State of the World’s Children 2013: Children with Disabilities examines the barriers – from inaccessible buildings to dismissive attitudes, from invisibility in official statistics to vicious discrimination – that deprive children with disabilities of their rights and keep them from partic...ipating fully in society. The report also lays out some of the key elements of inclusive societies that respect and protect the rights of all children, regardless of disability, and progress in helping all children to flourish and make their contribution to the world.
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For the Fiscal Year 2014-2015, the Health Sector continued to implement interventions and strategies meant to improve the availability, accessibility and utilization of quality healthcare services across public and private health facilities; and to ensure the reduction of the burden of communicable ...and non-communicable diseases in Rwanda. This annual report highlights key achievements registered by the health sector during the Fiscal Year 2014-2015. Achievements are highlighted under three big components: Health Programs, Health Systems Support and Budget Execution.
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In 2014, GHS/NACP, with support from UNICEF and other partners, conducted a situation analysis on paediatric HIV care and treatment in Ghana. The purpose of this analysis was to identify the gaps within the current delivery of paediatric HIV care and support system and develop a road map for effecti...ve implementation of Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and to increase paediatric antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage. The analysis identified gaps such as lack of task shifting on ART services, low paediatric ART coverage, and poor linkage of ART, EID, and PMTCT services with other RCH - immunization and nutrition services.
In view of the findings of the analysis, it was recommended that an Acceleration Plan for Paediatric HIV Services be developed to address the barriers and bottlenecks identified during the assessment. At the current pace of paediatric HIV Services, it can be extrapolated that paediatric ART coverage will increase from 26% to only about 40% by 2020; Ghana will, therefore, fall short of the global target of 90-90-90 (UNAIDS concept).
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This research report provides results from the study on living conditions
among people with disabilities in Malawi. Comparisons are made between
individuals with and without disabilities and also between households with and without a disabled family member. Results obtained in Malawi are also comp...ared those obtained in earlier studies carried out in Namibia and Zimbabwe. The Malawian study was undertaken in 2003.
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Suicides take a high toll. Over 800 000 people die by suicide every year and it is the second leading cause of
death in 15-29-year-olds. Most suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries where resources
and services, if they do exist, are often scarce and limited for early identification, tr...eatment and support of
people in need. These striking facts and the lack of implemented timely interventions make suicide a serious
global public health problem that needs to be tackled urgently.
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Continuing a worrying decade-long rising trend, the number of people forced to flee due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order climbed to 89.3 million by the end of 2021. This is more than double the 42.7 million people who remained f...orcibly displaced at the end of 2012 and represents a sharp 8 per cent increase of almost 7 million people in the span of just 12 months. As a result, above one per cent of the world’s population – or 1 in 88 people – were forcibly displaced at the end of 2021. This compares with 1 in 167 at the end of 2012. During 2021, some 1.7 million people crossed international borders seeking protection and 14.4 million new displacements within their countries were reported. This is a dramatic increase from the combined 11.2 million a year earlier.
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Despite Pakistan's progress in reducing the number of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases to 8 in 2017 and 12 in 2018, 2019 has seen a significant rise in the number of WPV1 cases (41 cases as of July 8 2019). One of the most intractable challenges the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) is ...facing is refusals by parents and caregivers to immunise their children with the polio vaccine. In light of this challenge, the Pakistan programme has revisited its strategy and put forward this Extension of the National Emergency Action Plan 2018/2019 (NEAP), which will carry the programme forward from July to December 2019
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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 care in the 21st century: towards universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, is a whole-of-government and whole-of-society a...pproach 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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