Publications

School health services (SHS), as defined in this guideline, are services provided by a health worker to students enrolled in primary or secondary education, either within school premises or in a health service situated outside the school. Most countries have some form of SHS, but many such programmes currently are not evidence-based, are not implemented well, are underfunded and/or are delivered with limited reach and scope. In all WHO regions, school-age children and adolescents (those aged 5–19 years) experience a range of largely preventable health problems, including unintentional injury, interpersonal violence, sexual and reproductive health issues, communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases and mental health issues.

The right to education and the right to health are core human rights and are essential for social and economic development. Now, more than ever, it is important to make all schools places that promote, protect and nurture health; that contribute to wellbeing, life skills, cognitive and socioemotional skills and healthy lifestyles in a safe learning environment. Such schools are more resilient and better able to ensure continuity in education and services, beyond the delivery of literacy and numeracy.

The General Assembly adopts the political declaration entitled “Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030” annexed to the present resolution.

Contact tracing is a key component of a public health response to infectious disease outbreaks. The purpose of this guidance is to reinforce the place of community engagement and participation in the contact tracing process. The guidance and related products articulate best practice principles for community engagement and how they can be operationalized as part of any community-centred contact tracing strategy. The material provided can stand on its own or be used to complement other documents that support strategies, implementation plans or training and capacity building modules.

In April 2019, WHO convened an expert scoping consultation in Geneva, Switzerland consisting of policy-makers, academics and partners from the HIV, noncommunicable diseases and mental health communities to discuss current evidence of chronic noncommunicable disease, the burden and risk among people living with HIV, review current norms and standards and ultimately to set priorities for technical areas and interventions for co-managing major non communicable diseases and mental health conditions among people living with HIV; and to inform the update of the 2016 WHO HIV consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection.

The handbook follows through the different tasks which policy-makers must reflect on and undertake when bringing in people’s voice into health policy-making. Examples include creating an enabling environment for participation, ensuring good representation, strengthening capacities, increasing policy-uptake of participatory process results, and sustaining participatory engagement over time. A fundamental premise of the handbook rests on the idea that policy-makers can leverage format and design elements of a participatory process to address power dynamics amongst participants, thereby fostering more meaningful contributions to the process.

Since its launch, GLASS has expanded in scope and coverage and as of May 2021, 109 countries and territories worldwide have enrolled in GLASS. A key new component in GLASS is the inclusion of antimicrobial consumption (AMC) surveillance at the national level highlighted in this fourth GLASS report. The fourth GLASS report summarizes the 2019 data reported to WHO in 2020. It includes data on AMC surveillance from 15 countries and AMR data on 3 106 602 laboratory-confirmed infections reported by 24 803 surveillance sites in 70 countries, compared to the 507 923 infections and 729 surveillance sites reporting to the first data call in 2017. The report also describes developments over the past years of GLASS and other AMR surveillance programmes led by WHO, including resistance to anti-human immunodeficiency virus and anti-tuberculosis medicines, antimalarial drug efficacy.

WHO has developed this interim guidance for countries and other stakeholders seeking validation of elimination of viral hepatitis as a public health problem, with a specific focus on hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). It provides a global framework for the processes and standards for validation of elimination, and overall proposes the use of absolute impact targets to validate elimination at the national level (instead of, although equivalent to, the relative reduction targets originally defined in the 2016 GHSS) in combination with a set of programmatic targets.

Four decades after the first cases of AIDS were reported, new data from UNAIDS show that dozens of countries achieved or exceed the 2020 targets set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2016—evidence that the targets were not just aspirational but achievable. The report shows that countries with progressive laws and policies and strong and inclusive health systems have had the best outcomes against HIV. In those countries, people living with and affected by HIV are more likely to have access to effective HIV services, including HIV testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis (medicine to prevent HIV), harm reduction, multimonth supplies of HIV treatment and consistent, quality follow-up and care.

This Fast-Track City Strategic Plan for Battambang is the first provincial/city-level HIV strategy developed in Cambodia. As a matter of principle, the Fast-Track strategy aimed to be in line with the priorities and targets set out by the National AIDS Authority (NAA) and the National Centre for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD (NCHADS), especially the 95-95-95 targets and the aim to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2025. These targets and priorities were then translated and adapted to the specific situation of Battambang Province in general, and to Battambang City in particular. This strategic plan will be useful guidance for the HIV response in Battambang, helping to ensure Battambang is reaching the 95-95-95 targets and ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2025 in line with RGC’s commitment.