Publications

A priority for Youth LEAD in 2019 was creating a strong organisational foundation between youth network partners, which led to the development of the Organizational Development and Change manual. The manual will be finalised and rolled out later in 2020. Similarly, the Legal Advocacy Toolkit, TeenGen and NewGen training was carried out in various countries, and more importantly, The YKP Small Grants Programme supported eleven YKP-led organisations in nine countries across Asia and the Pacific.

Youth LEAD, the Asia Pacific Network of Young Key Populations, is one of the recipients of the Global Fund- CRG Strategic Initiative long-term capacity development grant. Within the grant, various YKP-led networks and organizations are supported to meaningfully engage in the GF funding request development process. Youth LEAD Mongolia (YLM) is one of the grantees to have received that support.

The 2020 progress report is the first progress report of the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All initiative and covers the first eight months of implementation since its launch at the UN General Assembly in September 2019. In the early implementation phase, the signatory agencies have moved from the four key commitments made in the GAP – Engage, Accelerate, Align, Account – to action, and are beginning to lay the groundwork for sustainable impact and demonstrate progress. Building on existing collaborations, the agencies are also committed to leveraging the GAP to fill gaps in and add value to existing global, regional and national coordination mechanisms in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major yet preventable global health problem, with an estimated 10 million people developing TB and 1.5 million people dying every year worldwide, making it the leading infectious disease cause of death worldwide. One quarter of the global population is estimated to be infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Treatment of TB infection, also known as TB preventive treatment (TPT), aims to prevent the development of TB disease, and is one of the critical components to achieve the ambitious targets of the WHO End TB Strategy. At the United Nations High-level Meeting on TB in 2018, countries committed to provide TPT to at least 30 million people in 2018-2022.

TB remains the top infectious killer in the world claiming close to 4000 lives a day. Millions of people continue to fall ill with TB- a preventable and curable disease each year. The Global TB Report 2020 provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic, and progress in the response, at global, regional and country levels in the context of global commitments and strategies. The report features data on disease trends and the response to the epidemic in 198 countries and territories. This includes trends in TB incidence and mortality, data on case detection and treatment results for TB, multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), TB/HIV, TB prevention, universal health coverage as well as financing. Also included is an overview of pipelines for new TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.  

The UNAIDS Secretariat, as co-convener of the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate all Forms of HIV-related Stigma and Discrimination (Global Partnership), was tasked to develop this brief, based on consultations with its Technical Working Group (TWG), to provide evidence-informed guidance to countries on the intersection of stigma related to HIV and COVID-19 in national responses. 

This document is to urge the readers to understand the purpose, strengths and limitations of patient safety incident reporting. Data derived from incident reports can be very valuable in understanding the scale and nature of harm arising from health care, provided that the properties of the data are reviewed carefully and conclusions are drawn with caution. The use of incident reporting systems for true learning in order to achieve sustainable reductions in risk and improvements in patient safety is still work in progress. It can be and has been done, but not yet on the scale and with the speed that compares with some other high-risk industries. That is what we must all strive for. This technical guidance will help the journey to a position where we can show patients and their families how we used this learning to give them care that is safe and dependable, every time they need it.

This is a summary review of progress towards global TB targets, and in implementation of the political declaration of the UN High Level Meeting on TB declaration. Overall the report shows that high-level commitments and targets have galvanized global and national progress towards ending TB, but that urgent and more ambitious investments and actions are required to put the world on track to reach targets, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 in Asia-Pacific has added to the multitude of risks that the region faces intersecting with natural hazards, conflicts and fragility. More than any previous disaster, the novel coronavirus has exposed underlying risks and vulnerabilities and challenged the traditional notion of risk. The impact on population groups with pre-existing vulnerabilities has been particularly severe especially where the health crisis has turned into a humanitarian and economic crisis.

In January 2020, the United Nations launched a global consultation to mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. Through surveys and dialogues, people from all walks of life were asked about their hopes and fears for the future, their priorities for international cooperation and for the United Nations in particular. Since January 2020, over one million respondents from all UN Member States and Observer States have thus far taken part in the consultations, including through representative polling of 50,000 people in 50 countries. The results are presented in this report.