World health statistics quarterly. Rapport trimestriel de statistiques sanitaires mondiales
-
This paper presents the results of a working group on partnerships in preparation for the WHO Health for All Policy for the 21st Century. The working group aimed to clarify the nature of partnerships for health, proposed six categories of partnerships and outlined principles and criteria for partnerships. It concluded that partnership building was a key strategic component of health development and underlined that WHO must increasingly see its role as one of mustering support for health from many players. In order to do so, WHO must change its organizational culture and mode of operation.
-
The rule of law consists of one of the key requirements to implement policy reforms. The new global health policy, "Health for All in the 21st Century", indicates the role of public health law to attain its values and objectives. ⋯ Thus, this article concludes that the Organization should adopt international legal instruments and that it should, simultaneously, assist Member States to build institutional and human capacity in public health law. However, these initiatives require that all Member States confirm political determination to link economic and social reforms with legislative reforms.
-
Food safety is a complex matter that depends on a number of interrelated environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic factors. The purpose of epidemiology and surveillance is to define these factors, how they interact, and their relative importance in foodborne infections. The tools epidemiologists use to study foodborne disease include surveillance of specific infections in humans, monitoring of contamination with specific pathogens in foods and animals, intensive outbreak investigations, collecting reports of outbreaks at the regional or national level, and studies of sporadic infections. With sufficiently elaborate systems of surveillance and investigation, it is possible to provide quantitative risk data for foodborne diseases that will permit the wisest allocation of food safety resources.
-
Substantial progress towards the global eradication of poliomyelitis by the year 2000 has been achieved since May 1988 when WHO Member States adopted this goal at the Forty-first World Health Assembly. Virtually all polio-endemic countries have begun to implement the WHO-recommended strategies to eradicate polio and it is expected that, by the end of 1997, all endemic countries in the world will have conducted full National Immunization Days (NID), providing supplemental oral polio vaccine (OPV) to nearly two-thirds of all children < 5 years. In contrast, although globally acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance was being conducted in 126 (86%) of 146 countries where polio is or recently was endemic, surveillance remains incomplete and untimely. ⋯ This is of particular relevance in the remaining polio-endemic countries, especially in those that are affected by war or politically isolated and are important remaining reservoirs from where wild poliovirus continues to spread into bordering or even distant polio-free countries. External support will continue to be required by those countries and regions where the incidence of polio has reached low levels to ensure that final chains of poliovirus transmission are interrupted and to permit the eventual certification of eradication. The year 2000 objective for achieving poliomyelitis eradication remains a feasible target.
-
World Health Stat Q · Jan 1996
Women and AIDS in south and South-East Asia: the challenge and the response.
South and South-East Asia are at the centre of the most aggressive advances of the AIDS epidemic today. The challenge this presents to the region is clear. While reported absolute numbers still lag behind the African region (11,160,900 in Africa; 3,081,235 in Asia) knowledgeable observers agree that the place of infection and potential devastation in this region exceed what we have seen in Africa. ⋯ Because of women's multiple roles in the epidemic-potential "infectee", care-giver, transmitter of infection-if we are to be successful in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS we must give particular attention to reaching, working with, and serving women. Meeting this challenge requires involvement of men as well as women, individuals and institutions, governments and NGOs, in four broad areas of activity: (i) HIV/AIDS education and information; (ii) basic education and economic activity to reduce gender inequities; (iii) improvements in policy and social environments; and (iv) provision of health and other services. Lack of commitment, skill, or persistence in meeting the challenge will cost lives across Asia.