Publications

UNAIDS has called on all countries to harness the next several years (until 2020) as a key window of opportunity for rapidly scaling up the HIV response in three main areas: HIV prevention, HIV testing and HIV treatment. This Fast-Track approach—endorsed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in the 2016 Political Declaration on Ending AIDS—requires maximizing existing tools in order to quicken the pace of progress to achieve specific targets and end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030. This document offers guidance on why and how efforts to Fast-Track HIV prevention, testing and treatment services can and should be grounded in human rights. Beyond being an imperative in themselves, human rights principles and approaches are critical to addressing barriers to HIV services and to achieving HIV targets. Human rights principles and approaches will help maximize the reach and impact of HIV prevention, testing and treatment programmes. They also will help address potential human rights challenges and prevent abuses that may occur in the context of urgent efforts to Fast-Track the achievement of HIV prevention, testing and treatment targets.

Over the past decade, extraordinary progress has been made in transforming the World Health Organization (WHO), bringing it into the 21st century and positioning it not only as the world’s public health agency, but as forward-looking and fit-for-purpose. By developing innovative leadership, managerial structures and systems, the changes that WHO has undergone have resulted in increased effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness, transparency and accountability. Above all, these reforms have been grounded in robust metrics to measure performance and have been integrated into organization-wide systems and processes. The Organization has evolved fundamentally while weathering some of the greatest health crises the modern world has seen. Anyone walking in the doors at WHO today finds an agency that is revitalized, ready for the challenges of this century, operating smoothly across its three levels – headquarters, regions and countries – and squarely engaged with partners and governments to tackle this era’s health challenges. This report tells the story of that transformation, from 2007 through to the current day.

This Annual Report outlines the activities of the Department of Health & Family Welfare and of schemes implemented over the year 2013-14. The obligation of the Government to ensure the highest possible health status of India's population and to ensure that all people have access to quality health care has been recognized by a number of key policy documents.  The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare is implementing various schemes, programmes and national initiatives to provide universal access to quality healthcare. The approach is to increase access to the decentralized public health system by establishing new infrastructure in deficient areas and by upgrading the infrastructure in the existing institutions.

The establishment of the ASEAN Business Coalition on HIV-AIDS (ASEAN-BCA) supports the building of a people-oriented ASEAN as called for in the ASEAN Charter, and implementation of the ASEAN Labour Ministers’ Work Programme 2010-2015. As the majority of people living with HIV in ASEAN Member States are of productive working age, this adversely gives impacts on the well-being of millions of workers and their families, and on the productivity of nations and their enterprises. Considering this, the business community, which is usually represented by employers’ associations, shares the responsibilities to prevent and protect their workers from HIV and AIDS-related problems and discrimination. In partnerships with stakeholders, the business community would be able to build networks and mobilise resources to prevent and control HIV and AIDS in the workplace with greater results. Against this backdrop, the ASEAN-BCA is developed.

Under the auspices of National Health Policy 2014, Nepal Health Sector Strategy (NHSS) 2016/17-2020/21 is the primary instrument to guide the health sector for the next five years. It adopts the vision and mission set forth by the National Health Policy and carries the ethos of Constitutional provision to guarantee universal access to basic health services. NHSS places health at the centre of overall socio-economic development. It guides the health sector’s response in realizing government’s vision to graduate Nepal from ‘Least Developed Country’ to ‘Middle Income Developing Country’ by 2022. Developed within the context of Sector Wide Approach (SWAp), it sees partnership as a cornerstone for health development in Nepal. The strategy was developed jointly by the government and its development partners and commit to align their efforts to NHSS priorities and are jointly accountable to achieve the results. NHSS also harnesses multi sectoral approach to address social determinants of health.

The Annual Health Bulletin 2017 is divided into three parts: part one includes State of the Nation’s Health; part two with Millennium Development Goals and National Health Indicator Estimates; and part three with tables and figures. Part one describes progress and challenges of the health system. Part two provides the status of health indicators. This publication is the culmination of monthly routine reports including morbidity, activity and Annual Household Survey report from various health centers in the country. The publication of an Annual Health Bulletin is aimed to make available the data both for policy directions and programmatic interventions. It also serves an important source of information for various stakeholders including various sectors, UN partners and non-government organizations.

In settings where laboratory testing has been traditionally organized by disease programme, the introduction of multidisease testing devices (also known as polyvalent testing platforms or multianalyte analysers) brings new opportunities for collaboration and integration, which can provide significant system efficiencies and cost savings, increase patient access, and ultimately improve quality of care. Collaboration and integration should be a priority for both those countries with currently operational multidisease testing devices and those countries considering and planning for their introduction. This information note provides a strategic overview of key implementation considerations for diagnostic integration using these devices, and is primarily intended for use by national laboratory services and TB, HIV, and hepatitis programme managers.

People who use and inject drugs are among the groups at highest risk of exposure to HIV, but remain marginalized and out of reach of health and social services. Evidence shows that harm reduction approaches such as needle-syringe programmes reduce the health, social and economic harms of drug use to individuals, communities and societies. They do not cause increases in drug use. UNAIDS is calling for the global adoption of a peoplecentred, public health and human rights-based approach to drug use and for alternatives to the criminalization and incarceration of people who use drugs.

Discrimination in health care settings is directed towards some of the most marginalized and stigmatized populations – the very populations that States promised to prioritize through the 2030 Agenda, and who are all too often excluded or left behind. Many individuals and groups face discrimination on the basis of their age, sex, race or ethnicity, health status, disability or vulnerability to ill health, sexual orientation or gender identity, nationality, asylum or migration status, or criminal record, often experiencing intersecting or compounding forms of discrimination. Discrimination affects both users of health care services and health care workers. It serves as a barrier to accessing health services, affects the quality of health services provided, and reinforces exclusion from society for both individuals and groups.

PEPFAR’s focus on gaining sustainable control of the HIV epidemic made possible the announcement of bold PEPFAR HIV prevention and treatment targets for 2017 and 2018 at the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the 2016 United Nations General Assembly. The focus on sustainable epidemic control began in 2014, when PEPFAR programs began pivoting to a data-driven approach that strategically targets geographic areas and populations where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent, and in which PEPFAR, in collaboration with host country governments, can achieve the greatest impact. With the focus of scaling HIV services in the highest disease burdened areas now being implemented, the streamlined Country Operational Plan (COP) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 focuses on impact and performance. For the first time, we have evidence that PEPFAR program implementation can change the course of the epidemic evidenced by the impact assessments recently completed in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. Controlling the HIV pandemic is possible.