scholarly journals The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2 (WHODAS 2.0): remarks on the need to revise the WHODAS

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamyr Castro ◽  
Camila Ferreira Leite ◽  
Michaela Coenen ◽  
Cassia Maria Buchalla

Functioning and disability are concepts in increasing use in clinical settings and in public health. From the public health perspective, the use of functioning as a third health indicator could show more than the frequency of a disease and its death rates, offering information on how the population performs its activities and participation. Clinically, the functioning assessment can provide information for patient-centered health care and specific clinical interventions according to their functioning profile. WHODAS 2.0 is a generic tool to assess health and functioning according to the ICF functioning model. It is an alternative to assess functioning in a less time-consuming way, whereas the duration of the application is one of the main ICF critiques. This paper aims to present some of WHODAS 2.0 inconsistencies and weaknesses as well as strategies to cope with them. In this paper, we present some weaknesses related to the WHODAS layout; wording and scoring process. Some suggestions for strategies to correct these weaknesses are presented, as well.

Author(s):  
Dumilah Ayuningtyas ◽  
Misnaniarti Misnaniarti ◽  
Siti Khodijah Parinduri ◽  
Fitria Aryani Susanti ◽  
Ni Nyoman Dwi Sutrisnawati ◽  
...  

Abstract. World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Coronavirus 2019-2020 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Local transmission of this disease occurs in almost every country around the world. Likewise, in Indonesia, Covid-19 cases have spread to all 34 provinces. This study aims to analyze the local initiative in handling Covid-19 based on the public health perspective in Indonesia. It is based on time, the form of activity, the type of response, and the contribution of local initiatives. This study used secondary data from various media sources and articles on the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia and community assistance as the keywords. The study used 31 news found in media sources from 34 provinces in Indonesia. Handling Covid-19 has become a concern for the government and the public. The government is implementing physical distancing as a way to handle Coronavirus. For the local community, it is in the form of local initiatives by educating the community, fulfilling PPE, supporting infrastructure facilities, crowdfunding carried out personally or in groups, and doing prevention by wearing masks and doing self-quarantine. Various elements of society have played a role and participated in the movement to eradicate the Coronavirus. Cross-sectoral coordination needs to be intensified for the implementation of comprehensive efforts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick M Burkle ◽  
Christopher M Burkle

AbstractLiberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea lack the public health infrastructure, economic stability, and overall governance to stem the spread of Ebola. Even with robust outside assistance, the epidemiological data have not improved. Vital resource management is haphazard and left to the discretion of individual Ebola treatment units. Only recently has the International Health Regulations (IHR) and World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, making this crisis their fifth ongoing level 3 emergency. In particular, the WHO has been severely compromised by post-2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) staffing, budget cuts, a weakened IHR treaty, and no unambiguous legal mandate. Population-based triage management under a central authority is indicated to control the transmission and ensure fair and decisive resource allocation across all triage categories. The shared responsibilities critical to global health solutions must be realized and the rightful attention, sustained resources, and properly placed legal authority be assured within the WHO, the IHR, and the vulnerable nations. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2014;0:1-6)


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Guo ◽  
G. Quan

Healthy China 2030 aims to reduce the adult smoking rate from 27.7% in 2015 to 20% by 2030. Achieving this goal requires a review of the tobacco control measures introduced in China to date, the gaps that remain and the opportunities ahead. In 2008, the World Health Organization introduced six measures to reduce demand for tobacco called MPOWER. The progress China has made in implementing these measure varies: 1) monitor tobacco use and prevention policies. The surveillance on tobacco use has been rigorous, but the monitoring and evaluation of tobacco control policies needs to be strengthened; 2) protect people from tobacco use: pushes for national tobacco control legislation have stalled, but 18 subnational legislations have passed; 3) offer help to quit tobacco use. The accessibility and quality of cessation services needs to be improved; 4) warn about the dangers of tobacco. While there are no pictorial health warnings, tobacco control advocates have launched a series of anti-smoking media campaigns to inform the public; 5) enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. Legal loopholes and poor enforcement remain challenges; 6) raise taxes on tobacco: cigarettes in China are relatively cheap and increasingly affordable, which demonstrates the need for further tobacco tax increases indexed to inflation and income. China maintains a tobacco monopoly that interferes with tobacco control efforts and fails to regulate tobacco products from the public health perspective. Effective MPOWER measures, which depend upon the removal of tobacco industry interference from policymaking, are key to achieving the goal set by Healthy China 2030.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
R Singh ◽  
K Sharma

Abstract Background World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and characterized the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. India enacted such measures early on for effective mitigation and suppression to reduce community transmission, including an onerous national lockdown. The impact of the health system governance is quite apparent among all stakeholders including the public in such emergency contexts. Methods We compiled the daily data on the number of COVID-19 cases, recoveries and deaths from January 30th until June 16th, 2020. Different stages were categorized from post PHEIC declaration (pre-lockdown) phase to lockdown phases and unlocking phase as implemented. The several measures adopted by the national government were structured in four broad categories as Governance and socioeconomic, travel restrictions, lockdown and public health measures. These measures were compared during each phase. Results It was revealed that while the cases are rising the phased restrictions has helped in delaying the peak and remarkably interrupted the rate of transmission. The national average doubling rate was 3 days at the beginning which improved to 22 days. The basic reproduction number remained close to 1 during the last week of lockdown. However, the initial interruption of needed aid and technical support had negative social and economic impacts on the affected population. Conclusions As the situation abates following the measures adopted by the government, an articulate strategy of unlocking through increased testing and prompt isolation needs to be developed for more effective reduction and protecting the livelihoods allowing to further relax the lockdown measures. Key messages There is need for the local government to consider a strategic easing of the lockdown for protecting the rights of the most affected population. As the transmission rates are low, the easing of lockdown can be benefited from improved testing and prompt isolation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-30
Author(s):  
Muhammad Habibi ◽  
Adri Priadana ◽  
Muhammad Rifqi Ma’arif

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in more than six million confirmed cases and more than 371,000 deaths globally on June 1, 2020. The incident sparked a flood of scientific research to help society deal with the virus, both inside and outside the medical domain. Research related to public health analysis and public conversations about the spread of COVID-19 on social media is one of the highlights of researchers in the world. People can analyze information from social media as supporting data about public health. Analyzing public conversations will help the relevant authorities understand public opinion and information gaps between them and the public, helping them develop appropriate emergency response strategies to address existing problems in the community during the pandemic and provide information on the population's emotions in different contexts. However, research related to the analysis of public health and public conversations was so far conducted only through supervised analysis of textual data. In this study, we aim to analyze specifically the sentiment and topic modeling of Indonesian public conversations about the COVID-19 on Twitter using the NLP technique. We applied some methods to analyze the sentiment to obtain the best classification method. In this study, the topic modeling was carried out unsupervised using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The results of this study reveal that the most frequently discussed topic related to the COVID-19 pandemic is economic issues.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0250872
Author(s):  
Nirosha Elsem Varghese ◽  
Iryna Sabat ◽  
Sebastian Neumann-Böhme ◽  
Jonas Schreyögg ◽  
Tom Stargardt ◽  
...  

Background Risk communication is a key component of public health interventions during an outbreak. As the coronavirus pandemic unfolded in late 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was at the forefront in the development of risk communication strategies. The WHO introduced a range of activities with the purpose of enabling the public to avail verified and timely information on COVID-19 prevention behaviors. Given the various WHO activities to protect the public health during COVID-19, it is important to investigate the extent of familiarity and uptake of the WHO recommendations among the public during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods To do this, we conducted a large-scale Pan-European survey covering around 7500 individuals that are representative of populations from seven European countries, collected online during April 2-April 15, 2020. We use descriptive statistics including proportions and correlations and graphical representations such as bar charts to analyze and display the data. Results Our findings suggest that information from the WHO in the context of COVID-19 is well trusted and acted upon by the public. Overall familiarity and adherence were quite high in most countries. Adherence was higher for social distancing recommendations compared to hygiene measures. Familiarity and adherence were higher among older, female, and highly educated respondents. However, country level heterogeneities were observed in the level of trust in information from the WHO, with countries severely affected by the pandemic reporting lower levels of trust. Conclusion Our findings call for efforts from health authorities to get regular feedback from the public on their familiarity and compliance with recommendations for preventive measures at all stages of the pandemic, to further develop and adapt risk communication as the pandemic evolves.


2019 ◽  

En la presente publicación se formulan orientaciones sobre la respuesta de salud pública a la farmacorresistencia del VIH (FRVIH) a inhibidores no nucleosídicos de la retrotranscriptasa (INNRT), previa al tratamiento, en personas con exposición previa a los fármacos antirretrovirales (ARV) o sin antecedente de esta exposición que inician o reinician un tratamiento antirretroviral (TAR) de primera línea. El documento aporta además el consenso alcanzado sobre la prevalencia o el umbral de FRVIH a INNRT previa al tratamiento a partir de los cuales se deben tomar medidas específicas de salud pública. La presente publicación constituye un suplemento al capítulo 4 de las Directrices unificadas sobre el uso de los antirretrovirales para el tratamiento y la prevención de la infección por el VIH (directrices unificadas de la OMS del 2016 sobre el uso de los ARV)… En la presente revisión se observó además que la FRVIH a INNRT previa al tratamiento era mucho más frecuente en las personas que iniciaban TAR de primera línea y que tenían un antecedente de exposición a fármacos ARV (como las mujeres expuestas durante la PTMI y las personas que reanudaban el TAR después de un período de interrupción) en comparación con las personas que iniciaban el TAR y que nunca habían estado expuestas a los ARV, en todas las regiones de la OMS. En las siete encuestas representativas a escala nacional sobre la FRVIH previa al tratamiento en África, América del Sur y Asia en las que se daba seguimiento a la resistencia en estos dos grupos se obtuvieron resultados similares. En todas las encuestas nacionales de la OMS sobre la FRVIH previa al tratamiento, la resistencia a INNRT fue notablemente mayor en las personas que iniciaban el TAR y que habían tenido una exposición previa al TAR (22%), que en las personas que nunca habían recibido fármacos ARV (8%) (p <0,0001)… Versión oficial en español de la obra original en inglés: Guidelines on the public health response to pretreatment HIV drug resistance: July 2017. © World Health Organization 2017. ISBN: 978-92-4-155005-5.


2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Watson ◽  
M Zambon

A meeting of influenza experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva this week has considered the recent isolation of a new subtype of the influenza A virus, A(H1N2) (1). The meeting was held to review the global influenza situation and decide the composition for the influenza vaccine for the northern hemisphere for winter 2002/03, and was based on information from the WHO global influenza surveillance programme and the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) surveillance of influenza in England and Wales.


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