GENEVA-All over the world, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing significant loss of life, disrupting livelihoods, and threatening the recent advances in health and progress towards global development goals highlighted in the 2020 World Health Statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO) today
“The good news is that people around the world are living longer and healthier lives. The bad news is the rate of progress is too slow to meet the SDGs and will be further thrown off track by COVID-19,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
“The pandemic highlights the urgent need for all countries to invest in strong health systems and primary health care, as the best defence against outbreaks like COVID-19, and against the many other health threats that people around the world face every day. Health systems and health security are two sides of the same coin.”
WHO’s World Health Statistics — an annual check-up on the world’s health — reports progress against a series of key health and health service indicators, revealing some important lessons in terms of the progress made towards the SDGs and gaps to fill.
Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased, but unequally.
The biggest gains were reported in low-income countries, which saw life expectancy rise 21% or 11 years between 2000 and 2016 (compared with an increase of 4% or 3 years in higher income countries).
One driver of progress in lower-income countries was improved access to services to prevent and treat HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as a number of neglected tropical diseases such as guinea worm. Another was better maternal and child healthcare, which led to a halving of child mortality between 2000 and 2018.
But in a number of areas, progress has been stalling. Immunization coverage has barely increased in recent years, and there are fears that malaria gains may be reversed. And there is an overall shortage of services within and outside the health system to prevent and treat NCDs such as cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease, and stroke. In 2016, 70 per cent of all deaths worldwide were attributable to NCDs, with the majority of deaths (85%) occurring in low and middle-income countries.
This uneven progress broadly mirrors inequalities in access to quality health services. Only between one third and one half the world’s population was able to obtain essential health services in 2017. Service coverage in low- and middle-income countries remains well below coverage in wealthier ones; as do health workforce densities. In more than 40% of all countries, there are fewer than 10 medical doctors per 10 000 people. Over 55% of countries have fewer than 40 nursing and midwifery personnel per 10 000 people.
The inability to pay for healthcare is another major challenge for many. On current trends, WHO estimates that this year, 2020, approximately 1 billion people (almost 13 per cent of the global population) will be spending at least 10% of their household budgets on health care. The majority of these people live in lower middle-income countries.
“The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to protect people from health emergencies, as well as to promote universal health coverage and healthier populations to keep people from needing health services through multisecotral interventions like improving basic hygiene and sanitation,” said Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director General at WHO.
In 2017, more than half (55%) of the global population was estimated to lack access to safely-managed sanitation services, and more than one quarter (29%) lacked safely-managed drinking water. In the same year, two in five households globally (40%) lacked basic handwashing facilities with soap and water in their home.
The World Health Statistics also highlight the need for stronger data and health information systems. Uneven capacities to collect and use accurate, timely, and comparable health statistics, undermining lower income countries’ ability to understand population health trends, develop appropriate policies, allocate resources and prioritize interventions.
For almost a fifth of countries, over half of the key indicators have no recent primary or direct underlying data, another major challenge in enabling countries to prepare for, prevent and respond to health emergencies such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. WHO is therefore supporting countries in strengthening surveillance and data and health information systems so they can measure their status and manage improvements.
“The message from this report is clear: as the world battles the most serious pandemic in 100 years, just a decade away from the SDG deadline, we must act together to strengthen primary health care and focus on the most vulnerable among us in order to eliminate the gross inequalities that dictate who lives a long, healthy life and who doesn’t,” added Asma. “We will only succeed in doing this by helping countries to improve their data and health information systems.”
Third World Network asks African civil society organisation to support its letter to the Chair WHO Expert Committee on Biologic Standardisation (EBCS) to revise the WHO biosimilar guidelines. The South African NCDs Alliance has signed. The content below is from TWN.
In 2014, WHA adopted the resolution on access to Access to biotherapeutic products including similar biotherapeutic products and ensuring their quality, safety and efficacy” (WHA 67.21).
It requests the Director-General: “to convene t). the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization to update the 2009 guidelines, taking into account the technological advances for the characterization of biotherapeutic products and considering national regulatory needs and capacities and to report on the update to the Executive Board”. However, till date, the Secretariat has not updated the SBP Guideline.
WHO states that after the adoption of the WHA resolution“In April 2015, an informal consultation was organized during which participants from NRAs of both developing and developed countries, as well as from industry, recognized and agreed that the evaluation principles described in the Guidelines were still valid, valuable and applicable in facilitating the harmonization of SBP regulatory requirements globally. It was therefore concluded that there was no need to revise the main body of the existing Guidelines“.
This is a problematic approach and legally wrong. The resolution is clear and it asked the DG to convene the meeting of WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization to update the Guideline and not to convene the meeting of Expert Committee on Biological Standardization to decide whether to update or not. Further, the decision of Member states cannot be overturned by the informal meeting of National Regulatory Meetings. Further WHO has not published any verbatim records or minutes of the 2015 informal meeting.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Tobacco addiction is a global epidemic that ravages entire countries and regions, wreaking the most havoc in the most vulnerable countries and creating an enormous toll of disability, disease, lost productivity and death. Tobacco use continues to be the leading global cause of preventable death. It kills nearly 6 million people every year through cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases, childhood diseases and others. It also causes hundreds of billions of dollars of economic losses worldwide every year. If current trends continue, by 2030 tobacco will kill more than 8 million people worldwide every year, with 80% of these premature deaths occurring among people in low- and middle-income countries. Over the course of the 21st century, tobacco use could kill up to a billion people unless urgent action is taken.
We know what works to curb the tobacco epidemic. The action we need to take is laid out in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). So far, 173 nations (plus the European Union) have pledged to work together to implement the Convention in order to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. However, these tobacco control efforts are systematically opposed by the tobacco industry. Who or what is the tobacco industry and what forms do its interference with public health efforts take?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Heart disease and stroke, cancers, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) cause tens of millions of deaths per year, the majority of which occur during the most productive years of life. NCDs reduce economic output and prevent people around the world from living lives of health and wellbeing. Creating the conditions that favour sustainable development means taking action to prevent and control NCDs now.
Nine global NCD targets provide a vision for progress by 2025. The WHO Global NCD Action Plan 2013-2020 and other resources provide a roadmap of policies and interventions to realise this vision. When
implemented, they will put countries on track to meet the commitments made on NCDs at the United Nations General Assembly in 2011 and 2014, and in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including target 3.4 to reduce premature NCD deaths.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”Download Now” color=”primary” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sancda.org.za%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F07%2Fpolicy-brief-halt-diabetes-1.pdf|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The 2015 national NCDs capacity survey report compiled by WHO member states measures the current ability to achieve SDG 3.4 to reduce premature (ages 30-70 years) death from preventable NCDs.
Content: current means lated to NCD infrastructure, policy action, surveillance and health-systems response.
out lines progress Besides providing a useful snapshot of the progress countries are making to beat NCDs, the WHO NCD country capacity survey highlights areas that urgently require prioritization and additional strengthening.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”Download Now” color=”primary” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sancda.org.za%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F06%2F2014-WHO-Global-Status-Report-on-NCDs-1.pdf|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
