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This website provides a comprehensive overview of the novel Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The site includes resources for the public, healthcare workers and timely updates as the situation unfolds around the world. 

This overview gives actions for the disabled persons and their household, for governments, for healthcare workers , for disability service providers and for the community to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.

A systematic literature review on the cost–effectiveness of emergency care interventions in low- and middle- income countries.

Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2020;98:341-35

http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.19.241158

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene presents updated national, regional and global estimates for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in households in its 2019 update report, Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene 2000–2017: Special focus on inequalities. The report shows that in 2017:

The population using safely managed drinking water services increased from 61 per cent to 71 per cent
The population using safely managed sanitation services increased from 28 per cent to 45 per cent
60 per cent of the global population had basic handwashing facilities with soap and water at home

The report also focuses on inequalities between and within countries and reveals populations most at risk of being left-behind.

The Public Health Situation Analysis (PHSA) aims to provide all health sector partners, including local and national authorities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), donor agencies and United Nations agencies with a common and comprehensive understanding of the public health situation in a crisis in order to inform evidence based collective humanitarian health response planning. The PHSA may also be used to feed other sectoral and intersectoral products, such as providing the health input to the Humanitarian Needs Overview, and is also used in support of the WHO (re-)grading process.

The PHSA updates and replaces the previous Public Health Risk Assessment (PHRA) prepared by WHO. There are two versions of the PHSA: a short-form or “initial” PHSA, and a long-form or “full” PHSA. This SOP covers both.

The manual is structured in three parts.

• Part One “Epidemics of the 21st century” provides vital insights on the main features of the 21st century upsurge and the indispensable elements to manage them.
• Part Two “Be in the know. 10 key facts about 15 deadly diseases” contains key information about 15 diseases (Ebola Virus Disease, Lassa Fever, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Yellow Fever, Zika, Chikungunya, Avian and Other Zoonotic Influenza, Seasonal Influenza, Pandemic Influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Cholera, Monkeypox, Plague, Leptospirosis and Meningococcal Meningitis). This section provides tips on the interventions required to respond to epidemics of all these diseases.
• Part Three “Tool boxes” gives an overview and summarized guidance on some other important topics, including: the role of WHO, the International Coordinating Group, laboratory diagnosis and shipment of infectious diseases substances, and vector control.

The handbook enables the three levels of WHO – its Headquarters, Regional Offices and Country Offices to work efficiently together by building the foundations of a shared conceptual and thinking framework, which includes common terminology. 

WHO together with health partners such as CBM, Handicap International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have released the ‘Emergency Medical Teams: Minimum Technical Standards and Recommendations for Rehabilitation’ which provides important guidance on how emergency medical teams (EMTs) can incorporate rehabilitation in their response to emergencies. Using the experiences from the 2015 Nepal earthquake, this video shows the impact it had on the lives of those injured years later and highlights the reasons why rehabilitation needs to be a core component of any emergency medical response. Integrating rehabilitation into the EMT response resulted in greater clinical care by producing important, cost-effective, and positive long term outcomes at the individual, family, and community levels

This document is the result of collaboration between a working group of rehabilitation experts convened by WHO and external consultations. It is thus based on collective experience in rehabilitation during responses to recent large-scale emergencies and also on published data. In time, the minimum standards for rehabilitation in emergencies will be part of a broader series of publications based on the Classification and minimum standards for foreign medical teams in sudden onset disaster.

The purpose of this document is to extend these standards for physical rehabilitation and provide guidance to emergency medical teams (EMTs, formerly known as “foreign medical teams”) on building or strengthening their capacity for and work in rehabilitation within defined coordination mechanisms.The standards and recommendations given in this document will ensure that EMTs, both national and international, will better prevent patient complications and ensuing impairment and ensure a continuum of care beyond their departure from the affected area. This document gives the minimum standards for EMTs in regard to the workforce, the field hospital environment, rehabilitation equipment and consumables and information management. Notably, the standards call for:

• at least one rehabilitation professional per 20 beds at the time of initial deployment, with further recruitment depending on case-load and local rehabilitation capacity;

• allocation of a purpose-specific rehabilitation space of at least 12 m2 for all type 3 EMTs; and

• deployment of EMTs with at least the essential rehabilitation equipment and consumables according to type.

EMTs are encouraged to exceed the minimum standards outlined in this document; supplementary recommendations are included. All teams on the Global Classification List of quality assured teams are required to use the minimum technical standards for rehabilitation, and demonstration of adherence to the standards will be necessary for verification. Support in achieving the minimum standards will be available through EMT mentoring, if necessary

As part of the WHO Make Listening Safe initiative, students of the University of Washington's Speech and Hearing Science Department under the guidance of Dr Kelly Tremblay and in collaboration with the WHO PDH have developed a brief video on recreational noise induced hearing loss