PREVENTING MEASLES AND RUBELLA: A father waits with his baby daughter during Pakistan’s WHO-supported vaccination campaign in November. Massive floods have heightened the risk of severe disease. ©WHO
This week, we check in with projects from the Americas to Zambia, where contributions to WHO are providing the means to prevent disease, respond to emergencies, build vaccine-manufacturing facilities and much more.
Read about how WHO is helping embattled Ukraine adapt its health system for winter, supporting Comoros in its efforts to end HIV transmission from mothers to babies, and teaming up with authorities in Pakistan to protect children in flooded villages from
measles and rubella.
This issue also features a trio of stories – from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Zambia – on ways that WHO is helping communities keep alert to the presence of infectious diseases and be able to quickly identify drug-resistant
microbes.
WHO supports Ukraine’s health-care system as winter approaches
WHO is helping Ukraine prepare the country’s health facilities to keep running this winter. Above: WHO staff deliver a generator in Dnipro, not far from the front lines of the war. ©WHO
Mechnikov Hospital was just hours away from a power outage when the donation of a generator from WHO helped avert devastating consequences for patients on life support.
Delivery of new generators is part of a larger push by WHO and the Ukraine Ministry of Health to keep essential health services running during the winter months. Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by war, and continuing
attacks on health care threaten millions of lives.
“As attacks on power and heating infrastructure continue, so will our support to health facilities, because everyone has a right to health and well-being. Health care must never be a target,” said Dr Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative in Ukraine.
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WATCH THE VIDEO: Ukraine adapts its health system to wartime with WHO support
Democratic Republic of the Congo hones early-warning system for superbugs
PATHOGEN HUNTERS: A laboratory technician at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reads a Gram stain – a technique for classifying bacterial species. ©WHO
WHO recently trained 26 medical technicians from eight pilot laboratories in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to use WHONET, an app that yields microbiology data for use in the fight against drug-resistant microbes.
WHONET instantly provides analysis of …….