Search

Consumers' practices and knowledge play a significant role in ensuring meat safety and hygiene application. This is important in an environment where the slaughter and release of such meat is restricted and not always controlled and monitored. This could have been contributed by the lack of slaughter facilities; the controlled movement of live animal restrictions applicable in a typical veterinary diseases-controlled area. The aim of this investigation was to identify meat hygiene practices and general meat safety knowledge applied by consumers of central Bushbuckridge, South Africa. Structured interviews (n=81) were conducted with consumers observed purchasing meat from local meat supply centres. Data analysis was achieved by SAS Statistical software (Version 26) SAS and graphs were drawn using MS Excel 2020. The majority (84.2%, [sigma]=29.4) of the consumers indicated that meat supplied in the region were from registered facilities. The general belief amongst the consumers was that routine hygiene inspection was conducted by authorities at all meat distributing or butchery facilities (74.1%, [sigma]=39.7). None of the facilities or/and butcheries in the study area was registered and therefore, no formal regulated practices could have been conducted. Slaughter and distribution of meat within the area were seen as a good business by 78.6%, [sigma]=18.9 of the consumers, and as a result, the consumers did not have a problem with widespread slaughter and release of this meat to the public outside of those facilities. The extent of hygiene application practices at household level varied. These included the assurance that perishable products were properly handled after purchase (84.1%, [sigma]=8.3), and the handling or transportation of sourced meat did not comply with cold chain management prescripts (39.9%, [sigma]=44.9). The likelihood of consumers feeling the same about meat hygiene concerns and practices is undoubtedly low as represented by a high standard deviation ([sigma]) of the responses. These results show that consumers were relying on authorities for meat safety assurances. This ought to caution authorities on consumer practices and needed interventions such as animal movement policies enforcement. The adoption of such policies by consumers lies with the development and rollout of consumer awareness and meat safety assurances training programs. Key words: abattoir, consumer practices, illegal slaughter, meat safety, meat hygiene, INTRODUCTION Article 11(1) of the Covenant of the United Nations (2012) affirms that everybody has a right to access sufficient and safe food including meat [1]. This resolution clarifies that [...]

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in the [...]

During pandemics, in which harm is universal, states find themselves under an obligation to cooperate within a global solidarity framework. However, because they do not have the same set of capabilities, their obligations should be differentiated and based on equity and distributive justice. As an effective tool of States' foreign policy, health diplomacy is being used by developing countries according to different priorities and interests. After a few months of relative calm, COVID-19 still poses a major challenge for African and Middle Eastern economies and societies where the vaccination rates are low across the board with healthcare systems in poor shape. If some Gulf countries can be considered exceptions due to active lockdowns, mobility restrictions, and considerable testing, their engagement abroad to help contain the pandemic, especially in North Africa, shows that, if the spirit of cooperation and justice is well taken care of at the regional level, this is not the case at the international level, where global health cooperation would clearly benefit from the application of a type of differentiated treatment such as the one provided by the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle. Keywords: Health diplomacy, Vaccines, CBDR, Principle, Cooperation, Introduction Contrary to a global public good (2), a so-called 'global public harm (3)' is linked to a damage and not to the consumption of a good. To constitute a [...]

In the late nineteenth century, a water-carried system of flush toilets and sewage pipes came to be regarded as 'modern' and 'Western' and became part of the package of transformations conceived as 'development, ' which international organizations endorsed after 1945. However, in promoting sanitation, the World Health Organization and other organizations faced contradictory demands: protecting populations from fecalborne diseases, providing affordable and culturally acceptable forms of excrement disposal, maintaining valuable fertilizer for agricultural use, and establishing sustainable structures and methods were difficult to reconcile. Over time, as officers from different organizations grappled with question of advantages and disadvantages of solutions for different regions, it became increasingly doubtful whether the flush toilet/water-carried disposal could be the model for the entire world, and whether it even should. Gradually, as scientific information and public attitudes changed, international recommendations shifted from viewing excreta reuse as a temporarily necessary evil to--partially--embracing it as an ecologically desirable long-term development goal. The importance of modernity as a principal driver of sanitation reform remained intact, but the concept of what constituted modernity changed from one whose main criteria was efficient hazard removal to one geared toward comprehensive health protection and resource conservation. Over several decades, international organizations acted as catalysts for the conceptual developments regarding human waste disposal and the ideological underpinnings they stood for. Keywords: human waste, excreta, sanitation, night soil, WHO, World Bank, modernization., One could make a case that the disposal of human excrement has been at the center of key steps of human development. The embrace of agriculture and a sedentary lifestyle [...]

1 Introduction Public displays of gratitude around the world, championing frontline health workers as heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic, have contrasted sharply with the criticisms directed toward the World Health [...]

This article revisits the 2006 diplomatic standoff between Indonesia and the World Health Organization over wild-type (or naturally occurring) viral flu samples in the context of the ongoing War on Terror, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a Romance whose imagination seems to have predicted, improbably, the conceptual conjoining of the two: Mary Shelley's late, reviled apocalypse fantasy, The Last Man (1826). Raza Kolb explores the political and conceptual stakes of global health commentators' readiness to exploit the deep-seated terror of a Muslim planet, sketched out in Romantic shades by Shelley during the Greek Revolution of the 1820s, and reappearing in the invocation of 'Viral Sovereignty' as a global threat that public health officials compared to terrorism. In her essay, Raza Kolb argues for the ongoing necessity of postcolonial methods of reading in nineteenth-century studies, and calls on Victorian studies to reckon more robustly and generously with 'other' nineteenth-centuryists., 'Just as the wind preserves the waters of a lake from the stagnation which would result from a long calm, so a prolonged, or worse, a perpetual peace will infect [...]

I INTRODUCTION The impacts of a pandemic pervade all segments of society, devastating the global economy, weakening already fragile health systems and ultimately leading to mass mortality. As of November [...], The global spread of COVID-19 has widely illuminated the significant public health threat posed by emerging diseases of animal origin: zoonoses. Just as a comprehensive understanding of the underlying drivers of zoonoses necessitates a multidisciplinary approach, so too does the international response. The three principal drivers of zoonoses: biodiversity loss, the trade in wild fauna and intensive livestock production, are subject to fragmented international legal and regulatory controls. An analysis of the current role of international law in preventing diseases of pandemic potential highlights the need to increase coordination and collaboration between international public health, environmental and animal health bodies. The existing gaps in the international approach to prevention illustrate the rationale for the development of a novel international legal instrument directed towards addressing the underlying drivers of zoonotic disease. The World Health Organization, as the body leading and coordinating global health responses, is uniquely and appropriately positioned to govern such a novel instrument.

Drug companies and wealthy countries are facing increased pressure to partner with firms in the global south but are reluctant to relinquish control. Drug companies and wealthy countries are facing increased pressure to partner with firms in the global south but are reluctant to relinquish control., Author(s): Amy Maxmen Author Affiliations: The fight to manufacture COVID vaccines in lower-income countries In Mumbai, India, people stand in queue to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Divyakant Solanki/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock A [...]

Background The World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines (WHO EML) has played a critical role in guiding the country-level selection and financing of medicines for more than 4 decades. It continues to be a relevant evidence-based policy that can support universal health coverage (UHC) and access to essential medicines. The objective of this review was to identify factors affecting adaptation and implementation of WHO EML at the national level. Methods and findings We conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis by searching 10 databases (including CINAHL, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science) through October 2021. Primary qualitative studies focused on country-level implementation of WHO EML were included. The qualitative findings were populated in the Supporting the Use of Research Evidence (SURE) framework, and key themes were identified through an iterative process. We appraised the papers using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool and assessed our confidence in the findings using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation working group-Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research (GRADE-CERQual). We screened 1,567 unique citations, reviewed 183 full texts, and included 23 studies, from 30 settings. Non-English studies and experiences and perceptions of stakeholders published in gray literature were not collected. Our findings centered around 3 main ideas pertaining to national adaptation and implementation of WHO EML: (1) the importance of designing institutions, governance, and leadership for national medicines lists (NMLs), particularly the consideration of transparency, coordination capacity, legislative mechanisms, managing regional differences, and clinical guidance; (2) the capacity to manage evidence to inform NML updates, including processes for contextualizing global evidence, utilizing local data and expert knowledge, and assessing budget impact, to which locally relevant cost-effectiveness information plays an important role; and (3) the influence of NML on purchasing and prescribing by altering provider incentives, through linkages to systems for financing and procurement and donor influence. Conclusions This qualitative evidence synthesis underscores the complexity and interdependencies inherent to implementation of WHO EML. To maximize the value of NMLs, greater investments should be made in processes and institutions that are needed to support various stages of the implementation pathway from global norms to adjusting prescribed behavior. Moreover, further research on linkages between NMLs, procurement, and the availability of medicines will provide additional insight into optimal NML implementation. Protocol registry PROSPERO CRD42018104112, Author(s): Elizabeth F. Peacocke 1,*, Sonja L. Myhre 1, Hakan Safaralilo Foss 2, Unni Gopinathan 1 Introduction The World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines (WHO EML) offers a [...]

Background The International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) require that countries develop, strengthen and maintain the capacity to detect, assess, notify and report public health events. This includes the collection, analysis [...]

Introduction Public health emergencies can impact communities, countries, regions and the world. Public health emergencies can occur suddenly or emerge gradually anywhere, at any time, and can be difficult to [...]