Other (Essential Medicines)

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   Announcements
   Books
   Technical Documents


Announcements

WHO Expands Fight against Chagas Disease with Support from Bayer
This WHO press release describes how WHO is expanding the global effort to eliminate Chagas disease (American trypanosomiasis), a vector-borne parasitic infection native to the Americas but spreading worldwide due to migration factors and affecting nine million people, mostly children. The expanded program is supported by Bayer HealthCare, which manufactures nifurtimox, a drug used to treat the disease. (13/Apr/2007)
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Books

Specifications for Prepackaging Antimalarial Medicines: Report of a WHO Technical Consultation
The objectives of this meeting were to define minimum technical specifications for the blister prepackaging of antimalarial medicines; define minimum requirements for product labelling, product information inserts, and information, education and communication (IEC) materials for prepackaged antimalarial medicines; elaborate and review the regulatory requirements for registering antimalarial medicines as co-packaged and/or prepackaged products; and highlight issues related to improved access (good distribution, storage and other drug management processes) for end-users in relation to "course of treatment" packaging.(28/Dec/2005)
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Biodiversity, Biotechnology, and Sustainable Development in Health and Agriculture: Emerging Connections
This publication explores the connections among biodiversity, biotechnology, and sustainable development by examining the drug discovery process and agricultural improvements for better nutrition.(26/May/1996)
In English       Bookstore  
en español     Librería  


Technical Documents

Manual for the Bacteriological Diagnosis of Tuberculosis: Standards and Technical Guidelines—Part 1, Smear Tests
Although technological progress has promoted innovations in bacteriology, sputum-smear microscopy has not been subject to substantial technical modifications. However, new epidemiological situations—especially the incidence of tuberculosis among people living with HIV and the need to more rigorously guarantee the quality of results and human and environmental safetyhave promoted a new update of the standards seen in this special guide designed to strengthen laboratory capacity in Latin America. (24/Jan/2008)
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en español     HTML(13.14k)   PDF(1576.52k)  

Manual for the Bacteriological Diagnosis of Tuberculosis: Standards and Technical Guidelines—Part 2, Cultures
When diagnosing TB, cultures complement smear tests, since they can show viable bacilli present in limited quantity in a lesion sample, characterizing them so as to ascertain that it is indeed the TB bacillus and see if it is sensitive or resistant to TB drugs. Hence, the role of cultures is more important in scenarios with a median or low incidence of tuberculosis, with high levels of TB/HIV co-infection, and with a multiresistant medium or a high tuberculosis burden. This document contains a summary with access to the full text in Spanish of this special guide produced for Latin America(24/Jan/2008)
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en español     HTML(11.05k)   PDF(2073.94k)  

VIth Meeting of the Andean Initiative to Control Chagas Disease (IPA) (Bogotá, Colombia, 5–6 May 2005)
The objective of this meeting was to approach three thematic areas: (a) implementing greater coverage and quality of anti-vectoral activities, according to risk criteria already published by the IPA Technical Advisory Group, taking into account the following: (i) diversity of species, with updated and integrated taxonomy criteria; (ii) interpreting the various epidemiological situations and (iii) the acceptability and viability of the proposals; (b) optimizing management and methodology in blood banks with regard to blood tests, with the goal of eliminating contaminated blood and treating infected individuals detected during testing, within the framework of blood-safety goals; and (c) generating in the member countries a component of morbidity and care for persons infected with or ill from Chagas in an accessible, timely, effective and effecient manner. This page offers the recommendations and decisions plus access to the full-text report in Spanish.(6/May/2005)
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en español     HTML(10.7k)