World Health Assembly (WHA), the World Health Organisation’s highest decision-making body has adopted more than 30 resolutions and decisions in different areas of public health at the just concluded 74th session of WHA.
WHO, in a statement on Monday stated that, the global leaders at the assembly pledged commitment to ending COVID-19 pandemic and decisions on different areas of public health.
The resolutions by the WHO’s highest decision making body were on ending violence against children diabetes, disabilities, eye care, HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections, local production of medicines and malaria.
Other resolutions were on neglected tropical diseases, non-communicable diseases, nursing and midwifery, oral health, social determinants of health and strategic directions for the health and care workforce.
For instance, resolution on ending violence against children is aimed at strengthening health sector capacity to prevent and respond to violence against children.
“The health sector plays a major role in documenting the extent of the problem of violence against children; delivering and monitoring prevention approaches and providing services to mitigate the consequences of exposure to violence.
“The new resolution lists a range of actions to be taken by governments and the WHO Secretariat, in collaboration with other stakeholders, to ensure the health and well-being of children.
“Every year, about one billion children are affected by physical, sexual or psychological violence, suffering injuries, disabilities and death as well as the negative impact of witnessing violence between parents or caregivers.
“In addition to the immediate and lifelong harmful consequences to individuals and families, violence against children undermines investments in health and education and erodes the productive capacity of future generations.
“COVID-19-related stay-at-home measures have highlighted children’s vulnerability to violence within family settings.’’
According to WHO, the new resolution invites countries to scale-up the implementation of two WHO-led technical packages, INSPIRE: Seven strategies for ending violence against children and RESPECT women.
“To scale up a framework for preventing violence against women, developed to help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on ending violence against children (SDG 16.2) and violence against women and girls (SDG 5.2).
“The first-ever Global status report on preventing violence against children 2020 measured countries’ progress on preventing and responding to violence against children.
“The report highlighted substantial achievements at global, regional and country levels while also emphasising an urgent need to accelerate prevention efforts if the SDG targets to end violence are to be achieved.
“The resolution invites the WHO Secretariat to prepare the second and third global status reports on violence against children in 2025 and 2030.’’
In addition to the resolutions adopted, the assembly announced that it had assigned new simple labels for key variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, using letters of the Greek alphabet.
For example, the B.1.1.7 variant of concern initially identified in the United Kingdom will be labelled now as “Alpha”. The one identified in South Africa will be “Beta”.
The labels were chosen after wide consultation and a review of many potential naming systems.
The UN health agency, however, encouraged national authorities, media outlets and others to adopt these new labels to simplify public communications. (NAN)
