HLH Newsletter - March 2023

HLH Newsletter
March 2023

Welcome to the HLH Newsletter!

The HLH is a WHO knowledge platform to share cross-country learning on maintaining essential health services during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-pandemic recovery. Learn more about us here.

The HLH Newsletter is a place to share up-to-date information on key knowledge products from WHO and the Network of Networks. If you have any queries or wish to contribute, please email us: hlh@who.int.

HLH update

New briefs:

Learning Brief:
Lessons learnt from the adaptations to the provision of contraception-related services to adolescents and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic: case studies from nine organizations in eight countries

Learning Brief:
Health Partnerships and COVID-19: adapting the Twinning Partnerships for Improvement model

Learning Brief:
Virtual primary care use during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons for a post-pandemic world

Learning Brief:
COVID-19 in East Africa: trust in a time of crisis – enabling continuity of essential health services within a missionary approach to development

Other WHO news:

Patient Safety Global Ministerial Summit 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the high risk of avoidable harm to patients, health workers, and the general public, and has highlighted a range of safety gaps across all core components of health systems at all levels.

The 5th edition of the Patient Safety Global Ministerial Summit was organized in Montreux, Switzerland on 24 and 25 of February 2023, with the theme of “Less Harm, Better Care - from resolution to implementation”. The summit was organized by the Swiss Government with WHO co-sponsorship. Ministers of health and high-level delegations from 80 countries participated in this event to reprise their commitment towards the implementation of the World Health Assembly resolution (WHA72.6) "Global Action on Patient Safety" and the global roadmap for patient safety, the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030: Towards eliminating avoidable harm in health care.

A Montreux Charter on Patient Safety was endorsed by all participating countries with commitment to take definitive actions to address avoidable harm in health care.

Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020 – new release

Every two minutes, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth, according to the latest estimates released in a report by United Nations agencies on 23 February. This report, Trends in maternal mortality, reveals alarming setbacks for women’s health over recent years, as maternal deaths either increased or stagnated in nearly all regions of the world. The estimates presented in this report include one year of observation (2020) where the COVID-19 pandemic was ongoing. The report suggests the plausible contribution of the COVID-19 pandemic to the stagnation in progress seen in the MMR estimates for the 2016–2020 period. This was partly associated with increased direct obstetric deaths, where pregnancy complications might have been prevented or successfully managed if there had not been the disruption to health services that led to a decline in access to and/or quality of care. For more information, please see the report here.

HLH Partners:

FM Pivot Module "Mental Health Tools for Family Physicians in a Post-COVID World"

The FM Pivot module “Mental Health Tools for Family Physicians in a Post-COVID World” is now available!

The Besrour Centre for Global Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada™ (CFPC) is excited to announce the launch of our next FM Pivot learning module. You are welcome to register for free via one of the links below:

Directly on the FM Pivot course page at fmpivot.ca
Via WHO’s IntegratedCare4People platform—simply go online to register, complete your profile, and join the Communities of Practice where you’ll find a link to the module