Summary Report On The Who Workshop On Estimation Of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Rsv Disease Burden Based On Rsv Surveillance Of Global Influenza Surveillance And Response System Geneva Switzerland 21 23 June 2023

The seventy-second meeting of the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization was held from 19 to 23 October 2020 by WebEx video conferencing due to the restrictions imposed during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The meeting was opened on behalf of the Director-General of WHO by Dr Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Assistant Director-General, Access to Medicines and Health Products. Dr Simão welcomed Committee members, meeting participants and observers. Dr Simão began by noting that the Committee had met as recently as August 2020, primarily to address standardization activities related to COVID-19, and that much remains to be learnt about the pandemic. The WHO Solidarity Trial was continuing to facilitate the rapid and robust comparison of potential treatments. Recently published interim results indicated that the four small molecule treatments remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon had little or no benefit in terms of overall mortality or speed of recovery of hospitalized patients – to date only dexamethasone had proved to be effective against severe COVID-19.

The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to improve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants. Definitions of health-care settings are proposed in Appendix 1. These Guidelines and the associated WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy and an Implementation Toolkit (http://www.who.int/gpsc/en/) are designed to offer health-care facilities in Member States a conceptual framework and practical tools for the application of recommendations in practice at the bedside. While ensuring consistency with the Guidelines recommendations, individual adaptation according to local regulations, settings, needs, and resources is desirable. This extensive review includes in one document sufficient technical information to support training materials and help plan implementation strategies. The document comprises six parts.

The Committee reports on general issues discussed and provides information on the status and development of reference materials for various antibodies, antigens, blood products and related substances, cytokines, growth factors and endocrinological substances. The second part of the report, of particular relevance to manufacturers and national regulatory authorities, contains guidelines on the production and quality control of candidate tetravalent dengue virus vaccines and recommendations for the preparation, characterisation and establishment of international and other biological reference standards.

In October 1999, the Forum on Emerging Infections of the Institute of Medicine convened a two-day workshop titled "International Aspects of Emerging Infections." Key representatives from the international community explored the forces that drive emerging infectious diseases to prominence. Representatives from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe made formal presentations and engaged in panel discussions. Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Global to the Local Perspective includes summaries of the formal presentations and suggests an agenda for future action. The topics addressed cover a wide range of issues, including trends in the incidence of infectious diseases around the world, descriptions of the wide variety of factors that contribute to the emergence and reemergence of these diseases, efforts to coordinate surveillance activities and responses within and across borders, and the resource, research, and international needs that remain to be addressed.

This guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).

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