In recent years, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have experienced alarming increases in the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity. This updated systematic review sought to measure the prevalence and determinants of obesity and overweight among children and adolescents in MENA countries. A literature search for relevant observational studies published in English was conducted using PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Saudi Digital Library. The risk of bias was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Twenty-one published articles during the past five years were included in the systematic review. Varied approaches were used to diagnose childhood overweight and obesity, including the International Obesity Taskforce (IOTF), Centre for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and Saudi Growth Pattern Curves. We found that the combined prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity in the Middle East is up to 49.4%, depending on the methods applied in their studies. Risk factors identified were age, male gender, lack of sufficient physical activity, consumption of fried food, perceived stress level, number of family members, family size, mother\'s occupation, education level, family history of obesity, high energy consumption from carbohydrates, ≥2 hours spent on watching television on weekend days with overweight, and always eating breakfast while watching television with obesity. The results of this review indicate that the issue of childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity in the Middle East is substantial and concerning. Most of the risk factors identified are modifiable and, if given appropriate attention, could significantly reduce the burden of associated chronic complications.

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer poses a significant burden, particularly in low-and-middle income countries (LMIC) with limited access to healthcare. High-income countries have made progress in prevention, while LMIC face unacceptably high incidence and mortality rates, often lacking official screening recommendations. We analysed the presence and content of cervical cancer screening guidelines for the secondary prevention of cervical cancer in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and compared it to the current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for screening and treatment of cervical pre-cancer lesions for cervical cancer prevention.
METHODS: A review of national cervical cancer guidelines across the SADC region was conducted. Data was obtained from government websites, international cancer control platforms, and WHO resources. Search terms included \"cervical cancer\" and \"cervical cancer control guidelines\", amongst others. There were no limitations on publication years, and the most recent versions of the guidelines were analysed, regardless of language. Each guideline was assessed for specific screening and treatment recommendations, in relation to the current WHO guidelines. Points were assigned for each data element.
RESULTS: While most countries contributed data to this analysis there was a notable absence of adherence to the WHO guidelines. The most common screening method was naked eye visual inspection. There was a consensus on the age of screening initiation. Most countries recommended treatment by cryotherapy and loop excision.
CONCLUSIONS: Effective cervical cancer screening programmes, guided by evidence-based recommendations, can enhance early intervention and outcomes. This study highlights the need for standardized and evidence-based cervical cancer screening guidelines in the SADC region, to reduce the burden of cervical cancer and improve the health outcomes of women in these areas.

BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force across the health sector and has garnered significant attention within sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) due to polarizing views on its opportunities to advance care and the heightened risks and implications it brings to people\'s well-being and bodily autonomy. As the fields of AI and SRHR evolve, clarity is needed to bridge our understanding of how AI is being used within this historically politicized health area and raise visibility on the critical issues that can facilitate its responsible and meaningful use.
OBJECTIVE: This paper presents the protocol for a scoping review to synthesize empirical studies that focus on the intersection of AI and SRHR. The review aims to identify the characteristics of AI systems and tools applied within SRHR, regarding health domains, intended purpose, target users, AI data life cycle, and evidence on benefits and harms.
METHODS: The scoping review follows the standard methodology developed by Arksey and O\'Malley. We will search the following electronic databases: MEDLINE (PubMed), Scopus, Web of Science, and CINAHL. Inclusion criteria comprise the use of AI systems and tools in sexual and reproductive health and clear methodology describing either quantitative or qualitative approaches, including program descriptions. Studies will be excluded if they focus entirely on digital interventions that do not explicitly use AI systems and tools, are about robotics or nonhuman subjects, or are commentaries. We will not exclude articles based on geographic location, language, or publication date. The study will present the uses of AI across sexual and reproductive health domains, the intended purpose of the AI system and tools, and maturity within the AI life cycle. Outcome measures will be reported on the effect, accuracy, acceptability, resource use, and feasibility of studies that have deployed and evaluated AI systems and tools. Ethical and legal considerations, as well as findings from qualitative studies, will be synthesized through a narrative thematic analysis. We will use the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) format for the publication of the findings.
RESULTS: The database searches resulted in 12,793 records when the searches were conducted in October 2023. Screening is underway, and the analysis is expected to be completed by July 2024.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings will provide key insights on usage patterns and evidence on the use of AI in SRHR, as well as convey key ethical, safety, and legal considerations. The outcomes of this scoping review are contributing to a technical brief developed by the World Health Organization and will guide future research and practice in this highly charged area of work.
BACKGROUND: OSF Registries osf.io/ma4d9; https://osf.io/ma4d9.
UNASSIGNED: PRR1-10.2196/53888.

In 2020, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) challenged the world with a global outbreak that led to millions of deaths worldwide. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the symptomatic manifestation of this virus, which can range from flu-like symptoms to utter clinical complications and even death. Since there was no clear medicine that could tackle this infection or lower its complications with minimal adverse effects on the patients\' health, the world health organization (WHO) developed awareness programs to lower the infection rate and limit the fast spread of this virus. Although vaccines have been developed as preventative tools, people still prefer going back to traditional herbal medicine, which provides remarkable health benefits that can either prevent the viral infection or limit the progression of severe symptoms through different mechanistic pathways with relatively insignificant side effects. This comprehensive review provides scientific evidence elucidating the effect of 10 different plants against SARS-CoV-2, paving the way for further studies to reconsider plant-based extracts, rich in bioactive compounds, into more advanced clinical assessments in order to identify their impact on patients suffering from COVID-19.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies in the MedTech sector hold the promise to transform healthcare delivery by improving access, quality, and outcomes. As the regulatory contours of these technologies are being defined, there is a notable lack of literature on the key stakeholders such as the organizations and interest groups that have a significant input in shaping the regulatory framework. This article explores the perspectives and contributions of these stakeholders in shaping the regulatory paradigm of AI-enabled medical technologies. The formation of an AI regulatory framework requires the convergence of ethical, regulatory, technical, societal, and practical considerations. These multiple perspectives contribute to the various dimensions of an evolving regulatory paradigm. From the global governance guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO) to national regulations, the article sheds light not just on these multiple perspectives but also on their interconnectedness in shaping the regulatory landscape of AI.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends an evidence-based package of care to reduce mortality and morbidity among people with advanced HIV disease (AHD). Adoption of these recommendations by national guidelines in sub-Saharan Africa is poorly documented. We aimed to review national guidelines for AHD management across six selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa for benchmarking against the 2021 WHO recommendations.
We reviewed national guidelines from six countries participating in an ongoing randomized controlled trial recruiting people with AHD. We extracted information addressing 18 items of AHD diagnosis and management across the following domains: [1] Definition of AHD, [2] Screening, [3] Prophylaxis, [4] Supportive care, and [5] HIV treatment. Data from national guideline documents were compared to the 2021 WHO consolidated guidelines on HIV and an agreement score was produced to evaluate extent of guideline adoption.
The distribution of categories of agreement varied for the national documents. Four of the six countries addressed all 18 items (Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda). Overall agreement with the WHO 2021 guidelines ranged from 9 to 15.5 out of 18 possible points: Malawi 15.5 points, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone 14.5 points, South Africa 13.5 points, Uganda 13.0 points and Botswana with 9.0 points. Most inconsistencies were reported for the delay of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in presence of opportunistic diseases. None of the six national guidelines aligned with WHO recommendations around ART timing in patients with tuberculosis. Agreement correlated with the year of publication of the national guideline.
National guidelines addressing the care of advanced HIV disease in sub-Saharan Africa are available. Besides optimal timing for start of ART in presence of tuberculosis, most national recommendations are in line with the 2021 WHO standards.

A Family and Community Health Nursing (FCHN) model was first conceptualized by the WHO approximately 25 years ago in response to the epidemiological transition leading to major changes in the population health needs. To date, no study has comprehensively explored the adherence of current applications of FCHN to the WHO original framework. We carried out a scoping review on PubMed, Scopus and CINAHL with the aim to compare the main features of FCHN models developed at the international level with the WHO\'s framework. We identified 23 studies: 12 models, six service/program descriptions, four statements and one theoretical model. The FCHN models appear to focus primarily on sick individuals and their family, mainly providing direct care and relying on Interaction, Developmental and Systems Theories. While these features fit the WHO framework, others elements of the original model are poorly represented: the involvement of FCHN in prevention activities is scarce, especially in primary and secondary prevention, and little attention is paid to the health needs of the whole population. In conclusion, current applications of FCHN show a partial adherence to the WHO framework: population approaches should be strengthened in current FCHN models, with a stronger involvement of nurses in primary and secondary prevention.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently devoted special attention to oral health and oral health care recommending the latter becoming part of universal health coverage (UHC) so as to reduce oral health inequalities across the globe. In this context, as countries consider acting on this recommendation, it is essential to develop a monitoring framework to measure the progress of integrating oral health/health care into UHC. This study aimed to identify existing measures in the literature that could be used to indicate oral health/health care integration within UHC across a range of low-, middle- and high-income countries.
A scoping review was conducted by searching MEDLINE via Ovid, CINAHL, and Ovid Global Health databases. There were no quality or publication date restrictions in the search strategy. An initial search by an academic librarian was followed by the independent reviewing of all identified articles by two authors for inclusion or exclusion based on the relevance of the work in the articles to the review topic. The included articles were all published in English. Articles concerning which the reviewers disagreed on inclusion or exclusion were reviewed by a third author, and subsequent discussion resulted in agreement on which articles were to be included and excluded. The included articles were reviewed to identify relevant indicators and the results were descriptively mapped using a simple frequency count of the indicators.
The 83 included articles included work from a wide range of 32 countries and were published between 1995 and 2021. The review identified 54 indicators divided into 15 categories. The most frequently reported indicators were in the following categories: dental service utilization, oral health status, cost/service/population coverage, finances, health facility access, and workforce and human resources. This study was limited by the databases searched and the use of English-language publications only.
This scoping review identified 54 indicators in a wide range of 15 categories of indicators that have the potential to be used to evaluate the integration of oral health/health care into UHC across a wide range of countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the International Academy of Cytology, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have developed an approach to standardized reporting of pancreaticobiliary cytopathology. The WHO Reporting System for Pancreaticobiliary Cytopathology (WHO System) revises the Papanicolaou Society of Cytopathology (PSC) System for Reporting Pancreaticobiliary Cytology published in 2015 and replaces the 6 PSC categories with 7 categories: \"Insufficient/Inadequate/Nondiagnostic\"; \"Benign/Negative for malignancy\"; \"Atypical\"; \"Pancreaticobiliary neoplasm, low risk/grade (PaN-low)\"; \"Pancreatic neoplasm, high risk/grade (PaN-High)\"; \"Suspicious for malignancy\"; and \"Malignant\". In the PSC system, there is a single category for \"Neoplastic\" lesions that includes 2 groups, 1 for benign neoplasms and 1 named \"Neoplastic-other\", dominated by premalignant intraductal neoplasms primarily intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms and low-grade malignant neoplasms (pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNET) and solid pseudopapillary neoplasms (SPN). In the WHO System, benign neoplasms with virtually no risk of malignancy are included in the \"Benign\" category and low-grade malignancies (PanNET and SPN) are included in the \"Malignant\" category, as per the 5th edition of the WHO Classification of Digestive System Tumors, while the non-invasive pre-malignant lesions of the ducts are divided by the cytomorphological grade of the epithelium into PaN-low and PaN-high with distinctly different risks of malignancy. Within each category, key diagnostic cytopathologic features and the ancillary studies for diagnostic and prognostic evaluation, as well as the implications of diagnosis for patient care and management, are outlined. Reporting and diagnostic management options recognize the variations in the availability of diagnostic and prognostic ancillary testing modalities in low- and middle-income countries.

Although there has been an effective seasonal influenza vaccine available for more than 60 years, influenza continues to circulate and cause illness. The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) is very diverse in health systems capacities, capabilities, and efficiencies, which affect the performance of services, especially vaccination, including seasonal influenza vaccination.
The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview on country-specific influenza vaccination policies, vaccine delivery, and coverage in EMR.
We have analyzed data from a regional seasonal influenza survey conducted in 2022, Joint Reporting Form (JRF), and verified their validity by the focal points. We also compared our results with those of the regional seasonal influenza survey conducted in 2016.
Fourteen countries (64%) had reported having a national seasonal influenza vaccine policy. About (44%) countries recommended influenza vaccine for all SAGE recommended target groups. Up to 69% of countries reported that COVID-19 had an impact on influenza vaccine supply in the country, with most of them (82%) reporting increases in procurement due to COVID-19.
The situation of seasonal influenza vaccination in EMR is varied, with some countries having well established programs while others having no policy or program; these variances may be due to resources inequity, political, and socioeconomic dissimilarities. Few countries have reported wide vaccination coverage over time with no clear trend of improvement.
We suggest supporting countries to develop a roadmap for influenza vaccine uptake and utilization, assessment of barriers, and burden of influenza, including measuring the economic burden to enhance vaccine acceptance.