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About the Eastern Mediterranean Region
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the directing and coordinating authority for public health within the United Nations system. The WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean is one of WHO’s 6 regional offices around the world. It serves the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, which comprises 21 Member States and occupied Palestinian territory (including East Jerusalem), with a population of nearly 745 million people.
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Since 1948, WHO has played a pivotal role in advancing global health, ensuring equitable access to essential health services, responding to health emergencies, and setting standards for all areas of health.
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Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal
Volume 31, issue 1, January 2025
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The Integrated Management of Childhood Health (IMCI) is a WHO/UNICEF global initiative introduced in the Region in 1996 to reduce under-5 mortality, morbidity and disability, and improve child growth and development. The initiative challenges the traditional disease-specific approach to illness by adopting a more holistic approach to child health, including prevention and cure. IMCI emphasizes preventing disease through immunization and improved nutrition.
It includes three main components:
- Improving health workers' skills – mostly refers to clinical and communication skills and covers both pre-service education and in-service training, public and private sector.
- Improving overall health systems – to deliver IMCI concerns policy, planning and management, financing, organization of work and distribution of tasks at health facilities, human resources, availability of medicines and supplies, referral, monitoring and health information system, supervision, evaluation and research.
- Improving family and community health practices – currently refers to 12 key family and community practices related to child health and development that, if properly promoted and adopted by the targeted communities, would potentially contribute to improving child survival, growth and development.
Related links
Egypt IMCI experience: a systematic approach for implementation
