27 December 2021 marks the 2nd International Day of Epidemic Preparedness. We, in OpenWHO and WHO, are helping the world prepare for epidemic events with free online learning on 24 different diseases, from Cholera to Zika. Everyone, everywhere deserves access to knowledge to protect themselves and their loved ones from epidemics and other health emergencies. Join us today!
In its fifth year of operation, WHO’s OpenWHO.org learning platform has undergone significant development and expansion to meet the ongoing challenges of complex health emergencies globally. With increased engagement among learners during the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of major milestones were reached in 2021 highlighting the role OpenWHO plays in strengthening global health emergency response through online knowledge transfer.
By December 2021, OpenWHO had registered more than 6 million course enrolments and awarded more than 3 million certificates, the latter for course completion or surpassing the prescribed course assessment score. In total, learners have amassed more than 27 million video views across all platform content, comprising more than 693 000 hours of video streaming on connected devices. Along with a course completion rate well above the industry average for online learning, these milestones highlight the growing demand for relevant, high-quality learning resources in emergency contexts.
The scope of learning content across the platform has also grown to 120 total course topics, with 40 courses to support the COVID-19 response and 80 courses on other essential health topics, including an additional 23 diseases. Increased demand for reliable guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic is confirmed by measures of the most utilized learning content on the platform: Introduction to COVID-19 and COVID-19 personal protective equipment were the most visited and completed courses, respectively, and the animated COVID-19 explainer was the most popular video. Among the 18 OpenWHO learning channels, the COVID-19 channel was the most popular.
In demographic terms, students and health professionals, learners from India and those aged 20-29 are the most frequent visitors to OpenWHO. Among all learners, OpenWHO found that nearly half have enrolled in at least 2 courses and 71 000 superusers have completed at least 10 courses. Leveraging these repeat and superusers and to encourage learner activity more broadly, digital badges were introduced this year, with more than 60 000 badges already issued for course completers to share their learning achievements on social media.
To further increase learning uptake, OpenWHO now offers courses in 60 global languages, including the 15 most-spoken languages in the world as well as languages with high impact for affected populations, especially those in the least-developed countries. The Introduction to COVID-19 course was the most translated course and the French language was the most translated language. OpenWHO will expand these localization efforts going forward, with additional languages and translations underway to meet growing demand.
“For almost 2 years, we have worked together with amazing crowd power from all corners of the world and in particular from WHO country and regional offices to help ensure equitable access to pandemic and emergency-related WHO technical guidance in a large variety of languages. Evidence shows that accessing learning in preferred languages enhances uptake and comprehension and further can help save lives,” said Heini Utunen, acting Head of the Learning and Capacity Development Unit for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme.
Even with these expanded activities, the OpenWHO mandate to provide free, self-paced, accessible courses to improve health emergency response has remained unchanged. The platform continues to make life-saving knowledge available on a massive scale, not only to improve emergency response, having served frontline responders in outbreaks from Ebola to plague and now COVID-19, but also in anticipation of the next pandemic. It is with this aim that OpenWHO will continue to grow its learning portfolio in 2022 with a focus on serving countries with localized content, thereby strengthening health response globally and better serving affected populations now and in the future.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses:
New courses on other health topics:
New translations
60 languages on OpenWHO
OpenWHO is committed to translating courses into as many languages as possible, particularly those spoken by underserved and vulnerable communities, to make critical knowledge accessible to all. We are pleased to celebrate our 60th language on our platform, featuring the Tajik language.
The following 18 translations have been launched this month:
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 40 courses on COVID-19, spread across 60 languages. All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language. You can also access our catalogues which show all courses and languages available for COVID-19 and other health topics here.
We are introducing new digital badges that can easily be shared across your social platforms. If you have earned a Record of Achievement in your course, then your digital badge comes along with it and can be found on your Certificates page. The badge will include a verification link with your name, date of issue and your results.
If you want to know more about OpenWHO digital badges, please click here.
This portal offers learning resources to support a country's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other health threats. Created in collaboration with WHO Country Offices and Ministries of Health, resources based on WHO scientific guidance are available in each country’s official language(s) to empower frontline health workers, policymakers and the public. Thailand is the most recent addition to our Serving Countries portal.
You can access the most recent newsletter here. The newsletter highlights are also available in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
As 2021 draws to a close, the OpenWHO team would like to express our sincere thanks to each and every one of you for learning and growing with us. In the new year, we are committed to continuing to provide free access to expert knowledge to improve public health. Wishing you all a safe and healthy new year.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
WHO is developing an educational portfolio to help health staff take necessary actions to reduce the occurrence of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), which WHO has declared to be one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity.
The portfolio is based on adult learning principles that encourage learners to apply knowledge to improve health practices within their current job function.
Resources include a new OpenWHO course covering the principles and best practices of sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment and optimal antimicrobial use and stewardship. The course is targeted to clinical providers, such as nurses, midwives, doctors and pharmacists, and was launched ahead of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week from 18-24 November.
Click here to watch a video to learn more about the AMR educational portfolio, which will continue to be rolled out in 2022. You can also learn more about AMR by participating in other courses featured on OpenWHO’s AMR learning channel or by visiting the WHO website.
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) comprise 20 diseases or disease groups that affect more than 1 billion people, mainly living in poor, remote communities in the world’s tropical and sub-tropical areas. Some are associated with disabilities, deformities and social exclusion. Others are fatal without timely treatment. NTDs are often ignored or poorly known and therefore become devastating for affected individuals and their communities.
OpenWHO has played a critical role by enabling the continuation of training activities on NTDs as COVID-19 continues to seriously disrupt implementation of programmes and prevent on-site training courses on NTDs from being conducted. A major contribution to building capacity for public health control and management of NTDs has thus been the creation of a free-access learning channel on OpenWHO.org. The NTD channel was launched in March 2021 in collaboration with the Department of Control of NTDs at WHO headquarters.
The platform currently hosts 6 NTD-related courses in English; some courses are also available in Arabic, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, with additional translation underway. The 6 courses cover a wide area of work, including NTDs in the context of COVID-19, rabies and One Health, and skin NTDs (mycetoma, podoconiosis, scabies and tungiasis). The pandemic has resulted in the need to adapt NTD activities and community-based interventions to ensure safe delivery; all of these components are covered in the OpenWHO course on NTDs in the context of COVID-19 to support countries in maintaining essential health services.
Thus far, the NTD courses have totaled over 20 000 enrolments. More than 10 additional courses are being developed to provide a wider offering of online training resources dedicated to NTDs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has equalized the use of OpenWHO.org by gender. Prior to the pandemic, women represented 40% of platform learners, while men represented 60%; during the pandemic, the proportion of women participating in online learning on OpenWHO grew to 51%, slightly overtaking male learners (49%). The percentage of users identifying their gender as ‘other’ also increased from 0.08% to 0.15%. In courses on topics other than COVID-19, female learners provided fewer enrolments (43%).
Completion rates on OpenWHO have increased from 39% to a platform average of 54% during the pandemic. The platform has also expanded its reach to older and younger user groups. The age bracket of 70 years and older rose from 0% to 4.6% of learners, and users under 20 years have grown from 1.3% to 9.8%.
During the pandemic, enrolments from the WHO African Region have decreased from 23.1% to 8.6% of total enrolments, as interest in COVID-19 courses globally has outpaced courses addressing other, more regionalized outbreaks. Meanwhile, COVID-19 courses are both the most popular and have increased enrolments in the Southeast Asian (36%) and American (26%) regions.
When platform use is assessed based on countries’ classification by income level from the World Bank, additional shifts during the pandemic can be observed. Middle-income countries now dominate as the largest percentage of users (rising from 40.2% to 70.6% of total enrolments).
Influenza causes 3-5 million cases of severe illness and up to 650 000 respiratory deaths a year globally. Lower respiratory infections are the leading cause of death in low-income countries annually. Some populations are particularly vulnerable to seasonal influenza, either because they have a greater risk of exposure or because they have a greater risk of developing severe disease: pregnant women; health workers; people with chronic health conditions (such as diabetes, HIV, asthma, heart or lung disease); people over the age of 65 years; and children from 6 months to 59 months.
This course on Influenza prevention and control provides an overview of the tools to prevent and control influenza such as seasonal influenza vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. The training is intended for health workers and other stakeholders involved in preventing and treating influenza.
You can access more influenza-related courses through our Preparing for Pandemics channel, where you can learn more about the disease, surveillance, vaccination and risk communication.
Join us today and help protect the vulnerable this flu season!
In pursuit of equitable access, the OpenWHO team of the Learning and Capacity Development Unit has worked across the 3 levels of the Organization, and in particular together with WHO country and regional offices, to translate WHO’s evidence-based guidance into learning in the languages of Member States. Volunteer translators, public health institutes, Translators Without Borders and professional translation companies have been contributing to the translation work.
OpenWHO has translated COVID-19 online courses into as many languages as possible, nearing 60 languages on the platform, as WHO strives to ensure equitable access. Priority has been given to languages spoken by vulnerable or underserved populations in low- and middle-income countries as learning available in preferred languages enhances uptake and comprehension. These 56 languages available on OpenWHO include the official languages of every WHO region, the 15 most commonly spoken languages worldwide and the official languages of 43 out of 46 of the least-developed countries.
A total of 10.5 million words have been translated thus far and on average, each of OpenWHO’s COVID-19 courses has been translated into 4.8 languages. The 2 courses available in the most languages are the Introduction to COVID-19 course available in 44 languages and the Infection Prevention and Control course in 24 languages.
Multilingualism in OpenWHO's large-scale online production strategy has already resulted in 5.7 million course enrolments driven largely by 38 COVID-19 courses. The top 10 languages by enrolment are English (76.2%), Spanish (13.0%), French (3.1%), Arabic (1.5%), Portuguese (1.5%), Indian sign language (1.0%), Hindi (0.7%), Indonesian (0.6%), Russian (0.5%) and Italian (0.4%).
You can access the most recent newsletter here. The newsletter highlights are also available in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 course:
New courses on health topics:
Rabies & One Health: From basics to cross-sectoral action to stop human rabies deaths: This course provides a general introduction to rabies, and the One Health approach currently taken to prevent it. It provides participants with knowledge about the biology and epidemiology of this Neglected Zoonotic Disease, the current “Zero by 30” rabies elimination strategy, and how to prevent rabies in people and dogs by taking a One Health approach.
Mycetoma: Training of health workers at national and district levels on skin-NTDs: This course provides essential knowledge to national and frontline health workers on the epidemiology of mycetoma, clinical features, diagnosis, treatment and public health interventions.
New translations
30 September is International Translation Day! OpenWHO is committed to translating our COVID-19 courses into as many languages as possible, particularly those spoken by underserved and vulnerable communities, to make critical pandemic knowledge accessible to all.
The following 7 translations have been launched this month:
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 38 courses on COVID-19, spread across 53 languages. All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language. You can also access our catalogues which show all courses and languages available for COVID-19 and other health topics here.
The aim of the training package is to contribute to the implementation of the WHO African Regional Office Regional strategy for integrated disease surveillance and response: 2020-2030 for preventing and responding to health emergencies. The 3rd Edition IDSR Technical Guidelines explicitly describe what needs to be established at each level of the health system to detect and respond to diseases, conditions and public health events that are responsible for preventable illnesses, deaths and disabilities in local communities.
The training package will consist of five courses in English, French and Portuguese. To date, Course 1 is available in English and French and the remaining 4 courses are all available in English. All courses should be launched in French and Portuguese by the end of 2021.
Additional countries have been added to the Serving Countries portal: Azerbaijan, India, Nepal and Somalia. This portal offers learning resources to support a country's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other health threats. Created in collaboration with WHO Country Offices and Ministries of Health, resources based on WHO scientific guidance are available in each country’s official language(s) to empower frontline health workers, policymakers and the public.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
23 September is International Day of Sign Languages! Our Indian sign language course on COVID-19 has more than 54 000 learners, with top enrolments from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The course consists of 4 videos in Indian sign language, which provide an introduction to COVID-19 and show how to safely wear fabric and medical masks. It also includes a module customized for children with disabilities, with 2 text resources that cover the hygiene rules and precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Rehabilitation Council of India has included the course in the list of WHO modules recommended for rehabilitation professionals to upgrade their knowledge and skills during the pandemic. It has also been highlighted by national and international media.
Read more in our 'Stories from the field' feature here.
The Best Education Paper Award was given to the full research paper "Delivering WHO’s Life-Saving Information in Real-Time During a Pandemic Through an Online Learning Platform: Evidence from Global Use" by the 31st Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) 2021 conference on the topic of Public Health and Informatics.
A total of 261 papers were presented in the conference and 2 awards were granted. The “John Mantas” Best Education Paper awarded research paper was published under the thematic area of Human Factors and Citizen Centered Digital Health and can here found here.
The full MIE 2021 Conference Proceedings are available here.
Exploring challenges and opportunities for inter-agencies work to prevent SEA
Date: Wednesday, 15th September 2021
Time: 13:00 - 14:30 Central European Time
Panelists:
WHO has a zero-tolerance policy towards all forms of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (SEAH) and is committed to capacitating our workforce, partners and collaborators to prevent, protect from and respond effectively and quickly to any allegation of SEAH. Joining force across agencies to fight SEAH can power our efforts and positively impact communities, victims and survivors directly. For the rest of 2021, WHO, together with our partners and experts across the world, we will run a learning series #StopSEAH under hosted by our #LearningSavesLives movement. This and other webinars in the series offer a unique platform for social exchange and learning from each other. This first webinar in the series will focus on the progress and challenges that humanitarian and emergency response agencies face in combatting SEAH. It will look at what exists, the achievements to date and the barriers that still persist.
Moderator: Dr Gaya Gamhewage, Director a.i., Prevention & Response to Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (PRSEAH), WHO
In this webinar series, you will:
#OpenWHO #LearningSavesLives #StopSEAH
Since the Learning and Capacity Development Unit of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme was formed in October 2018, following what constituted the WHO Ebola Training Team of 2014–2015, multilingualism has been brought to the core of emergency learning. This was recognized in the 2020 United Nations Multilingualism in the United Nations system Joint Inspection Unit report.
According to the report, “WHO is well prepared and operational in producing materials for emergencies based on lessons learned and findings made during the Ebola West Africa outbreak, which have been progressively turned into practices. The new solutions and services put into practice, which relate mainly to capacity-building among staff and knowledge transfer, include: (a) local language translation capacity; (b) unlimited online dissemination to the frontline through a dedicated low-bandwidth platform; and (c) a process to turn evidence-based and emergency guidelines into knowledge resources for responders.
“As also recently experienced with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, disease transmission chains cannot be stopped unless people understand how to keep themselves and their families safe. This means communicating in the right languages and formats for the widest possible audience at each location. These findings highlight the need for better information on the comprehension levels and communication preferences of people across affected and at-risk areas.”
The Elsje Finck-Sanichar College COVAB in Suriname specializes in the education of nurses and caretakers. COVAB and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)/ World Health Organization (WHO) have cultivated a longstanding relationship, and PAHO has facilitated the improved access for students and staff to the online educational platform OpenWHO. During the pandemic, five key courses related to COVID-19 were translated and offered in Dutch, making the material even more accessible for the local college.
PAHO spoke with Winamba Bamoeje, Education Manager at COVAB and Farzana Mohamed, who recently graduated from COVAB as a nurse practitioner, about the use of the OpenWHO courses during the pandemic.
How has education at COVAB changed since the pandemic hit Suriname?
“When the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in March 2020, COVAB removed all its students from healthcare institutions to assess the situation and generate next steps”, Mrs. Bamoeje tells us. A 3-week holiday was announced for the students and during that time, our management team and Director worked towards a solution to continue all educational tracks at COVAB so the students would not get behind on their studies. The college decided to implement distance-learning and on April 14th, 2020, we started offering classes online using Microsoft Teams. All planned exams, were taken online, including the final presentation by the students. Farzana (Mohamad) was in one of the first batches of students that completed their educational track with COVAB online.
“We as students were very happy with this quick response and sustainable solution by COVAB, and didn’t experience any delay”, added Ms. Mohamed.
“Because of distance-learning, I along with many other students found that this also created opportunities for us to work in addition to studying, which was a bit more difficult before, with the face-to-face classes.”
How has the organization adapted to distance-learning and what are the constraints in terms of distance-learning?
“Converting an institution that has always operated in-person to digital teaching methods is always difficult – the right software and enough hardware (computers) being of the utmost importance. Therefore, we were incredibly grateful that PAHO donated equipment for distance-learning such as laptops and cameras to our institution. When the OpenWHO courses for healthcare staff launched in English, we implemented an active participation policy for these courses, making them mandatory for our students. The language barrier was deemed a challenge in many instances however for both students and staff."
"After the courses had been translated and offered in Dutch by PAHO/WHO however, the participation rate went up and we received many positive responses from both staff and students alike”, explained Mrs. Bamoeje.
We implemented the use of Microsoft Teams throughout our organizations and offered “learning packages” to our students consisting of (handouts of) PowerPoint presentations, materials, and class planning. The Dean would regularly check up on the students, and if they informed us that they did not have access to internet we arranged an allowance of 50 SRD per day to activate internet on their phones or invited them to use COVAB’s Wi-Fi on site.
Getting our staff, as well as freelance educators, proper training to teach online, came with certain challenges. Digital literacy proved to be an issue in some instances, and with more than 300 teachers, providing the training, to work with distance-learning tools was quite challenging at times.
“Some students found it difficult to study in their own time, because holding oneself accountable and responsible is not everyone’s strong suit”, Ms. Mohamed elaborated, “But I do think it also helps to develop these skills, so it’s certainly not a negative development in my opinion. The OpenWHO courses are also very easily accessed through a mobile application, making them very user-friendly. Time management during this hectic period, was also crucial and what helped a lot is that the OpenWHO courses can be finished in parts. So, if I had to work one day and would only be able to complete 2 hours of a 4-hour course, I could finish the last 2 hours another day.”
How have the translated OpenWHO courses from English to Dutch impacted your organization? Is there a certain success story you would like to share?
“Language was definitely a barrier at first and we found that most people did not want to or were not able to participate in the courses in English. This changed after the courses got translated”, said Mrs. Bamoeje. As participation went up, and the courses could be finished by the students independently, the teachers had more time to prepare on other segments of education. The students simply had to provide their certificates of the completed mandatory courses.
“For me, the certificates I obtained through the OpenWHO COVID-19 response courses on topics such as PPE, COVID-19 patient care, and vaccination training helped me not only expand on essential knowledge and training during the pandemic, but also helped me and other students get temporary jobs at the vaccination sites. As a recent graduate, the Director of a hospital where I got hired as a nurse practitioner, also specifically applauded these additional courses on my CV and I’m sure other graduates will also experience, or have also had similar experiences when applying for jobs”, added Ms. Mohamed. “Because the OpenWHO courses not only cover how to administer the vaccinations, but also broader knowledge such as storage, proper handling etc., I noticed that at the vaccination sites, I was entrusted with more responsibility than those that had not followed these courses. The OpenWHO courses are very thorough.”
Looking back at a little over a year of COVID-19 in Suriname, how has PAHO contributed to helping your organization better manage this health emergency?
“PAHO has significantly contributed towards the improvement of our education through the continuous support of distance-learning, by providing material and courses. We’ve talked about the OpenWHO courses but let me add to that. On June 14th, our specialized education track started, and our students that live in District Nickerie, who previously had to travel all the way to Paramaribo to participate in the courses, have now been able to follow the courses at the COVAB facility in Nickerie, with laptops and material provided by PAHO. Students, both in Paramaribo and Nickerie are also able to borrow these laptops for studying or completing assignments at home.
In addition, the OpenWHO courses are not only beneficial for COVAB, but for healthcare in general in Suriname. We share the courses with our colleagues from other healthcare institutions, with our alumni, with our freelance and part-time teachers, to further help spread the essential knowledge to better respond to the COVID-19 crisis”, Mrs. Bamoeje elaborated.
PAHO/WHO launched the OpenWHO landing page for Suriname in May 2021, making the courses in Dutch even more accessible to local healthcare students and professionals.
This story was originally published in the PAHO/WHO website and is available here.
The pandemic affects everyone – that’s why WHO is working to enhance health literacy as part of the global effort to fight COVID-19 by providing free online courses on OpenWHO.org.
OpenWHO learners come from all parts of the world and all sectors, from education, to transportation, to the entertainment industry. 28% of OpenWHO learners are health professionals, who need new knowledge during the pandemic to work safely and effectively.
OpenWHO is also reaching underserved demographics with real-time knowledge during the pandemic. Women represent 51% of OpenWHO learners, compared to 40% prior to the pandemic. 5% of OpenWHO learners are 70 years of age or older – a previously unrepresented demographic – as those vulnerable to COVID-19 actively seek life-saving information. The proportion of learners under age 20 has grown from 1% before the pandemic to 10% today.
In addition, OpenWHO course completion rates have increased from 39% before the pandemic to an average of 54% during the pandemic.
As of August 2021, OpenWHO.org hosts 5.6 million total enrolments across more than 100 different courses on 17 learning channels, including 37 courses for COVID-19. The platform offers courses in 55 languages and has awarded 2.9 million certificates.
Geneva, Switzerland / New York, USA / Incheon, Korea
According to UN data, today 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. COVID-19 is ravaging the world, challenging cities and their citizens, with significant impacts on the social and health infrastructure and the economy. There is still a long road ahead before the pandemic is over. Towards creating more resilient and equitable societies post COVID-19, the training “Build back better: Harnessing South-South cooperation and disaster risk reduction planning for resilient and healthy cities in the post COVID-19 era” was organized from 8 to 29 June 2021.
This 4-week workshop was jointly organized by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Global Education and Training Institute (GETI), the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) under the framework of its Cities Project, and the World Health Organization (WHO) through its OpenWHO.org team. The training builds on the 3 agencies’ missions to improve urban disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience and health equity through harnessing South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) and disaster risk reduction planning.
Four live webinar sessions took place every Tuesday in June 2021. The first session on 8 June focused on an introduction to the conceptual frameworks of DRR planning, health emergency response preparedness and SSTC. The second session, led by UNDRR on 15 June, focused on the utilization of the Public Health System Resilience Addendum (PHA) of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities towards strengthening the integration of public health issues in DRR and resilience planning, highlighting also the example of Makati City, Philippines. The third session, led by WHO on 22 June, took a deep dive into the issues that impact the way cities and local governments prepare for and respond to health emergencies and other risks.
The final session on 29 June focused on sharing frontline experiences and practical measures used by national and local authorities in reopening safely and adjusting public health emergency response and DRR planning in response to the recent resurgences. Health authorities and experts from the Government of Bangladesh Cabinet Division, Santiago Metropolitan Region of Chile, China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), City of Milan – Italy, Fujian Provincial CDC – China, and Ministry of Health and Wellness of Mauritius joined and exchanged with the participants.
Sanjaya Bhatia, Head of the Global Education and Training Institute, UNDRR, pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that cities need to transit to a “new normal” and local authorities can use this as an opportunity to shape new and innovative policies that strengthen health systems, improve social protection, pursue climate-friendly solutions and continue the pathway towards resilience.
Overall, the training attracted more than 5000 registrations from 165 countries and territories, with close to 3000 participants joining each session from more than 1000 cities in 155 countries. Approximately 35% of the participants were from national and local governments, 24% from academic and research institutes, 12% from civil society organizations (CSOs), 12% from the private sector, and slightly more than 10% from the UN and international government organizations. Gender participation was almost equal.
At the end of the course, more than 2000 people responded to the online post-webinar survey. Among these respondents, 98% reported having gained knowledge on public health, health emergency response tools, SSTC and DRR that would be applicable to their work, and close to 90% would like to be part of the “South-South Cities Clusters” platform and collaborate with UNDRR, UNOSSC and WHO on future activities. More than 1400 participants completed the final assessments, passed the quiz and obtained a certificate of completion.
Links:
For more information, contact:
You can access the most recent newsletter here. The newsletter highlights are also available in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses:
Learning how to use the COVID-19 Vaccine Introduction and deployment Costing (CVIC) tool: The aim of this course is to demonstrate the use of the CVIC tool and target national programme managers and personnel who have been involved in the costing, budgeting or financing processes of COVID-19 vaccine delivery in a country.
SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid diagnostic testing: SARS-CoV-2 antigen rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDT) are being used globally to test suspect COVID-19 cases in contexts where PCR diagnostic may not be available. This course aims to provide Ag-RDT users with an understanding of the theoretical and practical components of SARS-CoV-2 Ag-RDT testing.
New courses in other topics:
WHO Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Emergencies: The objective of this course is to provide high-level information and contextual understanding of WHO Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Emergencies. The course is available in both English and French and is designed for personnel who will be assigned by WHO to go on deployment in response to health emergencies.
Recognizing and managing anaphylaxis: This course provides guidance on how to recognize and differentiate between anaphylaxis and immunization stress-related response and respond to anaphylaxis as an adverse event following immunization.
Neglected Tropical Diseases training package: NTDs are a group of diseases that affect mainly deprived populations in tropical and sub-tropical countries. Aiming to protect communities and empower healthcare workers around the world, OpenWHO has launched dedicated training resources to address some of these diseases – Tungiasis, Podoconiosis and Scabies – with additional courses under development.
One Health approach training: Two new courses have become available on the OpenWHO One Health Channel. These trainings explore principles and best practices for strengthening the One Health approach for zoonotic diseases nationally and sub-nationally: Navigating the Tripartite Zoonoses Guide (TZG): A training for advocates and implementers and the Joint Risk Assessment (JRA OT): A Training for Implementers.
New translations
The following 6 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
Updates to course content
A new video recording has been added to the Scientific and strategic talks on COVID-19 portal. In this new video, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove gives an overview of the epidemiologic situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and outlines the global response and way forward.
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 37 courses on COVID-19, spread across 52 languages. All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language. You can also access our catalogues which show all courses and languages available for COVID-19 and other health-related topics here.
This new channel offers learning resources to support implementation of the Global Action Plan on AMR (2015), by building health care worker competencies to help combat antimicrobial resistance in their daily clinical practice. Currently, the page hosts two courses which are available in several UN and national languages: Antimicrobial Stewardship: A competency-based approach and Drug-resistant tuberculosis: how to interpret rapid molecular test results.
The “Stories from the field” page highlights how OpenWHO learning resources are being deployed in countries to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other health threats. To read these inspirational stories, please access the page under ‘Find out more’ in the top menu or click here.
You can now re-watch past #LearningSavesLives webinars on our new dedicated page here. Since February, the Learning and Capacity Development team, working in close coordination with other WHO Health Emergencies Programme teams, hosted 8 #LearningSavesLives webinars in multiple languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese). Learn from our panel of experts on a variety of topics and stay tuned for future sessions!
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator’s Country Readiness and Delivery workstream developed an OpenWHO training course for national and sub-national stakeholders on key aspects of COVID-19 vaccine deployment. The initial courses launched in December 2020 and were complemented by vaccine product-specific trainings in March 2021. As of June 2021, the Orientation to National Deployment and Vaccination Planning for COVID-19 Vaccines (NDVP) course had more than 15 000 learners in English alone and is available in over 13 languages.
A learner feedback survey was conducted from March to April 2021 to understand the impact of the trainings, usability for learners, and potential value of online training expansion for other immunizations. Using the survey responses and data available from the OpenWHO platform, WHO assessed the knowledge gained from participating in the course. The increase of knowledge from the course was assessed using the average score change between the pre-test and the post-test.
The scores increased by an average of 44% for the NDVP course from an average pre-test score of 51.5% to an average post-test score of 95.5%. Additionally, a substantially higher rate of the enrolled learners completed the course than the industry benchmark for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
The user feedback provides insight for WHO learning providers in health emergencies. Over 96% of the survey participants agreed that they have more confidence in performing their professional roles related to COVID-19 vaccination after taking the course. More than 60% of learners in the survey indicated that they prefer online learning over other training options. However, 44% of survey participants had at least one barrier to online learning (such as internet connection, IT related issues, not enough time to complete the course, language barriers, etc.). Despite these limitations, learners, all levels of WHO and partners have expressed strong interest in further expansion of the OpenWHO online learning courses
The old proverb states that necessity is the mother of invention. While webinars are not a particularly new invention, for OpenWHO.org their use marks the beginning of a new, powerful platform for engaging and expanding its user base in the health emergency preparedness and response arena.
Since February, participation in webinars has been substantial: nearly 20 000 participants have attended a total of 12 webinars produced with OpenWHO collaboration. If we were to equate our reach in terms of filling a stadium, it would compare to filling two-thirds of the Stade de Genève, Lancy (capacity 30 000) with participants.
As we all know, the ongoing pandemic has been marked by the rapid emergence of massive amounts of new knowledge on how to respond. This new knowledge is often presented in isolation, with little context or space for analysis and reflection, and countered by misinformation and disinformation. The flood of information is overwhelming, and the noise that comes with it distracts from what is free and available. Helping address this is at the heart of the new webinar series.
In practical terms, late last year, the Learning and Capacity Development team, working in close coordination with other WHO Health Emergencies Programme teams, realized that there was an opportunity and a clear need to empower the millions who were already taking advantage of OpenWHO.org COVID-19 course offerings, bring context and grow our shared learner base. With this in mind, the #LearningSavesLives webinar series was born.
As Heini Utunen, who manages the OpenWHO platform, explains: "We wanted to help our users connect the dots, to help transform the available information into applicable, powerful knowledge... to help them realize how they could better capitalize on the growing universe of COVID-19 courses being offered in multiple languages... to bring opportunities to maximize that knowledge by hearing the experiences of those working in the field and WHO experts."
As the pandemic continues, webinars have endured as a popular interactive tool to transfer life-saving knowledge to all corners of the globe. Grounded on OpenWHO.org principles of equity, free access and lifelong learning, these webinars provide a unique opportunity for anyone with an internet connection to interact directly with experts and those in the field.
Since February, we have held 8 #LearningSavesLives webinars in multiple languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese). In June, a second limited-duration multilingual webinar series was launched in English, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, French and Arabic. This forward-looking joint online training is titled, "Build back better: Harnessing South-South cooperation and risk reduction planning for resilient and healthy cities in the post COVID-19 era" and was co-organized with the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Global Education and Training Institute (GETI).
While the summer season in the northern hemisphere will be quieter in terms of the number of webinars, the autumn will see more taking place. We invite you to stay tuned, present us with ideas, partner with us and help us share information about future sessions so more people can benefit from the product of our shared collaboration.
Together we can help end this pandemic and begin to set the path to build back better a post-pandemic world.
'One Health' is an approach in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. One area of work in which a One Health approach is particularly relevant includes the control of zoonoses (diseases that can spread between animals and humans, such as avian flu, rabies and Rift Valley Fever) where efforts by just one sector cannot prevent or eliminate the problem. A One Health approach is key to the management of shared threats for future outbreaks and pandemics at the human-animal-environment interface.
Three new courses are available on the OpenWHO One Health Channel, allowing learners from around the globe to explore principles and best practices for a One Health approach for zoonotic diseases. The first course introduces the critical role of international frameworks to help human and animal health sectors ‘bridge’ their work to meet shared goals for disease preparedness and response. Once learners understand the role of collaborative work in their country context, they can then explore the practical approaches set forth in the Tripartite Zoonoses Guide and its operational tools. The second course offering on the One Health channel allows learners to explore and navigate the technical chapters of the Tripartite Zoonoses Guide in more depth, using country examples to propel their learning to the next level. And finally, a training for implementers is available for those interested in using the Joint Risk Assessment operational tool to asses and manage zoonotic diseases hazards at national and subnational levels.
Join us today and begin exploring the principles and best practices for a One Health approach in countries!
You can access the most recent newsletter here. The newsletter highlights are also available in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
This training package aims to develop consistent learning standards across the emergency response workforce, equipping participants with essential competencies needed to work across the various levels of response.
We invite you to enrol in the courses of this training package:
Intertwined: Diseases of man and beast and their impact on lives and livelihoods
On World Zoonosis Day 2021, 6 July 14:00 (CET), join our global panel of experts and practitioners to discuss the impact zoonotic diseases have on our lives, health, and livelihoods and discuss how we can build the capacity and systems to address the impact of zoonotic diseases.
You can register for this webinar here.
Celebrating 100 course topics
We are pleased to announce OpenWHO’s 100th course topic. The course focuses on management strategies when caring for patients with mild, moderate, and severe COVID-19.
New translations
The following 13 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
ePROTECT in Kazakh
IPC for COVID-19 in Kazakh
COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers in Kazakh
IPC leadership in Albanian and Azerbaijani
Introduction to COVID-19 in Kazakh
Neglected tropical diseases in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spanish and French
Health and peace in Arabic
Clinical care SARI in Kazakh
Operational Planning Guidelines and COVID-19 Partners Platform to support country preparedness and response in Kazakh
Clinical management of patients with COVID-19: Rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19 in Chinese
Personal protective equipment in Kazakh
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now offers 35 courses on COVID-19, spread across 52 languages. All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language. You can also access our catalogues which show all courses and languages available for COVID-19 and other health-related topics here.
The Serving Countries channel offers learning resources to support a country's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other health threats. Created in collaboration with WHO Country Offices and Ministries of Health, resources based on WHO scientific guidance are available in each country’s official language(s) to empower frontline health workers, policymakers, and the public. So far, the following country pages are available: India, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, and Viet Nam.
COVID-19 Vaccines channel
The new COVID-19 Vaccines channel provides health workers, national and subnational focal points, and partners with the information to ensure safe and efficient COVID-19 vaccine delivery. The following courses are currently available under this channel: COVID-19 vaccine-specific resources; Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines, and COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers.
Go.Data channel
This channel provides resources to learn how to use the Go.Data software for contact tracing and data collection in outbreak response. The channel offers online training courses in several languages and short how-to video tutorials that demonstrate how to use key functionalities of the Go.Data software.
This page hosts video recordings of presentations given by WHO experts from a variety of fields at conferences and other forums, so that this essential knowledge can continue to be shared across the globe.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
Celebrating World Zoonoses Day 2021
Date: Tuesday, 6th July 2021
Time: 14:00 - 15:30 Central European Time
Panelists:
Did you know the majority of infectious diseases in people are of animal origin? We call these zoonotic diseases. Seven out of ten new disease discovered the last decade – including the virus that is responsible for the COVID19 pandemic, are caused by pathogens which jumped from animals to humans. The truth is that our lives and health are closely intertwined with animals and the environment in which we all live. On World Zoonosis Day 2021, join our global panel of experts and practitioners to discuss the impact zoonotic diseases have on our lives, health, and livelihoods and discuss how we can build the capacity and systems to address the impact of zoonotic diseases.
Moderator: Dr Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning & Capacity Development, Health Emergencies Programme, WHO
Zoonosis related courses on OpenWHO👇
#OpenWHO #LearningSavesLives #HealthForAll #BuildingsustainablesystemforOneHealth
Today marks 4 years of open-source learning operations on OpenWHO.org. The online platform was designed to be readily scalable for a global pandemic. As it entered its 4th year of operations, the platform was already in a real-time pandemic test – and serves the world by delivering WHO’s evidence-based learning materials in free and accessible online formats in a massive scale.
OpenWHO use and reach has expanded over the years, with massive growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform opened to the public with the launch of a Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) course in June 2017.
The first pilot course on the platform was launched with African region in March 2017 on Managing 21st Century Epidemics. The pilot was a positive experience, including its accessibility in low-bandwidth environments, a key priority for the OpenWHO team. Currently, ¾ users of the platform are from the low- and middle-income countries.
We are soon up in 100 different course topics, in 53 languages and counting. OpenWHO hosts 5.3 million enrolments from all over the world and reaches very high completion rates, average 60 % (2.9 million certificates). We have nearly 10 million words translated. Thank you for all learners for having joined!
Today, on UN Russian Language Day, OpenWHO celebrates over 25 000 enrolments across 17 courses available in the Russian language. The OpenWHO platform, developed utilizing Russian Federation funds and launched in 2017, is WHO’s interactive, web-based, knowledge-transfer platform offering free online courses to improve responses to health emergencies.
Together with the WHO European Region Office, OpenWHO launched its first online course in Russian in June 2019 on the WHO Incident Management System (IMS). The number of courses and course enrolments on the OpenWHO learning platform in Russian language has only seen an increase throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since June 2019, OpenWHO has published 17 Russian language courses with 13 of these published since January 2020 specific to COVID-19. This includes multiple course offered for frontline responders and decision makers on COVID-19 on topics ranging from infection prevention and control (IPC) to COVID-19 vaccine-specific resources. As new WHO guidance and tools are released, the Russian language courses are updated, ensuring all courses cover up-to-date and accurate information. The remaining 4 course topics launched in Russian cover other critical health topics such as Antimicrobial Resistance and Tobacco Control and the translation of more courses into Russian is underway. All Russian courses are accessible here.
You can access the most recent newsletter here. The newsletter highlights are also available in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses:
Prevention, identification, and management of infections in health workers in the context of COVID-19: This course will highlight the epidemiology and risk factors associated with health worker infections with SARS-CoV-2; review measures that can be put in place to reduce risks; support identification of infection in health workers and review strategies for managing health workers to safely return to work post-infection.
Clinical management of patients with COVID-19: Initial approach to the acutely ill patient: The aim of this training is to prepare and support health providers as they provide emergency care to seriously ill patients.
Transmission-based precautions: This course will cover the main modes of transmission; what precautions can be used to stop the spread of COVID-19 and what personal protective equipment is required when caring for patients.
Coming soon
New translations
The following 15 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 34 courses on COVID-19, spread across 49 languages. All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language. You can also access our catalogues which shows all courses and languages available for COVID-19 and other health-related topics here.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR GETI), United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and WHO have joined together to deliver a unique online training for local authorities and urban practitioners on Build Back Better: Harnessing South-South cooperation and risk reduction planning for resilient and healthy cities in the post COVID-19 era. The training will be held on the 8, 15, 22 and 29 June 2021, with a total of 4 online sessions, one end-of-course assessment, and one post-course survey.
You can find more information here. You can register for the online training here.
Working with WHO expert teams OpenWHO has launched several courses to transfer critical knowledge on vaccination for the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. The following courses are currently available in all UN languages and other national languages: COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers, Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines and the COVID-19 vaccine specific resources.
After successfully completing a COVID-19 related course, OpenWHO users can now share their record of achievements certification with a verification link which will confirm the authenticity of the certificate.
The aim of this course is to better prepare clinicians who frequently prescribe antimicrobials with the knowledge and tools to improve their use of these essential medications in daily clinical practice. The Antimicrobial Stewardship course has been made available recently in Spanish and Russian. The course is also available in English, French, and Italian.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
On April 23, to celebrate the International Spanish Language Day, the Pan American Health Organization PAHO and OpenWHO co-hosted a webinar with testimonies on how the virtual training has been instrumental in defending public health and protecting lives in the Americas. During the webinar speakers from across the Americas shared their experiences on how PAHO's Virtual Campus and OpenWHO platforms enabled rapid national scale-up for training during the first year COVID19 pandemic, making life-saving knowledge available, accessible and locally contextualized.
Watch the webinar recording here.
#LearningSavesLives Webinar Series
Data: 5 de maio de 2021
Hora: 8:00h Brasil, 11:00h São Tomé e Príncipe, 12h Angola, 13h Suíça / Moçambique, 20h Timor-Leste
Orador principal
Palestrantes
Moderador
Responder aos desafios colocados pela pandemia da COVID-19 requer o uso de todas as ferramentas que a humanidade tem à sua disposição - uma das mais importantes é garantir que os trabalhadores da linha de frente em todo o mundo tenham acesso ao conhecimento mais recente em seu próprio idioma. A língua portuguesa não é apenas uma das línguas mais difundidas no mundo, - com mais de 265 milhões de falantes espalhados por todos os continentes - mas também a língua mais falada no hemisfério sul. O português é um dos principais idiomas de comunicação internacional e uma língua com forte projeção geográfica destinada a crescer, especialmente em África.
Por ocasião do Dia Internacional da Língua Portuguesa, ouviremos em primeira mão como falantes de português em todo o mundo estão respondendo à pandemia, e como os mais recentes conhecimentos sobre a COVID-19 estão sendo disponibilizados para serem usados e disseminados em todo o mundo. Exploraremos as oportunidades de aprendizagem disponíveis para falantes de português, e mapearemos alguns dos desafios futuros que se colocam, não só na resposta à atual pandemia mas também no acesso a conhecimentos essenciais de saúde pública que ajudarão as sociedades a se reconstruirem melhor após a pandemia.
A equipe da OpenWHO.org comemorou recentemente o primeiro aniversário da publicação de seu primeiro curso COVID-19. Desde então, disponibilizamos 29 cursos COVID-19 em diversos idiomas, sendo 9 deles o português. Embora tenhamos tido uma aceitação significativa durante a pandemia, com mais de 5 milhões de inscrições na plataforma OpenWHO, sabemos que muitos mais falantes da língua portuguesa poderiam se beneficiar do conhecimento oferecido pela OpenWHO
#OpenWHO #LearningSavesLives #HealthForAll #linguaportuguesa #aprenderemportuguês
The rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic called for the latest science and technical knowledge on COVID-19 to be disseminated quickly to Indonesia's health workforce. Amidst various information sources, health workers seek a credible source of knowledge to guide them in responding to COVID-19. OpenWHO courses provide trusted and structured courses based on the latest science to fill in the knowledge gap in the COVID-19 response.
WHO Indonesia technical team selects the courses to be disseminated based on identified needs on the ground. All course materials are translated into the Indonesian language and context, with a rigorous editing process to ensure technical accuracy. On 7 March 2020, in a matter of days since the first COVID-19 case was reported in the country, WHO in Indonesia launched the first OpenWHO course on ePROTECT and Infection Prevention and Control in the Indonesian language.
To broaden the reach of OpenWHO, courses are promoted widely through social media, email, and group chats across our networks and partners. Each course information and registration link are also announced on the Ministry of Health's (MoH) emerging diseases website and the Indonesian Hospital Association (PERSI) 's website.
MoH Head of Basic Immunization Unit, Dr Dyan Sawitri, said that OpenWHO courses have equipped her team with the technical knowledge and operational know-how needed to strengthen Indonesia's COVID-19 response. The 'COVID 19 vaccination training for health workers', in particular, has provided comprehensive information that covers vaccine types, logistical procedures, cold chain preparation, and implementation steps. More than 1300 participants have enrolled in this training since it was launched on 24 February 2021
"The OpenWHO course on COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers course has provided technical knowledge on all aspects of COVID-19 vaccination for my team and health workers in general. We often get questions from the subnational level on different aspects of COVID-19, and we always refer to WHO recommendations and content from the OpenWHO course as one of our key references. A well-trained and confident health workforce is a crucial pillar to ensure safe vaccination across Indonesia, and OpenWHO is strengthening our health workforce with the latest science," said Dr Dyan. "Communication aspects of COVID-19 vaccination are important to fight misinformation, and it is also a topic that is rarely discussed in technical health meetings, so it is good to see that this topic is covered as part of the OpenWHO course", she said.
The MoH continues to adopt various WHO technical guidance in the national technical guidance on COVID-19 response. Content from the OpenWHO courses is also adopted in MoH training modules. As of 12 April 2021, more than 27 000 participants have enrolled in the eight OpenWHO courses available in Indonesian.
OpenWHO欢庆中国语言日!
在COVID-19全球大流行期间，OpenWHO持续出品了许多中文课程。现在平台上已有10个不同主题的中文课程上线。
今天就加入我们： https://openwho.org/courses?lang=cn
#学习拯救生命
OpenWHO celebrates the Chinese language day!
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, OpenWHO has continued to produce courses in Chinese, currently hosting 10 different topical courses.
Join today: https://openwho.org/courses?lang=cn
#LearningSavesLives
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Celebrating UN Spanish Language Day and its importance in bringing life-saving knowledge to the frontline in the Americas during health emergencies
Into the second year of the COVID19 pandemic, real-time training has become a mainstay of the COVID-19 response. On 23 April, to mark the International day of Spanish language, the Pan American Health organization and The World Health Organization will co-host a webinar on how virtual training has been instrumental in saving lives and protecting those at risk in the Americas. The webinar will be in Spanish with interpretation in English and will focus on how the PAHO Virtual Campus and the global OpenWHO.org platforms quickly scaled up training and made life-saving knowledge available in languages of the Americas. Join experts and practitioners from across the region and globally to discover how they innovated to bring knowledge and skills to the frontline.
You can register for this webinar here.
The World Health Organization invites you to participate in an online public consultation on the draft WHO Global Learning Strategy. The objective of this consultation is to assess the level to which the approach, objectives, and goal of the draft Learning Strategy respond to the life-long-learning needs and capacity development efforts in stakeholder organizations.
The study is in two parts - the end of the first round has been set for 23 April. You can access the online public consultation here.
Working with WHO expert teams, OpenWHO launched several courses to transfer critical knowledge on vaccination for the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, the COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers course is available in all UN languages and several other national languages such as Portuguese, Indonesian, or Vietnamese. The Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines course is now available in English, Chinese, French, and Russian with Spanish and Arabic to come soon.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses which have recently become available on OpenWHO:
COVID-19 vaccine-specific resources: The purpose of this course is to provide key information about COVID-19 vaccines and it is intended to be used by vaccinators, clinicians, logisticians, and other focal points involved in COVID-19 vaccination. The course is available in all UN languages and Portuguese.
Guidance on mask use in the context of COVID-19: This course is based on scientific evidence and WHO guidance relevant to the use of masks for reducing the spread of COVID-19 virus in different settings.
Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - Initial approach to the acutely ill patient: The goal of this training is to prepare and support health providers as they provide emergency care to seriously ill patients. Coming soon
New translations
The following 32 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 204 courses for COVID-19 spread across 47 languages and 30 topics. You can access our catalogue which shows all courses and languages available for COVID-19 here. For other health-related topics, you can access the catalogue here
Applications for WHO's global infodemic manager training course are open. This cohort will be the second group of professionals to become skilled and certified WHO infodemic responders. Upon completion of the training, they can be deployed to different country assignments around the globe. WHO is proud to partner again with US CDC for this infodemic management training. US CDC is providing technical expertise, facilitation, and training support.
Find the full guidelines for how to apply here.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
COVID19 has profoundly shaken the time-tested traditions of education in medicine and health. As millions of medical and other health sciences students and their teachers remained in lockdown, dispersed across geographies, new methods of approaching distance and distributed learning have come to the fore. Some believe that medical education will never be the same again. While universities were able to make the shift from lecture halls to digital classrooms, with varying degrees of success for knowledge transfer, transferring skills and competency development that are essential for the caring professions, remain a major challenge. The know-do gap is now in sharp focus. How will the COVID19-inspired changes to medical and health sciences education, offered by universities and in-service training, evolve? Are we looking at the future of medical and health professional education
Webinar replay: https://youtu.be/UVRmIT6Zevo
Link to a short video with quotes: https://youtu.be/qcEACTisisg
The OpenWHO platform prioritizes translation of learning resources to reach populations as extensively as possible. Providing courses in learners' languages can help remove the barriers to learning and make it accessible to more learners. This means providing learning in the languages of those in need. OpenWHO hosts a COVID-19 explanatory resource in Indian sign language. This is currently being accessed by 53 000 learners, and 47 000 have already received a certificate of participation.
This learning resource is an example of OpenWHOs collaboration with volunteers around the globe who have generously offered to translate WHO's COVID-19 learning materials into additional languages to reach as many people as possible.
The Introductory COVID-19 course in Indian Sign Language can be accessed here
Knowledge saves lives, even more so during outbreaks of novel diseases when one’s understanding of the emergency and the public health measures exercised in response develop frequently. During visits to health facilities, laboratories and community centres, the staff at World Health Organization (WHO) Kazakhstan are often told by frontline medical responders that there is a never-ending need for learning that can be practically exercised to save lives.
In Kazakhstan, the WHO team has capitalised on OpenWHO’s evidence-based courses, which provide frontline responders with life-saving knowledge on various topics relevant to COVID-19, all for free. To name a few, the courses on infection prevention and control, case management, and emergency operations centres provide critical information that healthcare workers need to keep themselves and others safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We support healthcare workers in Kazakhstan daily, travelling to the locations where cases are on the rise and providing on-site consultation to doctors and patients, as well as policymakers. OpenWHO is a great help to us to ensure that healthcare workers have the required theoretical basis to work during COVID-19 response,” stated Professor Bakhyt Kosherova from Karagandy Medical University.
To promote the OpenWHO courses, WHO Kazakhstan has established an operational partnership with Kazakhstan’s specialised governmental agency for post-graduate education, medical professional associations, medical universities, and alumni groups. In January 2021, the team conducted seven awareness sessions for a range of national stakeholders. Currently, OpenWHO courses are being promoted through professional networks, Ministry of Health webpages and agencies and influencers referenced in training curricula. OpenWHO’s most popular COVID-19 courses are being translated into Kazakh by WHO, which will ease incorporating the material into the training curriculum for Kazakh medical students and health workers.
“OpenWHO enrolments from Kazakhstan have increased six-fold since the WHO country office began promoting the platform in 2020. However, we aim for the ambitious objective of reaching every healthcare worker responding to COVID-19 in Kazakhstan, regardless of their role. There are OpenWHO courses for every level of healthcare proficiency. Together with my colleagues from the WHO Regional Office for Europe, located in Copenhagen, we trained more than 4,000 healthcare workers last year through online webinars. Now, we are excited to engage in OpenWHO, another valuable channel for learning, offering self-paced courses that healthcare workers can complete on their own and at a time convenient for them,” remarked Dr Vitalii Stetsyk, a member of the WHO country team in Kazakhstan.
Dr Stetsyk shared WHO Kazakhstan's experience reaching frontline learners during the first WHO #LearningSavesLives webinar, which was held on 19 February ahead of World Day of Social Justice. The webinar also included speakers from Somalia, Suriname and Tajikistan. The next session will explore the challenges women face learning in emergencies, marking International Women's Day on 8 March. Register here to join.
As of February 2021, OpenWHO offers 27 courses on COVID-19, available in 45 languages. To find free courses in your language, click here.
Testimonies from International Women's Day 2021 #LearningSavesLives Webinar
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically highlights the need of every frontline health worker- no matter how remote or isolated - to access life-saving knowledge and learning opportunities. As we look forward, reaching the light at the end of the tunnel for the COVID-19 pandemic, will require decisive efforts to ensure that existing inequities are effectively tackled – especially those faced by women. While women make up 70% of the global health and social care workforce, they are often underpaid or unpaid. And while their contribution is outsized, women constitute less than 25% of leadership roles in health, thus limiting their contributions to decision and policy making.
The statistics are of significance not only because a large percentage of women face ongoing discrimination or bias, but also because they are confronted by the greatest risks during health emergencies. This is not only wrong from the perspective of equity and human rights, but its continuation also negatively impacts outcomes from a social, economic and management perspective. During this webinar, the panelist, practitioners and keynote speakers #ChoseToChallenge the barriers women face to access lifesaving information training & learning.
Keynote speaker quotes:
“Women’s contribution to health is enormous, so it is time we need to step forward and reclaim our space, we need to claim the seat to the table. That really reminds me about this quote from a colleague Shirley who said “if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring your folding chair”. So we really need a lot of folding chairs now so that women can really contribute to the decision-making and lead the COVID-19 response so we can also lead the recovery.” Savior Flomo Mendin, County Manager, Grand Bassa County, Last Mile Health, Liberia
“There has to be a place for women at every decision making table. Women are not only doers, they need to shape the environment in which we are moving forward.” Dr Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning & Capacity Development, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization
“All of us can be leaders in this pandemic, but we need women & girls to be provided the opportunities to do so and to be listen to”, Dr Maria D Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead COVID-19, WHO Health Emergencies Programme
“We probably need to recognise that the problem has been recognised. But to understand that the problem has not been adressed...“, Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme
According to a survey conducted in the first week of March 2021 among OpenWHO users, the top five challenges access to learning were Time (48%), Cost (45%), Digital access (24%), Not knowing where to access reliable source learning materials (24%), and language (19%). Female respondents were twice as likely to choose time and cost compared to male respondents.
The enabling factors were OpenWHO platform as easily accessible, with no cost, informative, simple and suitable for everyone. Also supervisor and colleague support of online learning was listed being helpful.
The COVID19 pandemic has increasingly brought more women to learn on the OpenWHO.org platform. Whereas prior the pandemic, about 70-80 % of learners in all courses were men, now the learner enrolment is equal between women and men.
Webinar replay: bit.ly/3qpMciv
Link to a short video with quotes: https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aub5xRpaC_E1kQi90FPnOGv5V3_t?e=3Kujcj
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
We are pleased to announce the following courses which have recently become available on OpenWHO:
Strengthening collaboration between human and animal health sectors for improved health security: This webinar-based course provides insight into some of WHO’s work at the animal-human-environment interface.
Introduction to Infection Prevention and Control (IPC): Infection prevention and control (IPC) is an essential component of healthcare quality and patient safety. In this module you will learn how and why healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occur and how IPC reduces their risk and spread.
New courses launched for COVID-19
COVID-19 and work: Staying healthy and safe at work during the COVID-19 pandemic: This course is intended to guide workers and their representatives, business leaders, managers, as well as occupational health and safety professionals in protecting their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 Infodemic management: Risk communication and community engagement challenges): The course covers key RCCE and then shows how they can be operationalized in the context of an extended outbreak that affects different populations with varied risk levels.
Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - Rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19: This course provides crucial knowledge on the rehabilitation needs of patients recovering from COVID-19, including patients with cognitive impairment, physical deconditioning and weakness, respiratory impairment, swallow impairment, communication impairment and challenges in completing activities of daily living.
Leadership and programme management in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC): In this course, we will explore characteristics of a leader and different types of leadership, and how leadership skills are essential for effective communication and conflict management.
Neglected tropical diseases in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: impact and guidance: This course provides a general introduction to the diseases, discusses the impact of COVID-19 on NTD programmes, and focuses on the adaptations needed to safely and effectively fight NTDs, in light of the disruption to health services caused by the pandemic.
New translations
The following 17 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 169 courses for COVID-19 spread across 45 languages and 27 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
Introduction to COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Amharic, Bengali, Dari, Fulah, German, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indian Sign Language, Indonesian, Kurdish, Latvian, Macedonian, Marathi, Oriya, Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Swahili, Tetum, Turkish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Yoruba and Zulu)
Clinical care SARI (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Tetum and Vietnamese)
Health and safety briefing for respiratory diseases – ePROTECT (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Bengali, Indonesian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Sinhala, Tetum, Thai and Vietnamese)
IPC for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Bengali, Dutch, Farsi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Tetum, Turkish and Vietnamese)
COVID-19 operational planning guidelines and partners platform to support country preparedness and response (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian and Portuguese)
SARI treatment facility design (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Italian, Portugues, Tetum, and Vietnamese)
An introduction to Go.Data (available in English, Spanish and Mongolian)
How to put on and remove PPE for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Sinhala, Somali, Tamil, Tetum, Thai and Turkish)
Standard precautions for hand hygiene (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Sinhala, Somali, Tamil, Tetum and Turkish)
Standard precautions for waste management (available in English and Tetum)
Decontamination and sterilization of medical devices (available in English)
Standard precautions for environmental cleaning and disinfection (available in English, Indonesian and Tetum)
Standard precautions for injection safety and needle-stick injury management (available in English and Tetum)
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) core components and multimodal strategies (available in English)
Basic microbiology (available in English)
WHO COVID-19 Mass Gatherings Risk Assessment Training (available in English)
Occupational health and safety for health workers in the context of COVID-19 (available in English, Spanish, Macedonian, Portuguese, and Swahili)
Long-term care facilities in the context of COVID-19 (available in English, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, and Indonesian)
Course 1: Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - General considerations (available in English, Albanian, and Macedonian)
Management and Facilitation of a Country COVID-19 Intra-Action Review (IAR) (available in English)
COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers (available in English and Indonesian)
Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines (available in English)
Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - Rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19 (available in English)
Neglected tropical diseases in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: impact and guidance (available in English)
Leadership and programme management in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) (available in English)
COVID-19 and work: Staying healthy and safe at work during the COVID-19 pandemic (available in English)
COVID-19 Infodemic management: Risk communication and community engagement challenges (available in English)
To mark the coming International Women's Day on Monday 8 March, OpenWHO would like to explore the challenges women face with regard to learning in an emergency. We want to hear how women are using OpenWHO materials to reduce the gaps in access to health emergencies knowledge in their communities, organisations, and with peers. Help us to understand better the challenges women face by completing this short survey for International Women's Day here.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
Today we mark 1 year since we launched WHO’s first online learning course on COVID-19. Although we could not have known at the time, our quick action helped to get essential knowledge for managing the pandemic to frontline responders and decision-makers.
Back then, no one knew about the new virus, but our WHO experts helped the OpenWHO team to gather and adapt existing WHO evidence on the novel coronavirus (later named COVID-19) and guidance on managing severe acute respiratory pathogens into learning courses. Course production accelerated as the first WHO Emergency Committee meeting took place 22-23 January 2020 and, fulfilling the requirements of WHO’s Emergency Response Framework, the first learning resource was put together over the next 72 hours and launched on 26 January 2020. All this took place even before a Public Health Emergency of International Concern was declared on 30 January 2020.
Since then, the OpenWHO.org platform had grown to nearly 5 million learner registrations, mostly in our 25 free online COVID-19 courses in 44 languages. WHO’s technical-guidance-based first course “Introduction to COVID-19” is available on OpenWHO and the Pan American Health Organization’s Virtual Campus platform, and hosts more than 1.1 million total enrolments across 36 language versions. As new knowledge becomes available, course content is regularly updated. This is the first time in WHO’s history that we have been able to launch fast, high-quality, accessible learning on a massive scale to manage any health threat.
As the WHO Director-General has stated: OpenWHO is a powerful proof of concept for the WHO Academy and other future initiatives.
Lessons learnt
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant and rapid increase in all forms of digital learning. It has proven the power of online learning by using equity of access as a foundational principle for equity for all learners across the world to address knowledge and skills gaps. Online learning is no longer a temporary replacement, but a new way of working more efficiently and equitably. It is a basic part of the ecosystem needed to create a culture of lifelong learning in health. Below are some lessons learnt from the massive online learning delivery:
The WHO Academy has launched its first augmented reality course for health workers on the proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE). This short course is available on the Academy’s mobile learning app for all health workers globally.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical importance of health workers properly using their PPE to protect themselves and their patients.
Using their smartphones, learners can observe a lifelike, animated nurse - who appears through their screens to have joined them in their room or space - demonstrating the proper use of PPE.
The course is free and can be taken from a smartphone anywhere, anytime. It takes about 20 minutes to complete and is available in 7 languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Working with WHO expert teams, OpenWHO launched the following courses to transfer critical knowledge on vaccination for the evolving COVID-19 pandemic:
COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers: All health workers involved in implementation of COVID-19 vaccination need to have adequate knowledge and skills in order to ensure safe and efficient COVID-19 vaccine administration to specific priority groups as per country policy. This course provides general information on the disease and specific information on storage, handling and administration of the vaccine, recording and monitoring (including for adverse events following immunization (AEFI)), and communication (acceptance and demand) through a series of short video lectures and quizzes to test your knowledge. The course targets frontline health workers who will be vaccinators and also priority recipients.
Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines: The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator’s Country Readiness and Delivery workstream has released Guidance on developing a national deployment and vaccination plan (NDVP) for COVID-19 vaccines. This training package is intended to support national and sub-national focal points in preparing for COVID-19 vaccination. The training provides an overview of key aspects of the Guidance on developing a national deployment and vaccination plan for COVID-19 vaccines and highlights available and upcoming resources for COVID-19 vaccine introduction. Coming soon
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following courses that have also recently become available on OpenWHO:
Management and Facilitation of a Country COVID-19 Intra-Action Review (IAR): The Country COVID-19 Intra-Action Review (IAR) is a facilitated process that brings together COVID-19 responders from multiple sectors for experience sharing and collective learning, and it has been modelled after the WHO After Action Review (AAR) methodology. This course provides a general introduction to the management and the facilitation of an IAR during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC): Experience has shown that timely implementation of a PHEOC provides an essential platform for the management of public health emergencies and can help avoid common failings such as lack of clear leadership leading to delayed decision making, mismanagement of resources and poor coordination. This online course is designed as a companion to WHO’s Framework for a Public Health Emergency Operations Centre and is aimed at health emergency preparedness and response professionals, policy makers and partners seeking to implement and sustain Public Health Emergency Operations Centres.
New translations
The following 4 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 147 courses for COVID-19 spread across 42 languages and 22 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
Introduction to COVID-19: methods for detection, prevention, response and control (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Amharic, Bengali, Dari, German, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indian Sign Language, Indonesian, Kurdish, Macedonian, Marathi, Oriya, Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Somali, Swahili, Tetum, Turkish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Yoruba and Zulu)
Clinical care SARI (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Tetum and Vietnamese)
Health and safety briefing for respiratory diseases – ePROTECT (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Bengali, Indonesian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Sinhala, Tetum and Vietnamese)
IPC for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Bengali, Dutch, Farsi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Tetum, Turkish and Vietnamese)
COVID-19 operational planning guidelines and partners platform to support country preparedness and response (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian and Portuguese)
SARI treatment facility design (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tetum, and Vietnamese)
An introduction to Go.Data (available in English, Spanish and Mongolian)
How to put on and remove PPE for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Somali, Tetum, Thai and Turkish)
Standard precautions for hand hygiene (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Sinhala, Somali, Tetum and Turkish)
Standard precautions for waste management (available in English and Tetum)
Decontamination and sterilization of medical devices (available in English)
Standard precautions for environmental cleaning and disinfection (available in English and Tetum)
Standard precautions for injection safety and needle-stick injury management (available in English)
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) core components and multimodal strategies (available English)
Basic microbiology (available in English)
WHO COVID-19 Mass Gatherings Risk Assessment Training (available in English)
Occupational health and safety for health workers in the context of COVID-19 (available English, Macedonian, Portuguese and Spanish)
Long-term care facilities in the context of COVID-19 (English, Dutch and Indonesian)
Course 1: Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - General considerations (English)
COVID-19 vaccination training for health workers
Management and Facilitation of a Country COVID-19 Intra-Action Review (IAR)
Orientation to national deployment and vaccination planning for COVID-19 vaccines:
As 2020 draws to a close, the OpenWHO team would like to express our sincere thanks to each and every one of you for learning and growing with us during the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that #KnowledgeSavesLives – and that is especially true during emergencies. Please watch our one-minute video message here.
In the new year, we are committed to continuing to provide free access to expert knowledge to help you manage the pandemic and improve public health. We challenge each of you to help us spread the word about these free learning resources by bringing 20 people you know to the OpenWHO platform in 2021. Wishing you all a safe and healthy new year.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
We are thrilled to share our COVID-19 learning response work has been recognized internationally. Last night, the health emergencies learning platform OpenWHO.org powered by Hasso Plattner Institute solutions was awarded Gold Winner for the 'Best international digital transformation of a training programme in response to COVID-19' by the Learning Technologies Awards.
This Award belongs to us all, as the success is based on the strong collaborative work with all technical teams over the past years and in particular during the COVID-19 learning response this year.
Here is the citation from the Award: “The judges were impressed by the speed and scalability of OpenWHO, the dynamic learning environment created to lead and facilitate a worldwide frontline response to the pandemic now and in the future. Responding to evidence, OpenWHO is constantly updating vital information and functionality as well as aggregating data to create extra value by, for example, predicting and identifying hotspots. A hugely worthy gold winner.”
The weblink is: https://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/the-class-of-2020
More than 350 private and public sector institutions participated, from 34 countries, and 61 judges screened nearly 500 entries. The OpenWHO team presented to the judges in September. Others shortlisted in our category included the British Council, Novartis, Open University of Hong Kong, University of Fort Hare and Metlife.
The OpenWHO team has also been honored to receive the following recognitions in the three years since its launch: Best Communication Paper Award at the International Conference on Informatics, Management and Technology in Health Care 2020; WHO Director-General's Award for Excellence 2018; Geneva Health Forum 2018 Jet d'Or prize; and Humanitarian Actor 2018 from Translators Without Borders.
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently, the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
The Certificate Guidelines page has recently been made available in Chinese. It is also available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish and can be found here.
OpenWHO’s courses on the Incident Management System (IMS) – WHO's command system to control health emergencies – are now available in six languages: Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The introductory course, IMS Tier 1, covers the minimum package for all personnel deployed in WHO emergency response, while the intermediate course, IMS Tier 2, builds on Tier 1 to provide a deeper understanding of the IMS. Additional languages such as Chinese are under development.
Quality clinical care is at the heart of a robust, effective response to outbreaks. Frontline health workers need evidence-based tools and training to provide safe, effective and quality clinical care.The new Clinical Management channel includes training courses on a range of diseases, such as Ebola, diphtheria, influenza and others. The channel will also host a full course series on COVID-19 which covers a holistic pathway of care of a patient, from screening and triage to rehabilitation and palliative care. To access COVID-19-related clinical care courses in additional languages, you can visit the COVID-19 national languages channel.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses which have has recently become available on OpenWHO:
New translations
The following 7 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updates continue to progress for the following materials. We thank you for your patience and will notify you once the updates have been finalized:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 140 courses for COVID-19 spread across 42 languages and 19 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
A general introduction to emerging respiratory viruses, including novel coronaviruses (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Amharic, Bengali, Dari, German, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indian Sign Language, Indonesian, Kurdish, Macedonian, Marathi, Oriya, Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Somali, Swahili, Tetum, Turkish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Yoruba and Zulu)
Clinical care SARI (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Tetum and Vietnamese)
Health and safety briefing for respiratory diseases – ePROTECT (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Bengali, Indonesian, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Sinhala, Tetum and Vietnamese)
IPC for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Bengali, Dutch, Farsi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Tetum, Turkish and Vietnamese)
COVID-19 operational planning guidelines and partners platform to support country preparedness and response (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian and Portuguese)
SARI treatment facility design (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tetum, and Vietnamese)
An introduction to Go.Data (available in English, Spanish and Mongolian)
How to put on and remove PPE for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Somali, Tetum, Thai and Turkish)
Standard precautions for hand hygiene (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Somali and Turkish)
Standard precautions for waste management (available in English)
Decontamination and sterilization of medical devices (available in English)
Standard precautions for environmental cleaning and disinfection (available in English and Tetum)
Standard precautions for injection safety and needle-stick injury management (available in English)
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) core components and multimodal strategies (available English)
Basic microbiology (available in English)
WHO COVID-19 Mass Gatherings Risk Assessment Training (available in English)
Occupational health and safety for health workers in the context of COVID-19 (available English, Macedonian and Portuguese)
Long-term care facilities in the context of COVID-19 (available in English, Dutch, and Indonesian)
Course 1: Clinical management of patients with COVID-19 - General considerations (available in English)
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The OpenWHO team has been updating its Ebola courses in response to the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The course "Introduction to Ebola" in Lingala has now been updated to reflect the latest technical guidance from WHO. All other languages versions of the course are currently up to date.
We are pleased to announce that the Healthy Ageing for Impact in the 21st Century: Global Online Leaders Training kicked off a second run on the OpenWHO platform on 14 September and will continue through December.
In the 21st century, demographic shifts are making a significant impact on the structure of populations, bringing forth the phenomenon of an ageing population.
This programme will equip participants with the skills and competencies needed to work in the area of ageing, enabling participants to become the change agents that are needed to generate and drive action for the Decade of Healthy Ageing. If you are interested in participating in future rounds of the course, please visit the registration page and sign up using your professional email address.
To enhance the WHO Health Emergencies Programme's (WHE) deployment and response capability, WHE proposed the development of a series of training packages to build staff competencies, skills and knowledge. IMS Tier 1 covers the mandatory minimum package that all personnel being deployed on a WHO health emergency response must complete. This course recently became available in Russian. It is also available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 course which has recently become available on OpenWHO:
New translations
The following 5 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Videos now available
Videos have recently been added to the following:
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updates continue to progress for the following materials. We thank you for your patience and will notify you once the updates have been finalised:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 132 courses for COVID-19 spread across 41 languages and 18 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
A general introduction to emerging respiratory viruses, including novel coronaviruses (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Amharic, Bengali, Dari, German, Hausa, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indian Sign Language, Indonesian, Kurdish, Macedonian, Marathi, Oriya, Oromo, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Somali, Swahili, Tetum, Turkish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Yoruba and Zulu)
Clinical care SARI (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Tetum and Vietnamese)
Health and safety briefing for respiratory diseases – ePROTECT (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Bengali, Indonesian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Tetum and Vietnamese)
IPC for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Bengali, Dutch, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Somali, Tetum, Turkish and Vietnamese)
COVID-19 operational planning guidelines and partners platform to support country preparedness and response (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian and Portuguese)
SARI treatment facility design (available in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tetum, and Vietnamese)
An introduction to Go.Data (available in English, Spanish and Mongolian)
How to put on and remove PPE for COVID-19 (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Albanian, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Somali, Tetum, Thai and Turkish)
Standard precautions for hand hygiene (available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Somali and Turkish)
Standard precautions for waste management (available in English)
Decontamination and sterilization of medical devices (available in English)
Standard precautions for environmental cleaning and disinfection (available in English and Tetum)
Standard precautions for injection safety and needle-stick injury management (available in English)
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) core components and multimodal strategies (available English)
Basic microbiology (available in English)
WHO COVID-19 Mass Gatherings Risk Assessment Training (available in English)
Occupational health and safety for health workers in the context of COVID-19 (available English)
Long-term care facilities in the context of COVID-19 (available in English)
The School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong (HKU SPH) and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) have partnered to offer a two-year training aimed at early to mid-career scholars from all over the world, with particular attention paid to scholars from the Asia-Pacific region. The NAM-HKU Fellowship in Global Health Leadership will initially run for three years, with one Fellow to be selected each year. The closing date for applications for the 2021/22 cohort is 30 November 2020. Please visit the HKU SPH website for further information: https://sph.hku.hk/en/nam-hkufellows
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The FAQ page has recently been made available in Chinese. It is also available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish and can be found here.
The Certificates tab is now available and can be found in each course's navigation toolbar. The Certificates tab allows you to download the certificates you have achieved in the course. It also features a link to the Certificates Guidelines page, which provides information about the types of certificates available on OpenWHO and how to become eligible for one. The Certificates Guidelines page is available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, with Chinese coming soon. It can also be found here.
We are pleased to announce the following course which has recently become available on OpenWHO:
New courses launched for COVID-19
New translations
The following 9 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Videos now available
Videos have recently been added to the following:
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updates continue to progress for the following materials. We thank you for your patience and will notify you once the updates have been finalised:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 126 courses for COVID-19 spread across 39 languages and 17 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
In recognition of World Mask Week, which runs from 7 to 14 August, the OpenWHO team would like to highlight its courses that illustrate how to safely wear a mask in the context of COVID-19.
The course Health and safety briefing for respiratory diseases – ePROTECT in English features video demonstrations that show how to put on and take off medical (Module 4) or fabric masks (Module 5). Those who prefer to access the videos in Indian Sign Language may do so here (Modules 2 and 3).
Masks alone will not stop the virus — we must do it all:
Last week, the Director-General of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced the #WearAMask challenge, which encourages the public to take a photo or a video of themselves wearing a mask, share it on social media and nominate friends to do the same. Dr Tedros noted "As well as being one of the key tools to stop the virus, the mask has come to represent solidarity...By wearing a mask, you’re sending a powerful message to those around you that we are all in this together."
You can access the most recent newsletter here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The FAQ page is now available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish and can be found here. Chinese to follow.
A short description of each channel is now available in Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Channels can be accessed by clicking on the "Channels" drop-down menu button that is located at the top of the OpenWHO homepage, between the "Home" and "Courses" buttons.
New courses launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 courses which have recently become available on OpenWHO:
New translations
The following 10 translations for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Videos now available
Videos have recently been added to the following:
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updates continue to progress for the following materials. We thank you for your patience and will notify you once the updates have been finalised:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 116 courses for COVID-19 spread across 38 languages and 16 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
The newsletter for June 2020 has been released. You can access it here. Please note that currently the newsletter is available in English only, but the newsletter highlights can be accessed in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
OpenWHO has been working to update its Ebola courses and make them more accessible in response to the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An introductory series is available in English, French, Lingala and Swahili and is currently being updated in collaboration with WHO technical experts to reflect the latest guidance. These modules were previously available in the Ebola knowledge resources pack. Additional resources have also been made available as individual courses for improved accessibility, including the Ebola GO 2.0 training in French and the Ebola clinical management course in Swahili.
The World Health Organization invites you to contribute your Big Idea to shape the future of training and learning in achieving better health for all. The submission form is available in English, French and Spanish. Just click on the relevant link below, select your language at the top of the page and submit your idea or approach in 500 words or less. Deadline for submissions extended until 10 July.
OpenWHO users can now select ‘Medical or health professional, such as a clinician, nurse, midwife or pharmacist’ in response to the question ‘What is your professional affiliation?’ in their personal profile. Please note that, if suitable, you may return to your profile and change your current selection.
Last week, the 100th course for COVID-19 was launched on OpenWHO. The 100th course (a general introduction to emerging respiratory viruses, including novel coronaviruses in Yoruba) was published on 26 June, exactly 5 months after the launch of the first COVID-19 course on the platform.
New course launched
We are pleased to announce the following COVID-19 course which has recently become available on OpenWHO:
New translations
The following 12 courses for COVID-19 have been launched this month:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Certificates now available
Participants can now gain a Confirmation of Participation if they complete 100% of the course material in the Introduction to COVID-19 video in Indian Sign Language course.
In addition, the quiz rules in the following courses have been changed to allow for unlimited attempts on the assessments:
Videos now available
Videos have recently been added to the following courses:
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updates continue to progress for the following course. We thank you for your patience and will notify you once the updates have been finalised:
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 103 resources for COVID-19 spread across 34 languages and 13 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
OpenWHO launched its 100th course to support the response to coronavirus disease on 26 June, exactly 5 months after launching its first COVID-19 course.
This milestone course provides an introduction to COVID-19 in Yoruba. The introductory course is also under development in Punjabi, Zulu, Igbo, Somali and Oromo.
OpenWHO knows from experience and research that people prefer information in their own language. That's why the free learning platform has prioritized the translation of COVID-19 courses not only into the 6 official UN languages, but also into diverse national languages spoken across the globe, to help localize the response.
In total, OpenWHO offers courses on 13 different COVID-19 topics across 31 languages. The platform has nearly 3.7 million course enrolments, with new users joining every day.
OpenWHO hosts a growing series of courses addressing infection prevention and control (IPC) topics on the platform’s COVID-19 learning channel.
The WHO IPC team partnered with OpenWHO to adapt existing learning materials for the OpenWHO platform to reach a broader audience, strengthening IPC in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An injection safety course was launched 23 June. Other courses cover hand hygiene (now in 4 languages), waste management, decontamination of medical devices and environmental cleaning.
There are 305 000 total course enrolments in the series and 169 000 certificates have been issued. The next course will focus on IPC core components and multimodal strategies.
OpenWHO also hosts courses tailored specifically to the COVID-19 response that provide an overview of IPC and explain how to put on and remove personal protective equipment.
The World Health Organization invites you to contribute your Big Idea to shape the future of training and learning in achieving better health for all.
The submission form is available in English, French and Spanish. Just click on the relevant link below, select your language at the top of the page and submit your idea or approach in 500 words or less. Deadline for submissions extended until 30 June.
The WHO Academy’s mobile learning app was developed specifically for health workers and is designed to enable them to expand their life-saving skills to battle COVID-19.
With content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, the app delivers access to a wealth of COVID-19 knowledge resources developed by WHO, including up-to-the-minute guidance, tools, training, and virtual workshops to support health workers in caring for afflicted patients and in protecting themselves as they do their critical work.
The app can be found via a direct link to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store or by searching “WHO Academy” in the stores.
We are pleased to announce the following two new courses which have recently become available on OpenWHO:
New translations for COVID-19
The following 10 courses for COVID-19 have been launched recently:
All courses for COVID-19 can be accessed here. You can use the toolbar to filter courses by language.
Certificates now available
Participants can now gain a Record of Achievement if they score 80% or higher on the assessments in the following courses:
Videos now available
Videos have recently been added to the following courses:
Updates to course content
The following course materials have been revised to reflect updates to the technical content and are now up to date:
Updated video: COVID-19 Explained (June 2020)
Click here to watch an updated video that offers a quick look at what is currently known about COVID-19.
Complete list of COVID-19 learning resources
We are pleased to announce that OpenWHO now has 90 resources for COVID-19 spread across 29 languages and 12 topics. In summary, OpenWHO currently offers courses covering the following topics and languages to support the response to COVID-19:
The OpenWHO newsletter for May 2020 has been released. You can access it here.
Best wishes,
OpenWHO team
The World Health Organization invites you to contribute your Big Idea to shape the future of training and learning in achieving better health for all.
The WHO Academy, a lifelong learning centre scheduled to launch next year, is working to scale up learning for impact through digital and face-to-face courses, reaching millions of health workers and others worldwide through the latest technologies and advancements in learning science.
As a key part of this effort, we are working with experts and practitioners to develop a global learning strategy that will shape the future of WHO’s approach to training and learning for achieving health goals and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals.
As part of a broader consultation process with experts in health, learning and education, and digital technologies, we would now like to invite everyone with an interest in this topic to join in this endeavor by contributing their ideas to the WHO’s learning strategy.
Accordingly, we have established a Call for Ideas so that anyone can share their Big Idea on how to enhance the quality and impact of training and lifelong learning approaches in health.
The submission form is available in English, French and Spanish. Just click on the relevant link below, select your language at the top of the page and submit your idea or approach in 500 words or less.
We will use the responses we receive to develop WHO’s global learning strategy to ensure that all who are involved in the world’s health and social-care systems have ample opportunities to strengthen the competencies they need to save lives and improve health outcomes in their communities.
The deadline for submissions has been extended to 10 July.
The WHO Academy’s mobile learning app was developed specifically for health workers and is designed to enable them to expand their life-saving skills to battle COVID-19.
With content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, the app delivers access to a wealth of COVID-19 knowledge resources developed by WHO, including up-to-the-minute guidance, tools, training, and virtual workshops to support health workers in caring for afflicted patients and in protecting themselves as they do their critical work.
The app can be found via direct link to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store or by searching “WHO Academy” in the stores.