New International Classification of Diseases by WHO

Manifest Pedagogy

The above topic under health can be placed under health and international collaboration specifically WHO. ICD gains relevance this year because it has been updated after a gap of many years. Most importantly under it homosexuality is no longer considered a mental health problem. This gains relevance as India also decriminalized homosexuality recently under Navtej Singh Johar vs Union of India case in 2018.

In news

The presentation of ICD-11 to the World Health Assembly in 2019 for adoption by countries

Placing it in the syllabus

Indian Society

Indian Polity and Governance

Static dimensions

• What is ICD?
• Importance of ICD
• Details about WHO

Current dimensions

• New ICD and its special features

Content

What is ICD?

The ICD is the foundation for identifying health trends and statistics globally, and the international standard for reporting diseases and health conditions. It contains around 55,000 unique codes for injuries, diseases, and causes of death. It provides a common language that allows health professionals to share health information across the globe.

It is the diagnostic classification standard for all clinical and research purposes. ICD defines the universe of diseases, disorders, injuries and other related health conditions, listed in a comprehensive, hierarchical fashion that allows for:

• Easy storage, retrieval and analysis of health information for evidence-based decision-making.
• Sharing and comparing health information between hospitals, regions, settings, and countries.
• Data comparisons in the same location across different time periods.

Importance of ICD

• The ICD is important because it provides a common language for reporting and monitoring diseases.
• This allows the world to compare and share data in a consistent and standard way – between hospitals, regions, and countries and over periods of time.
• It facilitates the collection and storage of data for analysis and evidence-based decision-making.

About WHO

• The World Health Organization (WHO) is the United Nations’ specialized agency for health. It is an inter-governmental organization and works in collaboration with its Member States usually through the Ministries of Health.
• It was established on 7 April 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group
• The World Health Organization is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
• Since its establishment, it has played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases such as sexual and reproductive health, development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

Focus areas of WHO

• Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.
• Communicable Disease Control.
• Non-communicable Diseases and Social Determinants of Health.
• Universal Health Coverage.
• Sustainable Development and Environmental Health.
• Health Systems Development.
• Health Security and Emergencies.

Objectives of the WHO

WHO fulfills its objectives through its core functions:

• Providing leadership on matters critical to the health and engaging in partnerships where joint action is needed;
• Shaping the research agenda and stimulating the generation, translation, and dissemination of valuable knowledge;
• Setting norms and standards and promoting and monitoring their implementation;
• Articulating ethical and evidence-based policy options;
• Providing technical support, catalyzing change, and building sustainable institutional capacity; and
• Monitoring the health situation and assessing health trends.

These core functions are set out in the Twelfth General Programme of Work, which provides the framework for organization-wide programme of work, budget, resources, and results. Entitled “Not merely the absence of disease”, it covers the 6-year period from 2014 to 2019.

New ICD (Revision) and its special features

WHO released its new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in June 2018( to be adopted in 2019) following are the special features of New ICD;

• ICD revision process allows for collaborative web-based editing, open to all interested parties. To assure quality it will be peer reviewed for accuracy and relevance.
• ICD-11 will be available in multiple languages.
• Definitions, signs and symptoms, and other content related to diseases will be defined in a structured way so they can be recorded more accurately.
• ICD-11 will be compatible with electronic health applications and information systems.
• ICD-11 will be free to download online for personal use (and in print form for a fee).
• It has been updated for the 21st century and reflects critical advances in science and medicine.
• This new version is fully electronic, significantly easier to implement which will lead to fewer mistakes, allows more detail to be recorded, all of which will make the tool much more accessible, particularly for low-resource settings.
• An important feature is that ICD-11 has been produced through a transparent, collaborative manner, the scope of which is unprecedented in its history.
• In this new ICD, there has been unprecedented involvement of health care workers who have joined collaborative meetings and submitted proposals .
• A key principle in this revision was to simplify the coding structure and electronic tooling — this will allow health care professionals to more easily and completely record conditions.
• The new ICD-11 also reflects progress in medicine and advances in scientific understanding. For example, the codes relating to antimicrobial resistance are more closely in line with the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS).
• ICD-11 is also able to better capture data regarding safety in health care, which means that unnecessary events that may harm health – such as unsafe workflows in hospitals can be identified and reduced.
• The new ICD includes new chapters on traditional medicine: although millions of people use traditional medicine worldwide, it has never been classified in this system.
• In the new ICD, Another new chapter on sexual health brings together conditions that were previously categorized in other ways (for instance gender incongruence was listed under mental health conditions) or described differently.
• Under the new ICD Gaming disorder has been added to the section on addictive disorders.