“Nursing teams are essential not only to deliver care to millions of people throughout the world, but also to transform health policies, promote health in the communities and give support to patients and their families. Nursing teams are also crucial to provide health services for all and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”, stated Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Ghebreyesus Ghebreyesus[1], WHO General Director
To support continued education in Nursing, and consonant with Dr. Tedros’ words, the International Nursing Virtual Health Library was created in 2005, aiming to promote equity in access to the best scientific and technical information on nursing and related themes from the region of the Americas, through collaboration of a network of organizations that produce information.
Today, organizations from seven countries take part in the project: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay. They work together to define the selection criteria for contents and record of scientific production in the sources of information available at the VHL.
Considering the collaborative work of the organizations of these countries, the VHL provided access to over 50 countries from the five continents in 2017. It is worth mentioning the accesses from Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Cuba, which totaled up approximately 415 thousand users and 850 thousand visits to web pages. Adding up the accesses to the portal International Nursing VHL, VHL Nursing Brazil and VHL Nursing Colombia, which use the same platform, the VHL was accessed by more than 590,000 users and 1,950,000 visits in 2017.
In September 2017, the VHL Advisory Committee met at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, in Lima, Peru, during the XI Reunión Internacional de la Red BVS Enfermería. There were 31 participants from Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Portugal and Peru. The VHL advances were presented, and the representatives of Chile and Portugal were invited to join the project VHL Nursing.
The VHL also stood out in another meeting held in Peru, the XI Reunión General de Redes de Enfermería de las Américas, participating in the panel “Network Contributions to Nursing Education”, when three nursing networks were presented:
- Red Internacional de Enfermería Basada en Evidencia;
- Red Iberoamericana de Investigación en Educación en Enfermería; and
- Red BVS Enfermería Internacional
The VHL is coordinated by the Escola de Enfermagem da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, with the support of the Human Resources for Health Unit, from the Health Systems and Services (HSS) at PAHO/WHO Headquarters, and the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME/PAHO/WHO).
[1] Source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/chief-nursing-officer/es/