The Deputy Director of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), Isabella Danel, visited the new facilities of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME/PAHO/WHO).
The visit took place in the context of the activities performed to celebrate BIREME’s 50 years, in 2017. In addition to touring the facilities, Dr. Danel was presented the leading actions performed by BIREME in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, as well as the potentialities, products and services of the Center.
In the scope of an initiative developed by BIREME named Café com Ideias, Dr. Danel met with the Center’s staff and was introduced to three examples of initiatives developed there, including the recently-launched MyVHL, a Virtual Health Library service that can be customized to store documents, create profiles on topics of interest, organize favorite links, among other possibilities, according to users´ needs. In addition, she was presented the Memória Azul project, designed to generate information to be spread through smartphones, and the Programa de Monitoramento de Projetos, used for effective management of the projects developed by BIREME both domestically and in the Region.
BIREME Director Diego González said these initiatives and others developed by the Center aim to provide equity and ease of access to information based on the best available scientific evidence. Its objective is to foster scientific production and subsidize decision-making by managers. “Although scientific evidence is produced at a global level, its use is always at the local level. We have an amazing wealth of experiences in Latin America and in the Caribbean that no one is aware of. That is why we are making a great effort to share all this knowledge among countries”, he stressed.
Along the same line, PAHO/WHO Deputy Director highlighted that the work developed by BIREME is very important. “Information is gold. You are the miners of this gold. To reach the Sustainable Development Goals we must expedite access to knowledge, and quality information is essential.”
According to the PAHO/WHO Representative in Brazil, Joaquín Molina, BIREME is crucial for the Americas. “It is an Organization that helps us develop multiple lines of cooperation, which is involved in several information management and scientific and technical development projects and activities”. Some examples of initiatives that feature a partnership between PAHO/WHO office in Brazil and BIREME include Plataforma de Conhecimento do Programa Mais Médicos and the Rede de Nutrição do Sistema Único de Saúde (RedeNutri), among many others.
Participants of the mission also included Ottorino Cosivi, Director of the Pan American Foot-and-Mouth Disease Center (Panaftosa), Eliane Pereira dos Santos (KBR Advisor) representing the area of Knowledge Management, Bioethics and Research (KBR/PAHO), Maria Dolores Pérez Rosales, PAHO/WHO Deputy Representative in Brazil, and BIREME managers, Silvia de Valentin, Renato Murasaki and Veronica Abdala.
As already a tradition in the Center, as of May 2017, BIREME established a labor gymnastics program by means of cooperation with Universidade Paulista (UNIP), facilitated by physical education undergraduate students led by Prof. Sergio Hiroshi F. de Carvalho, Coordination Aide of the Physical Education Program. To close the Café com Ideias, Prof. Sergio encouraged all attendees to practice some exercises, showing how physical and mental health are closely connected.