BIREME, as a Pan American Health Organization specialized Center, carries out functions at the regional level for its mission to democratize scientific information, knowledge, and evidence, aligned with international mandates like the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, and the Sustainable Agenda of the Americas (ASSA2030), among many others.
The Center’s cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean (LA&C) countries occurs through different avenues, one of them being the official missions of the BIREME/PAHO/WHO staff, whose specific objectives are to support the implementation of its technical cooperation program and its institutional alignment with the policies and procedures of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), ensuring the transparency and development of its operations. The 2018-2019 biennium registered 101 official missions, as shown in the graph below.
In 2018, the Administration and Planning Management (GA) coordinated and created, with the support of the Board and other Managers, a methodology for the control and classification of trips and/or official missions, that has been utilized by all staff at the time of application for travel permits, including the following categories: establish or pursue new projects; participation as an exhibitor at an event; participation in an event; project monitoring; training and development; counterpart development and support; promotion; and institutional alignment.
Next, we can observe the behavior of these indicators during the closing biennium.
According to the Director of BIREME, Dr. Diego González, “the Center’s presence in all these countries guarantees the possibility of presenting the priorities, products, and services, as well as the strategic actions that the Center develops. It is an opportunity to give visibility to the main products and services that are built with the countries themselves through their collaboration networks, as is the case of the VIrtual Health Library (VHL), the Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS), and the Descriptors in Health Sciences (DeCS), among many others.
One of the priorities established by BIREME is the cooperation with key countries in the organization, which include Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Suriname.
Following, we can observe that there were 11 on-site missions developed during the biennium.
Finally, it is also worth highlighting that BIREME’s activity, while its main focus is in the region of the Americas, also has a global commitment to Portuguese-speaking countries. For this reason, a mission was carried out during the biennium in Genebra, on the occasion of the Global Index Medicus, and two missions on the African continent.
