The first half of 2025 was marked by BIREME’s strategic action with countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region, with actions aimed at strengthening the national instances of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) network.
Through technical cooperation initiatives, actions ranged from updating content and technological platforms to reactivating committees, including the resumption of strategic and training projects, always with the aim of promoting equitable access to health scientific and technical information in the region.
Concrete advances were made in different countries:
- The national VHL of Brazil, El Salvador, and Ecuador received support for reviewing the content of their portals and updated their technology platforms;
- The Dominican Republic resumed activities and held the first meeting of its Advisory Committee, and LIDOCS – Dominican Literature in Health Sciences, the national database was created;
- Venezuela and Guatemala are in the process of reactivating their VHL instances, with activities to resume the project and meetings with national focal points and with offices of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in the country;
- Costa Rica resumed the process of reviewing its portal and planning the launch; and
- Argentina coordinated a series of actions aimed at supporting the BiViPsi VHL in psychoanalysis and psychology.
Also noteworthy is BIREME’s support to countries in the Caribbean region, with institutional participation in the ACURIL 2025 event and training on the Fi-Admin system, which was attended by eight member countries of CARPHA – the Caribbean Public Health Agency, reinforcing the countries’ commitment to the visibility of scientific and technical output throughout the region.
Beyond the Latin American and Caribbean region, Mozambique has also resumed activities to promote the visibility of its country’s scientific output, with a series of actions aimed at finalizing its portal and future launch, besides the creation of a thematic area for contributions to Multimedia and LIS (Internet Resources) sources and the creation of a database on legislation, RSDM.
Other relevant actions include 82 updates to the records of cooperating libraries (CL/LAC), creation of databases in FI-Admin (LIDOCS in the Dominican Republic and IPA in the United Kingdom), and support for updating information sources, among others.
Contribution to information sources
In the first half of 2025, contributions to databases totaled more than 20,000 new records in 60 bibliographic databases by 218 cooperating centers in 23 countries and more than 60,000 updated records by 324 cooperating centers in 23 countries.
The ten databases with the largest contributions can be seen in Table 1 below:
| Creation of new records | Curation and quality control | ||
| LILACS (AL&C) | 14,878 | LILACS (AL&C) | 50,489 |
| BDENF (Ibero-America) | 1,509 | BDENF (Ibero-America) | 7,838 |
| VetIndex (Brazil) | 1,472 | VetIndex (Brazil) | 2,485 |
| BBO (Brazil) | 1,084 | IndexPsi (LA&C) | 2,038 |
| Coleciona-SUS (Brazil) | 758 | BBO (Brazil) | 1,750 |
| RSDM (Mozambique) | 663 | CUMED (Cuba) | 1,470 |
| BiViPsi (Argentina) | 657 | Coleciona-SUS (Brazil) | 1,441 |
| IndexPsi (LA&C) | 654 | BINACIS (Argentina) | 1,293 |
| SES-SP (Brazil) | 524 | RSDM (Mozambique) | 1,001 |
| SMS-SP (Brazil) | 422 | SES-SP (Brazil) | 886 |
Table 2 (below) shows the contribution by country, considering the creation of new records and the indexing and revision of records collected or created via the LILACS Express initiative.
| Creation of new records | Curation and quality control | ||
| Brazil (includes BIREME) | 12,806 (61.2%) | Brazil (includes BIREME) | 36,153 (59.68%) |
| Cuba | 1,215 | Chile | 12,639 |
| Uruguay | 1,182 | Cuba | 2,583 |
| Colombia | 1,179 | Argentina | 2,305 |
| Mexico | 993 | Colombia | 1,490 |
| Argentina | 850 | Uruguay | 1,241 |
| Peru | 715 | Mozambique | 1,008 |
| Mozambique | 673 | Mexico | 986 |
| Chile | 310 | Peru | 821 |
| Bolivia | 212 | Bolivia | 280 |
| Venezuela | 115 | Costa Rica | 143 |
| El Salvador | 106 | El Salvador | 132 |
| Costa Rica | 105 | Dominican Rep. | 120 |
| Congo | 103 | Venezuela | 118 |
| Guatemala | 77 | Congo | 107 |
| Paraguay | 64 | Ecuador | 97 |
| Portugal | 51 | Guatemala | 84 |
| Honduras | 51 | Honduras | 75 |
| Panama | 47 | Portugal | 73 |
| Ecuador | 47 | Paraguay | 71 |
| Dominican Rep. | 23 | Panama | 49 |
| United States | 5 | ||
| Trinidad & Tobago | 1 | ||
The result of all these initiatives converges toward BIREME’s strategic objective, which is to integrate national VHL instances into the Regional VHL Portal, which will feature a more inclusive and modern information architecture. Currently under development, the new structure will allow all countries in the VHL Network, even those without an active national portal, to have their space secured on the Regional Portal, thereby expanding the visibility of their scientific and technical production in health.
Meetings with the Network
In addition to specific actions with countries, BIREME coordinates the Strengthening Health Information Networks in Latin America and the Caribbean program throughout the year, promoting a series of webinars aimed at capacity building with the VHL, LILACS, and DeCS networks, contributing to the democratization of access and visibility of scientific knowledge in health in the countries of the region.
In the first half of 2025, 10 meetings were held, bringing together 1,290 connections from participants in 28 countries, who addressed topics such as the use of artificial intelligence, good practices in editorial processes, indexing, among others. The presentations were conducted by experts specially invited to participate and exchange knowledge with members of health information networks.
By investing in strengthening the VHL Network, BIREME reaffirms its role as a specialized center of PAHO/WHO in promoting equitable access to health information, contributing to the development of local capacities and the consolidation of the VHL as a collaborative, sustainable, and accessible tool that reflects the diversity and needs of health systems in Latin America and the Caribbean.