Author: Lilian Callo

The Cultura e Saúde exhibition, planned and executed by the Brazil’s Ministry of Health’s Cultural Center of the General Coordination of Documentation and Information, made possible with the support of BIREME/PAHO/WHO, the objective of which is to reveal the relationship between the concepts of culture and health, creating a playful and immersive atmosphere through reproductions of famous paintings, historical occurrences, scenic objects, and texts about local projects, among other elements. The display was inaugurated on August 3^rd and will be open through the end of October in the tunnel that links the Headquarters and Annex buildings of the Ministry of Health, in Brasília, Federal District.

The Covid-19 global pandemic brought innumerous challenges to individuals and organizations that, due to teleworking caused by this public health emergency, had to reassess their way of operating so that their intellectual capital and operations could act in harmony, and necessarily with the support of information and communication technologies. Thus, BIREME/PAHO/WHO launched the Human Resources Administrative Newsletter, Fique por Dentro, which completed 54 editions in August.

BIREME continues to prioritize actions aimed at supporting countries with information and evidence for decision-making in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In parallel, it has continued to comply with its 2020-2021 Biannual Work Plan made up of projects, products, and services framed in 4 initiatives: Information and Knowledge Management, Information Services, Information Intelligence in Health Sciences, and BIREME Leadership and Management. BIREME highlighted the main results related to its operation and technical cooperation program from the first half of 2021.

BIREME presented the results obtained in the scope of the Second Term of Adjustment to the Term of Cooperation 93 (TA2/TC93) that are part of the results report of the first half of 2021 in a meeting that included the teams of the Ministry of Health, PAHO Brazil, and BIREME, held on July 13. As a result, at the end of the meeting, actions were submitted for the continuity of the TC93, given its importance for the fulfillment of the priorities of the Ministry of Health in the field of information management and scientific knowledge and communication in health, and which effectively impact on the mission of BIREME/PAHO/WHO.

The II World Summit on Traditional and Complementary Medicine: Towards an Integrative Medicine was marked by the participation of more than 180 renowned speakers from 30 countries. With the aim of sharing relevant experiences and getting to know different approaches from each region of the world, the event was organized by the Colegio Médico del Perú, through its Committee of Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine, with the support of the MTCI Americas Network, the Consórcio Acadêmico Brasileiro de Saúde Integrativa  (CABSIN)  and the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine, in addition to the support of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), through its Representation in Peru.

Phase III of the new technical cooperation agreement between the Municipal Health Secretariat of São Paulo (SMS – São Paulo) and PAHO/WHO was formalized for BIREME. On July 14, a meeting was held between the teams of SMS-São Paulo and the Center to advance developments in this context, and a retrospective of the activities already carried out was presented. The third agreement that is initiated is mainly aimed at promoting maintenance and technical and methodological support, as well as updating and including new sources of information in the VHL SMS-São Paulo.

The launching of the Portugal Virtual Health Library (VHL) Nursing, transmitted online from the Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Coimbra on July 9, was part of the International Conference on Scientific Publishing, an initiative within the framework of the Strategic Axis of Development of the Research Unit in Health Sciences: Nursing, for the Edition and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge. Since its launch, Portugal has become the first country outside of Latin America and the Caribbean to join the International VHL Nursing Network.

Considering that access to and use of scientific evidence is essential to support health-related decisions and interventions, the workshop “Search for Evidence for Interventions in Collective Health” was held on July 27 and 28, in partnership with BIREME. The workshop, dedicated to technicians and managers associated with the country’s Ministry of Public Health and the academic sector, was facilitated by Verônica Abdala, Manager of Services and Information Sources at BIREME, and her team.

The series of webinars promoted by the Universidade Aberta do SUS of the Universidade Federal do Piauí in collaboration with other institutions has attracted the attention of professionals in the area of Primary Health Care and researchers in the area. The topic “Strategies for the Reduction of Maternal Mortality”, presented on July 12 by Bremen de Mucio, specialist in Gynecology and Obstetrics and Health Services Management at CLAP/PAHO, with the coordination of BIREME, aimed to strengthen primary health care and seek the most appropriate strategies to reduce maternal mortality in Piauí and across Brazil.

Available in a beta version, the 2021 edition of the DeCS/MeSH vocabulary is expected to be released next July. The main new features are related to the addition of 287 new descriptors to this vocabulary. The Supplementary Concept Records (SCR) terms that reach a certain number of citations are promoted to descriptors in MeSH. This happened in 2021 with several of the terms related to the COVID-19 disease. Learn about the structured and multilingual vocabulary that will be 35 years old 2021.