Author: Lilian Callo

BIREME completes 53 years of uninterrupted activity as a Specialized Center of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). Its presence in the Region continues to be strengthened through the execution of its Biannual Work Plan 2020-2021 (PTB 20-21). Even in the current contingency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan continues to be implemented by supporting local health authorities with administrative and technical cooperation actions.

Two years after its launch, the Virtual Health Library Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine of the Americas (VHL TCIM Americas) consolidates itself as an initiative that aims to articulate various social actors involved in the generation of policies, regulations, training, promotion, practice, use and research of these therapeutic systems and methods in the Americas Region. An editorial in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine describes the trajectory of the initiative and highlights its relevance and international reach.

The coordinators of Virtual Health Library (VHL) instances of Latin America and the Caribbean (LA&C) and BIREME discuss and define an Action Plan for the year 2020, with the main objective of strengthening the Network and meeting the countries’ needs.

A new cooperation agreement between the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME) has recently been established. Its main objective is to index IPEA’s health scientific output into the LILACS database, making it available for free on the internet, through the channels for the dissemination of health information, especially the Virtual Health Library.

Under the theme “It’s time for action. End TB”, a campaign for World Tuberculosis Day 2020 aims to urgently accelerate the response to the disease to save lives and reduce its impact worldwide. BIREME gathers relevant and updated information on tuberculosis, spotlighting the theme of the campaign, promoting direct access to reference documents from the Virtual Health Library such as plans, strategies and guidelines for combating and controlling the disease.

BIREME’s Scientific Committee now has seven new members for the 2020-2022 triennium. Together with the Advisory Committee, these two constitute the Governance Committees of BIREME in the context of its new institutional framework, in force since 2010, which perform advisory functions before the Director of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), with regard to the programmatic, managerial and technical cooperation functions of the Center.

At the initiative and leadership of the Ministry of Health of El Salvador, through its National Institute of Health, in collaboration with PAHO/WHO in the country and with BIREME, between January 27^th and 31^st, an intense week of activities, meetings and workshops with representatives of academic, governmental and scientific associations was held, with the main objective of reorganizing the National Documentary Health Information Network (RENIDS) and reactivating the Virtual Health Library in the country.

The technical cooperation of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (BIREME/PAHO/WHO) is characterized by its regional operation on behalf of equitable access to information, knowledge and scientific health evidence from countries in the Region. In the 2018-2019 biennium, BIREME/PAHO/WHO cooperated with more than ten Cooperation Agreements (TC) established between PAHO/WHO Brazil and the Ministry of Health.

In 2019, BIREME offered a series of webinars to the LILACS Network on Best Practices in the Editorial Processes for Scientific Journals for the LILACS Network. The objective was to revisit the fundamental steps in the editorial processes for scientific journals, to describe the best practices and provide a space for discussion and questions about the topics addressed with the editorial teams of the journals indexed in LILACS. An online survey of webinars revealed a high level of respondent satisfaction. The 2020 program is now available and registration is open.

BIREME has concentrated efforts to make the contents of its websites accessible to a greater number of people with disabilities, such as blindness or low vision, movement limitations and photosensitivity. This effort means following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), recommended by the W3C, the Consortium that develops and maintains the Web’s operating standards.