Author: Lilian Callo

The course Leishmaniasis en las Américas: Diagnóstico y Tratamiento (Leishmaniasis in the Americas: Diagnosis and Treatment) is an initiative of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in partnership with BIREME and the Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) to train health professionals that work at different levels of care and educational training at undergraduate and graduate levels.

World Food Safety Day was celebrated on June 7^th to raise awareness and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage food-borne hazards. BIREME/PAHO/WHO makes the VHL Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional available, coordinated by INCAP and developed by Guatemala, with scientific and technical information on Public Health, Health, Food, Nutrition, and Food and Nutritional Safety.

Climate change is the biggest threat to global health of the 21^st century. Health is and will be affected by climate change through direct and indirect impacts. World Environment Day, celebrated every June 5^th since 1973, is the largest global dissemination platform for environmental issues and serves as a warning to governments and populations about the seriousness of our planet’s situation. Get to know the information sources that BIREME discloses on the subject.

ACURIL 2022 is holding its 2022 conference under the theme Change Management and Resilience: Proactive Action in Caribbean Libraries, Museums and Archives. A pre-conference event was held on May 26 with the Virtual Health Library Content roundtable featuring presentations by Amanda Wilson, Chief, Office of Engagement and Training at NLM, Sebastián García Saisó, Director of the EIH Department and Acting Director of BIREME, and Marcia Y. Barretto, ITI/GA Coordinator at BIREME. While Amanda Wilson spoke about NLM’s strategy for the period 2022-2036, when the institution will celebrate the bicentennial of its founding, Sebastián García and Marcia Barretto presented the topic Virtual Health Library: resilience and innovation towards the future.

Within the framework of the 3^rd week of the Colombia VHL and the 24^th National Conference on Updating and Training of Health Information Units-UNIRECS, on May 11 and 13, 2022, the Window of Knowledge and Toolbox (SDGs) Sustainable Development Goals of the Colombia VHL was launched. BIREME had a relevant participation, in the inauguration of the event and in the alignment with open science.

Training activities in scholarly communication through face-to-face or online courses, workshops or webinars are intended to stimulate the publication of the results of scientific research and clinical observation. BIREME coordinates these activities as part of its work plan and lines of action for technical cooperation with the countries of the Region. A series of webinars on scholarly communication for users of the Nicaragua VHL, coordinated with PAHO Nicaragua and UNAN Managua, addressed emerging topics such as Impact Metrics and Open Science.

This year’s theme of the PAHO/WHO campaign for International Nurses Day is: “No nurses = no care”, which reflects the need to invest in training, employment, leadership, and nursing practice. The theme reinforces the actions carried out in 2021, designated by the WHO as the International Year of Health Professionals and Caregivers. In order to provide scientific and technical information on nursing, BIREME developed, in partnership with the School of Nursing at UFMG and with the collaboration of a network of institutions that produce scientific and technical information in the field of Nursing, the International Nursing Virtual Health Library.

Honduras develops and implements actions to strengthen the Network and renew the VHL national portal. The result of these actions was presented at the launch event of the new portal of the Honduras VHL. The event was held on May 12 in a hybrid manner in the National Medical Library of Honduras, with the participation of health authorities of the country, professionals from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, PAHO/WHO Honduras, the coordination of the International Nursing Network of the VHL and the BIREME/PAHO/WHO team.

Cardiovascular Diseases are the leading cause of death in the Americas, and arterial hypertension is responsible for more than 50% of them. To draw attention to this serious health problem, World Hypertension Day was established on May 17^th. The WHO launched the Global HEARTS Initiative in 2016, and PAHO develops and coordinates the HEARTS Initiative in the Americas to, by 2025, become the institutionalized model for cardiovascular disease risk management.

World Health Day was celebrated last April 7, the date that marks the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization in 1948. Faced with the current pandemic of COVID-19, a planet with increasing pollution rates, and communicable and non-communicable diseases, the theme of this year’s World Health Day is “Our Planet, Our Health”. To provide scientific and technical information on health and environment, BIREME has produced a Window of Knowledge on this theme.