BIREME, as a PAHO/WHO specialized center, part of the Department of Evidence and Intelligence for Action in Health (EIH), has played an important role since the beginning of the pandemic, along with the Organization’s efforts, to make available to health professionals and society with a series of products and services with reliable information about COVID-19. Learn more about these resources.
On December 18, 2020, BIREME held its traditional year-end meeting to recognize the main results achieved during the year 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation determined that the meeting should take place online, which has not diminished, however, the enthusiasm of the employees and the number of results obtained during the year, in which everyone was teleworking. EIH Director Sebastián Garcia expressed his satisfaction in attending virtually this meeting and witnessing the integration among BIREME collaborators, which he attributes as an important part of the excellent results obtained.
The VHL Network Action Plan, whose objective was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the VHL instances in the countries of LA&C and Spain, concluded its activities for 2020, after nine months of work. The results were very satisfactory, since it was possible to identify the activities that had the greatest execution by the VHL, and those that had the least execution, which will be evaluated and prioritized together with each country in the plan for 2021.
The extension of technical cooperation established between BIREME and the National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) for an additional six months sought to implement information and knowledge management actions in the public health area in 15 State Health Secretariats. The results of this cooperation, aligned with the VHL Model, contribute to increase the visibility of the scientific and technical production in health of the Secretariats and their research and teaching units, such as the National Schools of Health.
The VI Session of the Scientific Committee (SC) of BIREME was held virtually on December 4, with two specific objectives: to position members on the current stage of implementation of the recommendations made by members of previous sessions and to generate an effective exchange with members of the SC to obtain recommendations to improve the visibility and quality of BIREME’s products and services. SC members were unanimous in recognizing the diversity and scope of the products and services developed by the Center and made a series of recommendations. A report of the session will be sent for the Committee’s final knowledge and considerations.
BIREME has participated in the annual meeting of the Global Libraries Group of the World Health Organization (WHO), held in November, presenting this year’s advances in the operation of the WHO Global Index Medicus (GIM) and the search interface of the global literature on COVID -19. GIM offers exclusive access to health evidence and information produced in low- and middle-income countries, whose main objective is to increase access, visibility, use and impact of health information published in these countries and regions.
The development of a Virtual Health Library (VHL) instance for the English Caribbean was the subject of a presentation by BIREME at the ACURIL 2020 Virtual Conference, on November 18th. This VHL will allow integrate efforts and information resources, prioritizing to facilitate access to scientific and technical information for professionals, researchers, students and decision makers in health area in the Caribbean region.
The Brazilian Academic Consortium for Integrative Health (CABSIn) released Evidence Maps on the clinical effectiveness for nine Integrative and Complementary Health Practices (PICS), which were officially launched on November 5 at an online event promoted by the PAHO Office in Brazil and BIREME.
Two series of webinars, one organized by BIREME, whose target audience is the networks of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) and the Libraries of the Unified Health System (BiblioSUS), and another, organized within the framework of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Latin American Center of Perinatology, Women and Reproductive Health (CLAP/WR), aimed at disseminating scholarly communication topics to audiences other than those who normally participate in workshops and courses. The more the public is familiar with the processes of publishing and disseminating research results, the greater their power to understand and evaluate the information they receive through the media, which increasingly cites scientific sources.
The Latin American Federation of Medical Students’ Societies (FELSOCEM, in its Spanish acronym) held its 35th International Scientific Congress on November 11-14. As with what had happened in previous editions, BIREME had an outstanding participation in the event, with lectures by Diego González, Director of BIREME and Lilian Calò, Coordinator of Scholarly Communication, in addition to a short course on Searching for scientific evidence in health Information sources provided by Rosemeire Pinto, Supervisor of Training and User’s Service.