Regional News

Between June 29 and July 1 it was held in Brasilia, Brazil, the PAHO’s internal dialogue of Department of Health Systems and Services  in support of Strategy for the Universal Health Access and Universal Health Coverage.

The meeting was proposed to discuss progress, opportunities and challenges, and identify priority areas for technical cooperation to strengthen the implementation of the strategy for universal access to health care and universal coverage areas.

We announce changes in the dates for the "Healthcare Technology Planning & Management (2015)" course.

The course will now run from 7 September 2015 through 21 November 2015.

And the deadline to submit applications has been extended until July 20, 2015.

Please take note of this changes. 

For more details, review the course information.

The Municipal Health Secretariat Curitiba, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education and their partners are looking forward to hosting this important global public health and health promotion event. The 22nd IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion will take place in Curitiba, Brazil. The aim is to create a global forum where researchers, practitioners and policy makers involved in and concerned about the promotion of health and equity will share and discuss new knowledge, innovations in practice and policy and cutting edge experience.

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On 9 and 10 June the VCPH attended the forum held in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Under the Panel: "Experiences of networking: ICT and innovation from the academy.", Mr. Gabriel Listovsky presented VCPH developments.

He also participated in a working group referred to the challenges of development of knowledge networks to promote citizen empowerment actions.

The meeting was an opportunity for joint exchange and cooperation ties between the virtual classrooms VCPH and UNDP.

On Thursday 12 and Friday June 13, 2015 the opening workshop tutor training for the network learning course, specially designed to promote the development of Node VCPH Nicaragua was held in Managua, Nicaragua.

The course has thirteen weeks of virtual work and three face meetings.

During the course, participants will have the opportunity to discuss the challenges of continuing healthcare education within virtuality and make the first steps of editing Moodle course, working platform of the Virtual Campus for Public Health.

As part of the updating process of portals and classrooms of the Virtual Campus of Public Health is already visible the new image design and regional access to virtual classrooms, countries, practices and staff.

This change was accompanied by updating the regional classroom to the Moodle version 2.8 which ensures the quality and safety of the course work according to international standards.

The new design, with a style similar to the regional portal image, allowing easy access and quick viewing of the courses in which participants are enrolled.

In early June, Dr. Carissa Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office of the Americas (PAHO/WHO), met with the five Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows who undertook their professional affiliation at the Organization’s Washington, DC headquarters. 

The Virtual Course "Integration of Mental Health into Primary Care (2015)", intended for primary care practitioners from English-speaking Caribbean countries who are working as MD general practitioners, specialized nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists and other mental health care providers directly involved in patient care, will begin 6 August and run until 10 December. Application forms for this course will be received until 10 July, 2015. 

Participants must fulfill the following criteria:

Geneva, May 19, 2015 (PAHO/WHO). Ministers and delegates of the Americas addressed the plenary of the 68th World Health Assembly regarding the need to ensure that every country has a solid health system ready to face any adversity. They made reference to the lessons learned during the Ebola outbreak and highlighted the achievements.

Representatives of 21 countries of the Region spoke before the plenary to share their perspectives. The following is a summary of each country's presentation, in order of appearance.

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PAHO / WHO calls for giving more attention to the control of hypertension

Collaboration between The Lancet, MEDICC Review - International Journal of Cuban Health & Medicine and with the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pan American Health Organization.

The Safe Delivery App is an innovative mobile health tool developed by Maternity Foundation in partnership with the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark. Through simple animated clinical instruction films, the app can teach birth attendants in hard-to-reach areas how to manage complicated deliveries. The app is based on global clinical guidelines and has the potential to overcome the outreach barriers of conventional training programs, ensuring that more women have access to skilled care when giving birth.

You can find more information about the App, and links to download it at: http://maternity.dk/en/content/mhealth

The Virtual Campus for Public Health is one of the virtual education programs is discussed in an article published in www.openpraxis.org

Mr. Edgardo De Gracia member of the VCPH regional team was interviewed as part of the investigation that led to the drafting of the article.

The complete article is available at:

http://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/188/152

Because the enormous interest and the number of applications received for the course "Nursing Leadership: Empowering Nurse Leaders in Latin America (2015)" the coordination of the course decide to increase the number of seats. Candidates selected for this edition will be informed soon.

The new date for the beginning of the course will be on May 18 and will run until August 10, 2015.

Candidates not selected at this time will have a chance to take the course in future editions that are already programmed.

In the framework of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama, the Departments of Health Systems and Services and Communications prepared the exhibition of photographs Towards universal access to health and universal health coverage in the Americas.

The photographs underscore the importance of health in the lives of people and highlights key steps for countries to move.

We invite you to view a sample of this online exhibition:

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FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS:

• The WHO HQ Library instructor will lead the offered courses online using WebEX.
• Courses are approximately 90 minutes in duration with time allowed for questions/interaction between instructor and  participants.
• Please verify your local time by using the following site http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
• Participants need a computer, internet connection and ability to install the Java script to take full advantage of the course.
• Audio speakers are required and ideally a microphone to fully participate.
• You can pretest your WebEX functionality by using this test site http://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html

VIRTUAL TRAINING AGENDA:

Between 26 and 27 March Eng. Edgardo De Gracia and Lic. Gabriel Listovsky attended a workshop in Lima, Peru intended to assist the development of virtual training projects managed by the Directorate-General for Management Development HR Ministry of Health of Peru.

Panama, March 31, 2015 (PAHO / WHO) - Officials from several institutions in the Panamanian health sector participated in the workshop skills training tutorials and design of virtual environments, with the aim of strengthening the implementation process Node Panama in the Virtual Campus of Public Health, PAHO / WHO.

"This workshop is very important because it seeks to implement the Node Panama to update staff nationwide," said Dr. Itza Barahona de Mosca, Director General of Health, Ministry of Health, during the opening of the workshop. "This is the best tool to train border to border, at low cost," she said.

On 4 and 5 March the annual meeting of the decentralized nodes of the Virtual Campus for Public Health was held in Bogota, Colombia.

RISS, evaluate the performance of decentralized nodes and develop the work plan for 2015 - On 4 March, a working meeting devoted to evaluating the experience in developing the course of PHC was performed.

We are pleased to launch of the Virtual Course on Properly Completing Death Certificates for medical doctors on the PAHO Virtual Campus (March 20^th, 2015), developed by experts in the Family of International Classifications (FIC-WHO). This course aims to contribute to the improvement of the quality of the mortality data. It is a self-learning virtual course that can be accessed from any computer or mobile device connected to the Internet. The target audience is medical doctors responsible for filling out death certificates in hospitals or any other health facility. In addition, final year medical students are also encouraged to participate.

We announce that the deadline to submit application forms to participate in the Virtual Course "How to effectively address Non Communicable Diseases in 21st Century (2015 version)" has been extended to March 2, 2015 (previously the deadline was February 26).

The course will run from 9 March to 7 June, 2015, and is targeted to Caribbean NCD country managers and managers in related areas: Health promotion, NCD Epidemiology, diabetes, CVD or cancer program managers. Selected participants will be notified by March 5.

You can review the course information for more details.

Between 2 and 6 February an Workshop in the regional office of VCPH of different professionals related to area of information, and who are working at the nodes of Central America and the Caribbean.

The workshop is proposed to meet the following objectives:

On Wednesday 28 February the 3rd meeting in the creation of Panama Node Virtual Campus of Public Health, PAHO was held at the offices of PAHO in Panama.

The meeting was attended by Dr. Gaspar Da Costa, assigned by the Ministry of Health to coordinate the node, Dr. Federico Hernandez Pimentel - PAHO Representative in Panama and Dr. Rosa María Borrell -. Head Unit Resources human Health (ai). PAHO-WDC.

Dr. Federico Hernandez welcomed, appreciated the presence of Dr. Rosa María Borrell and acknowledged the efforts of the various institutions that are participating in the development of the node.

Between 27 and 29 January, a workshop for review and analysis of management processes of VCPH was held at the regional office in Panama.

We are initiating the call for applications for the “Virtual Course on How to Effectively Address Non Communicable Diseases in the 21th Century” Version 2015, which will be offered on the Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH). The General Coordinator (GC) for this course is Dr. Branka Legetic, regional advisor in prevention and control of NCDs in NMH/ND unit and Director of the course is Dr Anselm Hennis, Director of NMH.

The self-learning course VIAA (Visual inspection with acetic acid) and cryotherapy for cervical cancer prevention is available.