Travel Report: Health Sciences Information Meeting in Havana, Cuba

By Dave Piper, Head, Information Technology Center
Arizona Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona

In late April I attended the 5^th Biannual Regional Congress on Health Sciences Information (CRICS V) held in Havana, Cuba. The meeting was organized by the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information formerly known as BIREME. BIREME (http://www.bireme.br/) is a Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Specialized Center that was established in Brazil in 1967 in collaboration with the Brazilian Ministries of Health and Education, the Secretary of Health of the State of São Paulo and the Federal University of São Paulo.

The theme of the CRICS V meeting (http://www.bireme.br/crics5/), attended by over 500 participants from more than thirty countries, centered on the role of information and access to information in achieving "health equity," i.e., the reduction in the great disparities of health status and health conditions among different countries. Among the meeting's speakers were George Alleyne, Director of PAHO; Abel Packer, BIREME Director; Xavier Bonfill, director of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Center; Becky Lyon, NLM's Deputy Associate Director; and Patricia Brennan, AMIA President. Presentations were given in Spanish or English or Portuguese with simultaneous translation available in the three languages.

I attended the meeting to learn more about BIREME's Virtual Health Library project which is an initiative to make scientific and technical knowledge available electronically to the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Arizona Health Sciences Library is especially interested in the growing body of full-text Spanish language medical journals and other health-related resources that are becoming available through the Virtual Health Library. The Arizona Health Sciences Library has taken an active role in addressing the health information needs of Mexican, primarily Sonoran, health care professionals and students who come to the library. With the creation of Sonora's first medical school in Hermosillo and with the development of the University of Arizona's College of Public Health, we believe that the interest in and need for access to Latin American health information by the library's users will expand rapidly. At the meeting I also presented a poster on wireless network applications in libraries and spoke with several individuals whose institutions are interested in exploring wireless networking technology.

While in Havana, I visited Cuba's National Medical Library with two other U.S. health sciences librarians, Gale Hannigan (University of Texas and Texas A&M University) and Jonathan Eldredge (University of New Mexico). We spoke with library personnel, toured the library and learned about Cuba's national health information network which in some ways (such as their document delivery system) functions similarly to the U.S. National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

As interesting and informative as the CRICS V meeting was, I feel I learned even more away from the conference venue. Numerous Cubans were interested in talking to me and sharing their thoughts and feelings about how their lives are and what they like and dislike about their country. The warmth, exuberance and humor of the Cubans I met and the beauty of historic Old Havana will be enduring impressions.

The next CRICS meeting will take place in Mexico City.

(Editor's note: Dave can be contacted at dpiper@ahsl.arizona.edu)

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