Senator Aundre Franklin, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health was today (Tuesday, August 31, 2010) elected Vice President of the 43 year old prestigious advisory Committee of the Latin American and Caribbean Centre on Health Science Information (BIREME). The Advisory Committee met today at the Headquarters of the Pan American Health Organization, regional office of the World Health Organization in Washington D.C.

Senator Franklin’s term of office will be for two years.  He will be responsible for enhancing regional utilization of BIREME and in particular how Jamaica can increase capacity and infrastructure for the management, dissemination and facilitation of access to scientific information, knowledge and evidence, in keeping with international state of the art methodologies and technologies.

Today’s meeting saw the approval of the statute of BIREME which establishes a new institutional framework that will give PAHO/WHO the BIREME as its specialized international centre increasing the capacity to provide technical cooperation in the area of scientific and technical information in health essential for the development of research education and health care systems.

The advisory committee is the policy making body for the scientific committee that recommends and advises the Director of PAHO/WHO on programming, work plan and financing of the BIREME.

The BIREME in located in Sao Paulo, Brazil and has an annual budget of US$6 Million dollars.

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 Contact: MOH, Public Relations Unit Tel: 967-1561