Cohort study protocol of the Brazilian collaborative research network on COVID-19: strengthening WHO global data.

INTRODUCTION: With the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals in low-income countries were faced with a triple challenge. First, a large number of patients required hospitalisation because of the infection's more severe symptoms. Second, there was a lack of systematic and broad testing policies for early identification of cases. Third, there were weaknesses in the integration of information systems, which led to the need to search for available information from the hospital information systems. Accordingly, it is also important to state that relevant aspects of COVID-19's natural history had not yet been fully clarified. The aim of this research protocol is to present the strategies of a Brazilian network of hospitals to perform systematised data collection on COVID-19 through the WHO platform. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This is a multicentre project among Brazilian hospitals to provide data on COVID-19 through the WHO global platform, which integrates patient care information from different countries. From October 2020 to March 2021, a committee worked on defining a flowchart for this platform, specifying the variables of interest, data extraction standardisation and analysis. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (CEP) of the Research Coordinating Center of Brazil (CEP of the Hospital Nossa Senhora da Conceicao), on 29 January 2021, under approval No. 4.515.519 and by the National Research Ethics Commission (CONEP), on 5 February 2021, under approval No. 4.526.456. The project results will be explained in WHO reports and published in international peer-reviewed journals, and summaries will be provided to the funders of the study.

[Health policy and practice towards equity]. / Políticas e práticas de saúde e equidade.

The article discusses the concepts of equality and equity in the health area in Brazilian scenario, which means under the Unified Health System (UHS). The author shows the principles of UHS, emphasizing the principles of Universality and Integrality. Also reviews briefly the history of UHS and its construction process. It shows singularity of present issues such as technological advances and its consequences to the quality of health attention, both reflecting to the costs of the health care. It analyses some advances that were possible in Brazilian health attention and especially in São Paulo State. In conclusion, he explains a brief analyze about UHS news challenges: the increasing of accessibility to the health services, increasing of needs and the limited resources.