This issue of the International Journal in Portuguese Language marks the first edition dedicated to health sciences. This and the next editions will represent a space for the dissemination and debate of health issues by academics and researchers from Portuguese-speaking countries. The infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was renamed COVID-19, appeared at the end of 2019, was identified and declared a pandemic in 2020 by the World Health Organization, affecting all countries in the world that have experienced profound changes in the fields of medical care, public health and in different sectors of the world economy. It remains, even today, a very current topic to be studied from various angles and perspectives, representing a vast field of investigation in the search to fill knowledge gaps, despite the accelerated and high number of existing and available publications in the literature and of the progress observed, from the progress made in diagnosis and above all in the development of vaccines. (...) Thus, grouped under the theme “Contemporary Health Challenges”, this first issue presents articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, portraying aspects that constituted the initial concerns of Portuguese-speaking countries in relation to the adoption of restrictive measures and adapting to the “new normal”. (...) Since the space of Portuguese-speaking countries is culturally diverse and geographically dispersed, with different realities of development and socioeconomic level as well as a vast nosology, this issue of RILP marks the historical context of the initial approaches related to the pandemic of COVID-19.