India home to UN's first 'country pilot' for Health InterNetwork by Frederick Noronha
CHENNAI, Sept 26 -- India is being built up as the first 'country pilot' for an ambitious United Nations-led international project, seeking to strengthen public health services by making use of the powerful potential of the Internet. "The Health InterNetwork (HIN) seeks to bridge the digital divide, as it affects health. Initially we're planning some pilots, and the first pilot is to be done in India," Health InterNetwork India project manager Ranjan Dwivedi told IANS here. This ambitious project is an initiative of the United Nations' Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who announced it as part of his Millennium Initiative. It is one of the four initiatives that the UN is to take up over the next 15 years. Its goal is to build existing capabilities using the power of the Internet and new ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to empower those working in the field of health, and make their initiatives more effective. Once in place, the Health InterNetwork would seek to disseminate authentic and relevant information in the Third World, where access to information can still be costly or difficult. It aims to build up a web-based portal for facilitation of the dissemination of information. In addition, it will create access points by providing hardware, software and connectivity in some 130 countries. Currently, the plan is for creating 13,000 access points over a seven year period. Apart from this, one major task will be creating and garnering authentic health-related information. "We'll do so not by necessarily creating content ourselves, but locating and facilitating the creation of content in a digitised form which can be easily shared and facilitated over the web," Dwivedi told this correspondent. In addition, there will also be an initiative in capacity-building and training. This will help the target segment -- health service providers, policy-makers and researchers -- to access biomedical databases. "The WHO is just the lead agency to bring everybody together. This Health InterNetwork is seen as a big partnership -- between governments, civil society, corporate sector, NGOs and so on," Dwivedi said. Three-four pilot projects are currently being planned globally. But the first country-pilot is the one in India, says Dwivedi. There are other research pilots, where four countries in Africa, and four in Eastern Europe have combined. The endeavour there would be to provide international journals at equity-pricing to researchers in these eight countries. If this ambitious plan could be effectively implemented, its impact could be felt all over. "Because once you put it on the web, it's web-based facilitation, and it's accessible from anywhere in the whole world," says Dwivedi. Initially, in terms of creating access points to the Health InterNetwork however, work is to be done in two parts of India -- Orissa and rural Bangalore district. "There's a whole lot beyond there because we're also networking medical libraries, and creating a research network through the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research). But all these initiatives are basically based and housed in institutions, to ensure the sustainability after the pilot is over," Dwivedi informed. In keeping with attempts to relate this work to an ongoing programme which is important priority in the country, early attempts will be linked to existing efforts in battling tuberculosis in India. "TB is the largest killer disease in the country. We've got the second-largest TB population in the world. It's a high-priority programme for the government. And it's 100% curable. So there are tremendous gains to be obtained in TB. TB is also a global priority for the WHO too," said Dwivedi, who is based at WHO's Delhi office. He explained that the pilot would be undertaken in India for a year, and results measured. On the basis of the learning gained from the pilot, it's scaled up here and replicated in other countries. One key aspect is that the perceived importance of this initiative will dictate its growth. "The money has to be raised. The money will come only if people see its relevance," he added. (ENDS) Contact details: Ranjan Dwivedi Project Manager Health InterNetwork -India Project WHO, Room No 530 A Wing Nirman Bhawan New Delhi 110011 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile 98105 05068 ------------ ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.globalknowledge.org>
