Martin Carroll

Healthcare Information For All by 2015

Dear Mr Haworth Please see the following background information in response to your proposed delete of Healthcare Information for All by 2015. Martin Carroll Deputy Head, International British Medical Association

HIFA2015 is extensively described in major medical journals and on the World Health Organization website. For example:

BMJ 30 June 2011: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d4151.full.pdf?sid=9d4f1ce9-02d8-4cd9-b872-25d70cde5786 Provision of health information for all A major organisation should support global efforts Richard Smith & Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos programme head UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative, London SW4 0LD, UK; Health and Family Planning Systems Programme, ICDDR,B, Dhaka, Bangladesh

High quality information is essential for good health, yet many individuals, practitioners, and health organisations­particularly in low and middle income countries­lack access to information. This problem has been highlighted many times, and Health Information for All 2015 (HIFA2015) was founded in 2006 with the aim that “by 2015 every person worldwide will have access to an informed healthcare provider­lack of relevant, reliable healthcare information will no longer be a major contributor to avoidable death and suffering” (www.hifa2015.org/)... More than 100 health and development organisations worldwide have committed in principle to the HIFA2015 goal... The Rockefeller Foundation is funding an evaluation of HIFA2015... There is virtually no access to high quality information in many rural areas of low income countries. The consequences are highlighted in the HIFA2015 report: eight in 10 caregivers in developing countries do not know the two key symptoms of childhood pneumonia, four in 10 mothers in India believe that they should withhold fluids if their baby develops diarrhoea, and three in four doctors caring for sick children in district hospitals in seven low income countries have poor knowledge of the leading causes of death in children... One of the strengths of HIFA2015 is that it is an international collaborative group that includes the full range of stakeholders, from senior WHO executives in Geneva to rural health workers in Bangladesh, with a predominance of people from low and middle income countries... the best way forward would be for a major funder to recognise that improved health information is fundamental to global health improvement and development and offer substantial support, not just funds, to HIFA2015.’

Other examples: Godlee F, Pakenham-Walsh N, Ncayiyana D, Cohen B, Packer A. Can we achieve health information for all by 2015? Lancet 2004;364(9430):295-300 http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)16681-6/fulltext

HIFA2015 Supporting Organisations are organisations that have publicly and officially declared their commitment to the HIFA2015 goal. There are 115, with more added each month, and they include some of the world’s leading organisations in health, development and knowledge: British Medical Association; Royal Colleges of Nursing; Royal College of Midwives; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, International Center for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research (Bangladesh), Partners in Health (USA), Intrahealth International, Wikimedia Canada...

The sources listed above are peer-reviewed, reliable, and highly credible.

A Google search on “HIFA2015” reveals 61,900 hits. HIFA2015 is described or cited on thousands of organisations’ websites and in hundreds of publications by leading international health organisations, including the World Health Organization, with which HIFA2015 is a collaborating partner.

Martin Carroll (talk) 11:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Instead of posting a massive message on my talk page, would it not have been more sensible to actually improve the article? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a learned journal. We are not so much interested in peer review as in recognition in the big world - national newspapers and the like. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:16, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

We actually are indeed more interested in peer review journals than national newpapers. But anyway we can discuss this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)