By Duncan Mboya
Wikipedia is slowly becoming an alternative outlet for scientists to help change lives through open knowledge communities. Notably, some medical professionals are providing educational information in their native languages to populations.
Dr. Netha Hussain, a radiologist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, is one such medic who has been contributing to Wikipedia and editing articles on stroke in her native Indian language, Malayalam.
She revealed that many specialists develop content on Wikipedia on health-related subjects such as abortion, femicide, and COVID-19, but information on stroke is lacking.
Dr. Hussain revealed that she opted to start writing in her native language to help educate and change people’s eating habits and their response to quick treatment.
“I have been writing for Wikipedia since 2010 after realizing that articles on health were not well represented in her native language,” she said, noting that she started writing on the topic to help bridge the gap and also help her population.
Dr. Hussain observed that there is a lot of health information online, but most of the content is written in languages that do not appeal to the majority of populations globally.
She noted that since Wikipedia alone is edited in over 300 languages by nearly 260,000 volunteers every month around the world, it was an opportune platform to help educate populations in her native language.
“Wikipedia offers a rare platform for all countries in the global south that have not yet started benefiting from the platform,” she added.
She said that she has been doing it voluntarily to bridge the knowledge gap by helping populations to cope with the condition and, above all, to avoid decisions that may lead to getting the condition.
The medic calls on scientists from the developing world to write regularly in a simplified language to help empower and save populations from contracting diseases that can be avoided.
Renowned African technology experts and academics, Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende and Prof. Vukosi Marivate, observed how open knowledge communities, such as the global volunteers on Wikimedia projects and mission-aligned partners, may navigate a fast-changing technological landscape while staying true to their core values with support from Artificial Intelligence (AI).
According to Maryana Iskander, Chief Executive Officer of the Wikipedia Foundation, the question for all of us is what the next generation needs, and how the current generation will build on the success of the past quarter century.
Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary will be marked next year as a major milestone for the world’s largest free knowledge resource.
