WHO will provide graphical and informative resources to the Wikimedia library, the organization responsible for administering Wikipedia.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Wikimedia Foundation agreed to collaborate for access to reliable and up-to-date information on COVID-19 and the pandemic in general.
This collaboration seeks to give people access to truthful information about what is happening in their countries, the agreement between these two agencies will promote the dissemination of open public health information through Creative Commons and ShareALike. That is, Internet users will be free to consult and share available information, including: videos, infographics and other relevant public health resources that are published through Wikimedia Commons, the digital library of rights-free materials and ready for disclosure.
Currently the Wikimedia Foundation digital library on COVID-19, has more than 5 thousand articles in 175 languages. that have been this was made possible by the contribution of about 88,000 volunteer editors. In addition, it should be noted that the total number of accesses to all available articles is more than 500 million visits., with the highest number of visits to these articles being recorded in March, when WHO classified COVID-19 as a pandemic.
For his part, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, explained: “Equitable access to trusted health information is critical to keeping people safe and informed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our new collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation will increase access to reliable health information from WHO across multiple countries, languages, and devices.” WHO has carried out various actions and collaborations with national governments to prevent the COVID-19 infodemic.
On the other hand, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher highlighted how important it is for the population to have reliable information these days: “Access to information is essential to healthy communities and should be treated as such. This becomes even more clear in times of global health crises when information can have life-changing consequences. All institutions, from governments to international health agencies, scientific bodies to Wikipedia, must do our part to ensure everyone has equitable and trusted access to knowledge about public health, regardless of where you live or the language you speak.”
The free graphic resources on COVID-19 for use are available for use at the following link:
