Knowledge is power. Medical care is a product in which individuals offer patients compensate doctors according to their expertise in the health care field. One way to help sick individuals—especially in developing countries—is to increase their own knowledge of the illnesses which afflict them.
One organization working to spread health care knowledge is Global-HELP. The organization publishes and translates medical guides for various ailments and makes the information available to the public free of charge. This non-profit is similar to the more widely known Hesperian Foundation, of whom I mentioned in my April 8th post. The Global-HELP website describes itself as follows:
“The Global-HELP Organization, commonly referred to as HELP (Health Education using Low-cost Publications), is devoted to making knowledge about health-care accessible worldwide. By using a network of donors, authors, producers, health-care workers, and volunteers, our publications can be made available without charge.
Thanks to advances in software and communication, we can now make these publications available to places and people throughout the world.
All of our publications may be downloaded in PDF format from this website, and printed versions of select publications are also available. When used in developing countries, we provide printed publications for only the cost of mailing. For developed countries, printed publications may be purchased at a reasonable price.
Global-HELP is a humanitarian organization that is non-political and values racial, cultural, and religious diversity.”