Neil Pakenham-Walsh.
In an exclusive interview with HumanIPO from London, Neil Pakenham-Walsh said HIFA forums, which currently have more than 6,000 health professionals in 167 countries as members, are exploring ways to improve access to health information in low- and middle-income countries.
The platform provides an area where experts can share, disseminate and discuss information coming out of countries and look to try and solve problems with healthcare availability.
He told HumanIPO: “We communicate via a global email discussion platform, supported by Dgroups.
“More than 170 health and development organisations worldwide have officially declared their support for HIFA2015, and more than 2,000 organisations are represented among our members.”
He said the need to create the group arose in 2004 when he and Fiona Godlee, current editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, were contacted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to write an internal discussion paper for them.
Pakenham-Walsh said: “We published a short version of the paper in The Lancet, with the title ‘Can we achieve health information for all by 2015?’. We called on WHO to champion this goal.
“We proposed the concept of a global healthcare knowledge system, and pointed out the opportunity for increased global communication, understanding and advocacy to address the information and learning needs of health workers and citizens.
“WHO were unable to lead the campaign, but they provided a letter of support for us to take this forward, saying “HIFA2015 is an ambitious goal but it can be achieved if all stakeholders work together”.
“We established a small non-profit organisation, the Global Healthcare Information Network, specifically as a basis for the campaign, and launched the HIFA2015 in October 2006 in Mombasa, Kenya, at the Biennial Congress of the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa.”
Concerning Africa’s participation in the forums, he said one third of members are based on the continent, with Nigeria having the most members from one country.
At the time of publishing, Nigeria has 629 members, Kenya 231, Uganda 230, South Africa 165 and Ghana 134.
The HIFA-Portuguese forum has 263 members in Mozambique and 164 in Angola, while HIFA-EVIPnet-French members are based mostly in French- speaking west and central Africa.
While expressing his delight with the strong participation from Africa, he said it is not surprising since the initiative was launched in Kenya.
He said: “I am very happy that so many people in Africa have joined. We have worked hard to encourage this. We launched the campaign at the AHILA Congress in Mombasa, Kenya, so most of our early members were based in Africa.
“Many new members come through personal recommendation, so if you start with a high proportion of people in Africa, this tends to reinforce itself. I have travelled to various countries in Africa many times and engage new members wherever I can.”
HIFA2015 also has country representatives in Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
“These are HIFA members who have volunteered to promote HIFA in their country. They give talks about HIFA and invite colleagues to join. It is largely thanks to them that we have so many members in Africa.”
Concerning the success of the HIFA2015, he said the greatest achievement is “the quality of the discussions on the forum, the generosity of HIFA members (we have more than 100 volunteers), and the continuing growth in the membership".
