[india-drug] Enquiry regarding awareness of HIN in India

[Sunitha Srinivas <s.srinivas@ru.ac.za>]

Enquiry regarding awareness of HIN in India
-------------------------------------------

Dear Idrug participants,

The following information is form the URL < Health InterNetwork
website: www.healthinternetwork.net>
Since 31 Jan 2002, many thousands of doctors, researchers, health
policy-makers and others in about 70 developing countries gained free
access through the Internet to one of the world's largest collections
of biomedical literature.This benefit was from an initiative launched
by the World Health Organization and the world's six biggest medical
journal publishers, which WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland
had described as "perhaps the biggest step ever taken towards reducing
the health information gap between rich and poor countries."
The "Access to Research" initiative enables accredited universities,
medical schools, research centres and other public institutions in the
developing countries to gain access to the wealth of scientific
information contained in more than 1000 different biomedical journals
produced by the six publishers. Until now, subscriptions to these
journals, both electronic and print, have been priced uniformly for
such institutions, irrespective of geographical location. Many key
titles cost more than US$1500 per year, and the average subscription
costs several hundred dollars, putting the journals beyond the reach of
the large majority of health and research institutions in the poorest
countries.WHO, working with the British Medical Journal, approached the
six biggest medical journal publishers: Blackwell, Elsevier Science,
the Harcourt Worldwide STM Group, Wolters Kluwer International Health &
Science, Springer Verlag and John Wiley. The aim was to bring them
together with the countries concerned to seek a more affordable pricing
structure for online access to their international biomedical journals.

The reason I am putting up this info is because on checking the
registered Universities that are making use of this excellent resource,
I did not find the names of any Indian Universities.

On the other hand on the  URL<http://www.hin.org.in/ipf.htm#pilotpro>,
the info I see is that the following pilot projects have been
initiated.
The HIN Project functions from the office of the WHO Representative to
India. The project plan was formulated in coordination with he
Government, various UN agencies active in the initiative and the core
team formed to facilitate planning, implementing and evaluating the
Pilot project.

Pilot States: 
Karnataka: Health Commissioner, Department of Health and Family Welfare
Govt. of Karnataka 

Orissa: Project Director, Orissa Health Systems Development Project,
Govt. of Orissa. 

ICT application, content development and network of stakeholders in TB
control: National TB Institute, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,
Govt. of India. 

Development of content and knowledge base of research for Tobacco
Control: Action Council Against Tobacco.(http://www.actindia.org) (The
council is an NGO located in the Tata Memorial Hospital (Autonomous
Institution funded by the Govt. of India) 

National Health Research information System:
Indian Council of Medical Research 

Network of Medical College Libraries:
National Medical Library, Directorate General Health Services (Ministry
of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India.); 

Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, an umbrella institution of
about 250 live sciences institutions in Karnataka. 

VSS Medical College Burla, Sambhalpur, Orissa; SCB Medical College
Cuttack, Orissa.

I am keen to know if any of the Idrug participants can update us
further on this.

Thanks.

Best regards,
Sunitha


Associate Professor
Pharmacy Adminstration and Practice
Faculty of Pharmacy
Rhodes University
Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa
Tel: +27 46 603 8396
Fax:+27 46 636 1205
Email: s.srinivas@ru.ac.za




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