An electronic conference is a two-way electronic mailing list devoted to a specific topic. Members share comments or pose questions to the group by sending e-mail messages to the electronic conference's e-mail address (a process known as posting). When a message reaches the group's address, special mailing list software automatically distributes the message to all the members of the group. For the most part, members respond to questions in the same way that they pose them, by posting messages to the group's address. Sometimes members choose to reply directly to the author of a question by writing to that individual's e-mail address.

All of our electronic conferences are moderated, which means that e-mail messages sent to the electronic conference's address are first read by a moderator, a person who filters out messages inappropriate to the electronic conference's objective. If the moderator decides that a message is appropriate, he or she authorizes the posting of the message to the group.

To unsubscribe via email for any electronic conference listed in this guide, compose an e-mail message to:

For each electronic conference, an "info file" exists which contains helpful information such as whether the electronic conference is moderated, how to post messages, and how to access the discussion group archives.

To retrieve the "info file" for any electronic conference listed in this guide, compose an e-mail message to:

majordomo@usa.healthnet.org

To participate in a electronic conference, post a message to the e-mail address specific to that electronic conference (listed below).

AIDS Action

Area name: aids-action

Published four times a year, AIDS Action examines and provides practical information on HIV/AIDS transmission, prevention, and treatment. AIDS Action examines the importance of policy and project assessment as well as outlines methods useful for increasing provider impact on the international AIDS community. Recent issues have covered HIV and children, caring for people who are very sick, and HIV prevention projects. AIDS Action is published by Healthlink Worldwide, formerly known as the Appropriate Health Resources and Technologies Action Group (AHRTAG) in the United Kingdom.

CBR News

Area name: cbr-news

Produced three times a year, CBR News ("Community-Based Rehabilitation-News") is also published by HealthLink Worldwide. CBR News focuses on the concerns of physically challenged persons in relation to the global perspective. Recent issues have covered wheelchairs, raising awareness about disability issues, and the legacy of leprosy. CBR News provides practical and fulfilling solutions to enable disabled individuals work within, and to contribute successfully to, their communities.

Child Health Dialogue

Area name: chd

Child Health Dialogue, published quarterly by HealthLink Worldwide, concentrates on international pediatric health promotion and disease prevention. It provides a forum for information exchange on five key conditions as they affect children - acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition, and measles. Each issue offers practical information on a range of subjects such as barriers to treatment, staff management, and clinical guidelines.

Health Action is published three times a year by Healthlink Worldwide and emphasizes international implementation of primary health care. Health Action features practical information on various public health issues such as emergency management and quality control of health services. It frequently includes input from health workers in the field concerning the challenges they face and the solutions they find to work.

HealthNet News

Area name: hnn

HealthNet News, SATELLIFE's own publication, is sent out weekly via e-mail, and features current clinical and public health information. Summaries, abstracts, editorials, and occasional full-text articles from several leading peer-reviewed journals are featured in this newsletter. Please note that distribution is limited to the developing world because of publisher permission restrictions.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to copyright restrictions, we only distrbute HealthNet News to those health professionals living and working in the developing world.

HealthNet News HIV/AIDS Supplement

Area name: hnn-aids

The HealthNet News HIV/AIDS Supplement, another one of SATELLIFE's own publications, concentrates on HIV/AIDS, other STDs, and their associated opportunistic infections. Published monthly, the HIV/AIDS Supplement carries abstracts, summaries, and occasional full text articles selected by our physician-editor for their scientific integrity and international relevance. Topics include new developments in HIV/AIDS and STD research, therapy options, vaccine efforts and updates on epidemiology.

Who Library Digest

Area name: who-digest

WHO Library Digest for Africa is a monthly publication compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) Office of Library and Health Literature Services in Switzerland. It features recent WHO press releases, new WHO publications from headquarters and regional offices, and publication information from WHO newsletters and periodicals. WHO Library Digest for Africa is oriented towards medical librarians and others interested in promoting health information in the developing world. Recent reports have included regional immunization campaigns, guidelines for primary health practitioners, smoking, epidemiology, and infectious diseases endemic to Africa.

For each publication, an "info file" exists which contains helpful information such as a description of the publication, how to subscribe to the publication, and how to access the archives of the publication.

To retrieve the "info file" for any publication listed in this guide, compose an e-mail message to:

majordomo@usa.healthnet.org

In the body of the message, type the command info followed by the area name of the publication. Each area name is listed below the name of the publication in the section Descriptions of publications, below. On a separate line, type end and send the message. For example, to retrieve the "info file" for Practical Pointers on Primary Care, you would look up the area name and find that it was "pracptrs". You would then use that information to compose a message to the majordomo address. Your message might look like this:

To: majordomo@usa.healthnet.org info pracptrs end

GetWeb provides access to a number of Internet resources through a simple exchange of e-mail messages. If you are new to the Internet, and would like a brief overview of the subject, please see Appendix A: About the Internet, starting on page 39. With GetWeb, you can download information from World Wide Web pages, follow links from one Web page to the next, access Gopher and FTP sites, and conduct Web searches.

Using GetWeb to retrieve a single Web page

SATELLIFE HealthNet's GetWeb server allows you to request the text content of the World Wide Web pages through e-mail. To get information from a particular World Wide Web page:

1. Compose a new message to the following address:

getweb@usa.healthnet.org

2. Leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message, type the command GET followed by the URL (that is, the address) of the Web page you want, for example:

GET http://www.healthnet.org

Note that many URLs contain both uppercase and lowercase letters. When typing the URL, be sure to preserve the case of all letters.

3. Send the message.

When SATELLIFE receives your message, the GetWeb server retrieves the requested page from the Web, formats it as plain text, and sends it to you as an e-mail message.

If your mailer software automatically inserts unwanted text (a signature, for example) at the beginning or end of your message, an error will occur. You can prevent this by enclosing your commands in a begin/end block as shown below. The GetWeb server ignores any text that appears before or after the block. Remember to leave an empty line between the commands:

begin

GET http://www.healthnet.org

end

Ideally, the URL should appear all on one line in your message. If the URL is too long to fit on one line, please see the section Breaking commands between multiple lines, on page 34.

If a message is larger than 20 kilobytes (20kb), GetWeb will automatically split it into two or more 20kb files, and send each file as a separate message. Your mailer software may place a limit on the size of messages you can receive, and in some cases that limit is 10kb or less. If you know that your mailer software has a file size limit of less than 20kb, you can request that GetWeb split messages into files of smaller sizes. Please see the section Splitting messages on page 34.

Please note all requests are logged; we cannot guarantee that your requests will remain private.

Following links to other pages

Web pages usually contain links to other pages, whether to other pages at the same Web site, or to pages of related interest at a different site. When you retrieve a Web page through GetWeb, each of these links is represented in the text with a reference number in brackets. These numbers correspond to a list at the bottom of the message, which provides the URL for each of the linked pages. You might then choose to follow a link, by sending another e-mail message requesting that page. For example, if you requested a page through GetWeb, it might look like this:

Some important conferences carried by SATELLIFE include: * ProMED-mail: Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases[1] * ProCAARE: Program for Collaboration Against AIDS[2] * E-Drug: Essential Drugs[3] ** References from this document ** [1] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/promed.html [2] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/procaare.html [3] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html

If you wanted to get more information about ProCAARE, you would look for the reference number [2] at the bottom of the message. Under [2] you would find the URL:

http://www.healthnet.org/programs/procaare.html

You could then send a message to GetWeb that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET http://www/healthnet.org/programs/procaare.html end

Once your message had been received, GetWeb would retrieve the text of the page on ProCAARE and send it to you.

Retrieving more than one page at a time

You can request for GetWeb to send you more than one Web page at a time. For each Web page you would like to receive, type GET and the URL on one line. Leave a blank line between each request. Start your message with the command begin and complete it with the command end. For example, if you wanted to receive three Web pages, your message might look like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/procaare.html GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/promed.html GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html end

Getting help

For the most up-to-date help documents, send an e-mail message to getweb@usa.healthnet.org and leave the subject line blank. The body of the message should read:

begin

HELP

end

If you having trouble using GetWeb and you are a HealthNet user, please contact your system operator. If you have contacted your system operator, and they are not able to resolve the problem, please send a message describing the problem to:

support@usa.healthnet.org

About Web searches

Search engines are a very useful tool for finding information on a specific subject located on the Web. Using GetWeb, you can access several of these search engines through e-mail. You should be aware that most Web searches are not topic searches per se -- they do not search for content on a given subject, but for a word or set of words. In order to conduct a Web search, you will need to select a word or set of words, called "keywords," which describe your chosen subject. When you submit these keywords to the search engine, it searches through the text posted on a large number of Web sites for those specific words you have submitted. When it has completed the search, the search engine gives you a list of all the pages on which those words can be found.

Specifying keywords

Once you have chosen the keywords that describe your subject, there are certain things to keep in mind when you type them in to your search request. If your keywords contain a phrase like "South Africa" or "cardiovascular disease" you should enclose these phrases in quotation marks. That way, the search engine will know to look for instances where those words appear as a phrase, and not for instances where they simply appear in the same document. Likewise, if any of your keywords contain capital letters, like "AIDS" (the disease) or "Turkey" (the country) you should be sure to type them in with capitals. Otherwise, the search engine will also return references to documents including the words "aids" (assistance), or "turkey" (the bird).

Using GetWeb to conduct a search

GetWeb is not itself a search engine, but using GetWeb, you can make use of certain search engines on the Web. Currently GetWeb supports the search engines AltaVista, Yahoo!, and Infoseek. AltaVista searches the largest number of sites, and therefore will probably produce the largest search result. The Yahoo! search engine, by comparison, allows you to search through a carefully indexed list of World Wide Web sites and produces a small list of well-organized sites. Infoseek searches a large number of sites, and also allows you to search through different electronic conference archives. We suggest that you try your search first with AltaVista. Then, if the result is too large, or does not contain useful information, try one of the other search engines.

To access one of these search engines, compose a message to getweb@usa.healthnet.org and leave the subject line blank. In the body of the message type SEARCH followed by the name of the search engine, all in capital letters, and the keywords for your search. Remember to start your message with the command begin, complete it with the word end and to leave a blank line between commands. When GetWeb receives your message, it will forward it on to the search engine. The results of your search will be returned to GetWeb and forwarded to you as an e-mail message.

For example, if you wanted to use AltaVista to search for information on cardiovascular disease in Africa, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SEARCH ALTAVISTA "cardiovascular disease" Africa end

If you wanted to use Yahoo! to search for the same information, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SEARCH YAHOO "cardiovascular disease" Africa end

If you wanted to use Infoseek to search for the same information, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SEARCH INFOSEEK "cardiovascular disease" Africa end

Advanced search features

Infoseek offers you the option of searching a large number of Web sites, or of limiting your search to a given set of documents. If you submit your request without further specification, as in the example above, Infoseek will search a broad range of sites. But, if you would like, you can use the following two-letter commands to indicate the set of documents you would like to search:

NN searches Usenet newsgroups

CT searches the Infoseek company directory

EM searches a database of known e-mail addresses

NW searches through the past month of news

FQ searches through a collection of Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) documents

In order to make use of these commands, simply insert them after the word INFOSEEK and before the first of your subject keywords in your search request. For example, if you wanted to search for recent news on the 15-year-old search for a cure for AIDS, your message might look like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SEARCH INFOSEEK NW cure AIDS end

In order to learn more about searching with Infoseek, you can request the Infoseek help page from the following URL:

http://guide.infoseek.com/Help?pg=SearchHlp.html&sv=IS&lk=lcd

In order to learn more about searching with AltaVista, you can request the AltaVista help page from the following URL:

http://altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=h&what=web

In order to learn more about searching with Yahoo!, you can request the Yahoo! help page from the following URL:

http://search.yahoo.com/search/help?

A sample Web search

Suppose that a user, joe@anywhere.healthnet.org, needs statistics about the morbidity rates for Malaria in tropical Africa. Joe hopes this information is located somewhere within one of the millions of documents making up the World Wide Web, and decides to execute aWeb search using the AltaVista search engine.

Joe reasons that the sort of document he is looking for might contain the words "Malaria" and "morbidity", as well as the phrase "tropical Africa". He therefore sends the following message:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SEARCH ALTAVISTA malaria morbidity "tropical Africa" end

When GetWeb receives the message, it forwards the message to AltaVista. AltaVista searches the Web and sends a message back to GetWeb. The message is then forwarded to Joe, a portion of it is shown on the next page.

From: GetWeb MailBot <getweb@usa.healthnet.org> To: joe@anywhere.healthnet.org Subject: AltaVista Search: Simple Query "tropical africa" malaria morbidity <URL:http://altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg= q&what=web&fmt=.&q=%22tropical+africa%22+malaria+morbidity> [AltaVista] [1] [Advanced Query] [2] [Simple Query] [3] [Private eXtension Products] [4] [Help with Query] [5] [IMAGE] [6] Word count: tropical africa: about 1000; morbidity:27708; malaria:54079 Documents 1-10 of about 10000 matching the query, best matches first. Malaria Information - tropical Africa[7] Tropical Africa - Estimated Incidence and Mortality. In Africa south of the Sahara, between 13 and 23 million cases per year have been reported during... Chagas Disease Control[8] World Health Organization. Division of Control of Tropical Diseases. Malaria Control. Malaria Control. Malaria is one of the three leading causes of... HISTORY OF TROPICAL AFRICA[9] This class meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7:45 to 8:40 AM in Room 138, North Hall. HISTORY OF TROPICAL AFRICA. Spring 1996 Instructor: Dr.... *** References from this document *** [orig] http://altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what= web&fmt=.&q=%22tropical+africa%22+malaria+morbidity [7] http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/5-africa.htm [8] http://www.who.or.jp/documents.hq/programmes/ctd/act/malaact.htm [9] http://www.uwlax.edu/LS/History/courses/381_001.html

Joe decides that the document titled "Malaria Information - tropical Africa[7]" looks promising. He refers to the bottom of the message and finds that the [7] refers to the following URL:

http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/5-africa.htm

To request this new document, Joe composes another message to GetWeb. His message looks like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/5-africa.htm end

GetWeb then sends back to Joe a message containing the World Health Organization's estimated malaria statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa, a portion of which is shown below.

From: GetWeb MailBot <getweb@usa.healthnet.org> To: joe@anywhere.healthnet.org Subject: Malaria Information - tropical Africa <URL:http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/5-africa.htm> Tropical Africa - Estimated Incidence and Mortality In Africa south of the Sahara, between 13 and 23 million cases per year have been reported during 1985-1989. Based on the population exposed to malaria risk and on the number of fever episodes (less than 1 up to more than 6, d epending on the age group) from which a person will be suffering every year and of which about half are typically due to malaria, it has been estimated that between 270 and 480 million clinical malaria cases may occur every year[...] Taking into account the above morbidity estimates one could expect malaria mortality to be in the order of 1.4 to 2.6 million annually, of which approximately 1 million deaths will occur in children below the age of 5 years; for s ome of the deaths malaria may not be the only cause. [IMAGE] Return to main Malaria Information page[1] *** References from this document *** [orig] http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/5-africa.htm [1] http://www.who.ch/whosis/malinfo/malinfo.htm

Following chains of linked documents

If you know what link you are going to follow from an intermediate document, you do not need to download the whole document. You can instead use the FOLLOW command.

Suppose you received a document that looked like this:

Some important conferences carried by SATELLIFE include: * ProMED: Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases[1] * ProCAARE: Program for Collaboration Against AIDS[2] * E-Drug: Essential Drugs[3] ** References from this document ** [1] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/promed.html [2] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/procaare.html [3] http://www.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html

You could then send a message to GetWeb that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/ FOLLOW 2 end

Once the message was received, GetWeb would send you the description of ProCAARE.

You can chain together multiple FOLLOW directives. For example, if you were to receive the document above, and you already knew that you were going to want the fifth document linked to the ProCAARE page, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/ FOLLOW 2 FOLLOW 5 end

Breaking commands between multiple lines

If the URL is too long to fit into a single line, you can break it up by surrounding it with angle brackets (< > ) or by ending the line with a backslash (\). For example:

GET <http://www.yahoo.com/text/Regional/Countries/Czech_Republic/>

is the same as

GET http://www.yahoo.com/text/Regional/Countries/Czech_Republic/

which is also is the same as

GET http://www.yahoo.com/text/Regional/Co\
untries/Czech_Republic/

Splitting messages

If a message is larger than 20 kilobytes (20kb), GetWeb will automatically split it into two or more 20kb files, and send each file as a separate message. If you would prefer that the messages be split into files of a different size, you can add a SPLIT command to your request. You would type SPLIT and then the size, in bytes, of the messages as you would like them to be sent, at the beginning of each line in which you make a request.

If you make more than one request, place the SPLIT command at the beginning of each request. For example, if you wanted to request two pages from HealthNet Web site, and you wanted the information to be sent to you in files of 10kb or less, your message would look like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin SPLIT 10000 GET http://www.healthnet.org SPLIT 10000 GET http://www.healthnet.org/programs/promed.html end

If you wanted to do a Web search using Alta Vista on tobacco and lung cancer, and you wanted the results of your search to be sent to you in files of 40kb or less, your message would look like this:

SPLIT 40000 SEARCH ALTAVISTA tobacco "lung cancer"

Requesting a Web page as an HTML source document

If you have a browser which can interpret HTML documents, you might wish to download a Web page as an HTML source document. Then, you could use your browser to view the page locally, or make it available for others to do so.

In order to retrieve a Web page as an HTML source document rather than as plain text, insert the word SOURCE after the command GET and before the URL of the document. For example, if you wanted to receive the HealthNet home page as an HTML source document, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET SOURCE http://www.healthnet.org end

About binary files

If you are using GetWeb to retrieve certain types of electronic documents, such as image files, software, files in Word or WordPerfect, or files which have been compressed, GetWeb will send these files to you in binary form. Unless you specify otherwise, GetWeb will send any binary message as Base64 MIME file-attach. Like UUEncode, MIME is a method of encoding binary files into a mailable text format.

If you would like your binary message to be formatted in UUEncode, rather than in MIME, you can use the NOMIME modifier. In order to retrieve a binary message formatted in UUEncode, insert the word NOMIME after the command GET and before the URL of the document. For example, if you wanted to to get the zipped copy of the mpack utility in UUEncode format, you would send a message that looked like this:

To: getweb@usa.healthnet.org Subject: begin GET NOMIME ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack/mpack15d.zip end

Please note that there are limits on the number of bytes that GetWeb will send.

About limits

HealthNet users can utilize GetWeb without any restrictions. All others are subject to limits on their use of GetWeb, including a maximum number of bytes, and a maximum number of messages. Access to SATELLIFE HealthNet pages (including ProMED-mail) are generally not counted towards this total. These limits are subject to change over time. For the most current information concerning limits on the use of GetWeb, send a message to getweb@usa.healthnet.org and leave the subject line blank. The body of the message should read:

begin

HELP QUOTA

end

Suggestions or comments

If you have suggestions or comments on GetWeb, or if you identify a problem with the software, please send a message to:

getweb-admin@usa.healthnet.org