Meeting the information needs of health workers in developing countries | The BMJ

"Health workers in the developing world are starved of the information that is the lifeblood of effective health care.1 2 As a direct result, their patients suffer and die. In the words of the late James Grant, former executive director of Unicef, “The most urgent task before us is to get medical and health knowledge to those most in need of that knowledge. Of the approximately 50 million people who were dying each year in the late 1980s, fully two thirds could have been saved through the application of that knowledge.”2

Providing access to reliable health information for health workers in developing countries is potentially the single most cost effective and achievable strategy for sustainable improvement in health care. Cost effective because the amounts of money required are negligible compared with those invested in health services. Achievable because providers of health information have the will and commitment to make it happen, and because information technology presents exciting new opportunities to complement conventional methods of dissemination. And sustainable because information access is the sine qua non of the professional development of all health workers–the most vital asset of any healthcare system...."