Danbury, CT, USA – 09 August 2016. Translators without Borders (TWB) and the Wiki Project Med Foundation are partnering to ensure that critical healthcare information reaches an estimated to 3.3 million people every month. Since the partnership began in 2012, 1,900 medical articles have been made accessible on local-language Wikipedias, with TWB providing the translations into 83 languages. With an estimated annual readership of 39 million, this project is ensuring access to free, uncensored, accurate and timely information on topics like the urgent Ebola or Zika fever outbreaks and perennial concerns like diarrhoea, malaria and birth control. That does not take into account the scope of the articles when shared across thousands of other websites. The actual reach is much wider.
“The aim is to translate content where it is needed most”, said James Heilman, MD, of the Translation Task Force, a Wiki Project Med Foundation project. “While many of the languages from the less developed world have low readership I believe this will change in time. As content is developed readership grows. For example, there has been a doubling in the readership of our medical articles in Oriya each month, indicating that speakers of Oriya in India now have access to extensive information about important medical topics.” The Translation Task Force are working to do the same for speakers of Persian and Swahili. In the past year, the Task Force added another 770 summary articles and 18 full-length articles to 66 local-language Wikipedias.
The Wikipedia Medical Translation Task Force and Translators without Borders share the conviction that language should not be a barrier to accessing quality health information. The health outcomes of vulnerable communities depend on access to free local-language information.
Wiki Project Med Foundation and Translators without Borders are both parts of the global initiative: Healthcare Information For All. More information about the progress of these projects can be seen here
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Please direct all media enquiries for Translators without Borders to Amy Rose Mc Govern, Director of External Affairs [email protected]
To contact the Wikipedia Medical Translation Task Force email: [email protected]
