Global Help: Free Medical Information

Health care information in journals, medical books, or electronic format is usually produced in well-resourced countries but is unaffordable and often unsuitable in other areas of the world. To bridge this gap, “The Global-HELP Organization” (www.global-help.org) provides free health care information to countries lacking health care resources. The organization which is commonly known as HELP (Health Education using Low-cost Publications) is a nonprofit making organization that values diversity in religion, race, and culture and has no political affiliations. With advances in telecommunication, HELP is able to achieve its commitment in making medical knowledge accessible worldwide.

The vision for HELP came from Drs. Lynn and Lana Staheli, who after experiencing the 9/11 tragedy in America came to the conclusion that conflict around the world is caused mainly by poverty, despair, and poor health care and believed that this may be best addressed by education. They both worked and taught in numerous developing countries and personally understood and experienced the impact the lack of health education had on people's lives. They saw hospitals whose entire medical libraries did not even fill a single bookshelf. Improving health requires access to health care information, and given their backgrounds in medicine, academia, and publishing, providing access to health education resources seemed a logical and powerful way to give something back. The idea was born for Global-HELP: the creation, distribution, and broad access to affordable health education materials. Their principles were as follows:

• We make medical knowledge available worldwide.

• Our material is free to read, watch, and download.

• We focus on children's health to improve their lives.

• We believe knowledge is the most sustainable resource.

• Our contributors are worldwide professionals.

To bridge the global health care information gap, they found alternate ways to distribute medical information and started by focusing on Web site PDF file downloads which were free. They further generated free medical information in the form of books, posters, and compact discs (CDs) for the less-resourced countries.

Since 2001, the Global-HELP Organization has created 85 free publications in 35 different languages, which have been downloaded in free, universal PDF file over 3 million times. HELP has also distributed printed titles to medical professionals, educators, and families in nearly 200 countries. In addition, 30,000 printed publications have been distributed in more than 70 countries. A total of 1,000 printed copies of “Paediatric Surgery: A Comprehensive Text for Africa,” in particular, have been distributed throughout Africa and digital versions have been downloaded more than 250,000 times.

HELP is funded mainly by board members and the donations received from non–board members are used entirely for developing publications and for free distribution of material from their Web site.

Through Global-Help Organization, a two-volume book, namely, “Pediatric Surgery: A Comprehensive Text for Africa” was feasible. The book is based on the same academic principles as “Pediatric Surgery” by O'Neill et al but for African surgeons. To date, most text books in pediatric surgery are based on Western disease, whereas this book provided information for surgeons working in less-resourced countries. Each chapter in the book has an African contributor and a Western contributor to cover the disease profile in developing countries shared with Western authorship. The book is available in print, CD, and PDF file which is available for download free of charge via the organization's Web site. The demand for the book has spread beyond Africa to other less-resourced continents, namely, parts of Asia, Middle-East, and America. The book has been translated in many languages and the demand is increasing. As pediatric surgeons, we are grateful to HELP, for the information on pediatric surgery is now distributed to new countries and new people every day (www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHxt6v9IQH8).