As I am currently engaged in facilitating medical education
in a
developing country, I was encouraged to read in a recent editorial by
Neil Pakenham-Walsh and Carol Priestley about the recent INASP-Health
initiative (by the International Network for the Availability of
Scientific Publications) to promote worldwide access to the medical
literature.1 There is much untapped potential in
imaginative exploitation of newer information technologies.
From our end, however, there is a clear perception of the close link
between access to medical literature and power. Those who generate and
possess the knowledge base have greatest influence, over both the
medical and the political worlds we inhabit. Knowledge controls.
Thus I hope that the International Network for the Availability of
Scientific Publications and others seeking to empower the medical
workforce in developing countries will not limit themselves to
availability, simply giving access to Western literature as its authors
see fit. Rather, we need to distribute the control of access to
databases to the users, enabling them to initiate searches and
determine end points, seeking answers to their own questions. We might
also do more to enable medical practitioners from developing countries
to contribute more to the published literature from their own
discoveries, reactions, and experiences, giving them the confidence to
share their perspectives. Only then can an "international
network"
have real meaning.
Roderick Macrorie
Doctor in charge
Beni Project,
International Nepal Fellowship,
PO Box 5,
Pokhara,
Nepal
