Leprosy in Wikipedia

Leprosy Mailing List – October 30^th, 2010

Ref.:   Leprosy in Wikipedia

From: Al Aboud Khalid M., Makkah , Saudi Arabia

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Sir,

Online Resources are very convenient and effective tool for helping the physicians in their practice and also for patient health education.  Wikipedia is a free, web-based, multilingual encyclopaedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation [1].  It was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and is currently the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet [1].  Its 16 million articles (over 3.4 million in English), have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site [1].

On looking to the leprosy page in Wikipedia (kindly, see the link in reference 2), one can see a comprehensive information about the disease.  The article is available in 63 languages.  The above status about the multilingual availability about the topic is good, if we compare it with other common diseases like vitiligo or psoriasis (37 languages for each).  However, few remarks need to be mentioned.

The Contents about leprosy in other languages (other than English and French), are limited. One can expect that the contents are more in the languages of the countries most affected about the disease.

Secondly, one can observe that there is a difference in the details among different languages and also the external links in the leprosy pages are not the same.  I could not find a link to our LML in the Wikipedia leprosy page.

There is a need to supplement the articles in each language by good figures and images. Workers in leprosy elimination or rehabilitation of leprosy patients or in any other different leprosy programmes, may enhance their works by utilizing this important resource because the disease exist in many communities with different languages.  It is particularly, more profitable if those with interest per language group try to upgrade the leprosy chapter.  Before they can do this they have to register to Wikipedia.

I may conclude by saying that, we may need to initiate a task force among LML group with an aim to review and improve the leprosy pages in Wikipedia as it is a very important resource for the physicians and patients alike.

Khalid M. Al Aboud, MD

Medical Director and Consultant Dermatologist

King Faisal Hospital

Makkah , Saudi Arabia

Address for correspondence:

Khalid Al Aboud

M.D, Medical Director

King Faisal, P.O Box 5440

Makkah, Postal Code 21955 , Saudi Arabia

Tel 00966 2 5566411, Fax 00966 2 5563523/5574350, E-mail amoa65(at)hotmail.com