Health Information for Consumers in Developing Nations: A Medical Librarian’s Perspective

Health information, both professional as well as consumer oriented, is an important component of the health care service. Professionals constantly need information for academics, research, preventive care, treatment and also to stay updated and to create and update health policies. Consumers need health information to stay healthy and to manage diseases and conditions. Generic search engines like Google and Yahoo answers are utilized extensively for getting health information (Akerkar & Bichile, 2004). However while utilizing these engines information seekers most often have to sift through volumes of data that often includes questionable sources of information. Health professionals face lacunae in receiving training about information resources and databases, and structured approach to searching these. Both consumers and health professionals spend far too much time searching for information, time that could be utilized much better in the actual health care delivery process. This article describes a medical librarian’s journey from being a health information consumer to a health information provider both to health professionals and consumers.