Health Information Kenya

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Introduction Health is a key element to development.Indeed,it is said that "a healthy nation is a wealthy nation". Reliable and timely information on health has been suggested to be the single most sustainable tool to the attainment of equitable health for all.

Health information sources in Kenya Kenya has a considerable high level of literacy as compared to most low-income countries,with a literacy level of 80-89%(http://www.justmaps.org/maps/thematics/literacy.asp#).It has been suggested that there is a co-relation between general literacy and health literacy http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/289 However,this literacy is not sufficient to address health problems such as HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Chronic non-infectious diseases such as diabetes and cancer.More effort should be invested in behaviorial change.

Opportunities for increased knowledge among health professionals Ever since the emergence of the internet,there have been a number of initiatives that make available health information.One of the most outstanding and particularly useful to health and biomedical reserachers is the WHO led HINARI(http://www.who.int/hinari/en.

HINARI is an on-line portal that provides more than 3,600 biomedical and social science journals to researchers in low-income countries for free or at a low cost.

Another initiative that promises to bring about positive change is HIFA2015 (http://www.dgroups.org/groups/HIFA2015) discussion group, which is an online electronic board that allow health information professionals to share ideas via the internet/email. Health information Kenya http://healthinfokenya.blogspot.com is also available for health professionals in Kenya.