Wikipedia SWASTHA (Special Wikipedia Awareness Scheme for The Healthcare Affiliates) aimed to curate, translate, localize, and disseminate important and relevant health information to communities in India and beyond. It sought to address the needs of the communities in India that lacked access to basic health-related information in their language.
Consultation calls and meetups were held to engage existing Wikipedia communities and academic experts.
Project SWASTHA started working on articles in late December 2019 after hosting in-person meeting in Mumbai which was attended by 10+ language community members. Wikipedia experts with average experience of 5+ years gathered under SWASTHA umbrella in Mumbai and decided to work on improving healthcare articles on English as well as local language Wikipedia's.
The platform created through SWASTHA served as a meeting place for volunteers and healthcare professionals to exchange knowledge and to share best practices.
Numerous news articles highlighted the work of Wikipedia SWASTHA in editing, translating, and publishing Wikipedia articles related to COVID-19 have been published. Most of these articles emphasized the role that Wikipedia SWASTHA is playing to fight misinformation about COVID-19, describing the coronavirus crisis as a crisis about information, as well as about public health. Relevant to this context, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned against an “infodemic” of inaccurate information “that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it”. The news articles also mentioned the collaboration of Wikipedia SWASTHA with WikiProject Medicine, a larger Wikipedia group of doctors and experts that has produced more than 35,000 medical articles across different languages.
The news articles helped to raise awareness about Wikipedia SWASTHA: its coverage of the COVID-19 articles in Indian languages, and the processes it entails to accomplish the task. It also drew attention to Wikipedia and the importance of reliable information on Wikipedia, especially articles containing critical health information such as COVID-19. The Wikipedia SWASTHA team would like the attention to be focused on the impact and the health topics, more than the branded project. The team hopes that the attention would lead to increased public trust in objective information and greater trust for health authorities.
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