AFRO-NETS> Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Portal - AfroAIDSinfo (2)

[Victoria Ives <victoria.ives@mrc.ac.za>]

Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Portal - AfroAIDSinfo (2)
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[in addition to yesterday's message, here the official press release]:


LAUNCH OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN AFROAIDSINFO PORTAL

http://www.AfroAIDSinfo.org

Cape Town - According to UNAIDS, HIV/AIDS is now the number one cause 
of death in Africa, and has moved to fourth place among all causes of 
death worldwide. Improved information and knowledge management has 
become an essential enabling tool in the fight against this pandemic.

AfroAIDSinfo provides this opportunity. It is a southern African in-
formation portal providing comprehensive information on HIV/AIDS. 
AfroAIDSinfo is an appropriate tool to structure a wide variety of 
data and to provide relevant and reliable information quickly to end-
users. The SADC community, and others, will benefit from being able 
to access accurate up-to-date information in an effort to combat the 
pandemic in the region.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) developed and manages the 
AfroAIDSinfo portal. Apart from MRCs own resources, funding was re-
ceived from the International AIDS Society (on behalf of the XIII In-
ternational AIDS Conference held in 2002) and Bristol-Myers Squibb 
HIV/AIDS Research Institute Secure the Future.

The portal is part of SAHealthInfo (http://www.sahealthinfo.org), a 
health knowledge network established as a South African Government 
Innovation Fund project. 

This unique tool caters for the information needs of individuals 
and/or defined user groups - on a personalised basis. The aim of the 
portal is to disseminate important information on HIV/AIDS to re-
searchers, the health profession, the public, infected individuals, 
educators and policy-makers. The portal also caters for services such 
as discussion groups, generating newsletters and bibliographic ser-
vices. 

The portal will be complemented by information kiosks, which will 
serve areas without Internet access through partnering with relevant 
government and private sector organisations. These information kiosks 
will act as central deposits for information carried on the portal, 
and users will be able to translate it and disseminated it to secon-
dary audiences according to their needs. 

The interactive environment is divided into five main categories to 
cater for each audience independently. Here are some examples of the 
various categories offered on the portal.


RESEARCH 

The Research category is geared to research professionals working in 
the area of HIV and AIDS and provides them with up to date informa-
tion on medical advances, research projects and reviews. As members 
of the portal, researchers will also be privy to an online chat fo-
rum, which will allow them to interact with other professionals.
	
					
HEALTH PROFESSION

A Health Profession category provides useful information to public 
and private health care workers across a range of specialised disci-
plines. The information is geared to assist professions support, di-
agnose, treat and manage HIV/AIDS. 


HIV AND YOU

AfroAIDSinfo speaks to the general public - adults and children - in 
a community-orientated category called HIV and You. This resource 
centre carries informative articles and educational tools and ad-
dresses issues around infection, prevention, safer sex, nutrition and 
how to care for ill people. Members will be able to share their 
hopes, fears and concerns in the chat room. 


POLICY 

The portal also hosts a Policy category to provide a wide array of 
readers with the latest policies adopted or proposed by governments, 
parties, lobbying groups, businesses and individuals. It will also 
host a discussion platform for AfroAIDSinfo members. It will also 
host a discussion platform for AfroAIDSinfo members.


EDUCATION

An Education category offers the latest information on projects being 
undertaken by education institutions and aims to evolve into a re-
source centre for industry workers.

In addition to these categories, AfroAIDSinfo streams Daily News up-
dates, hosts an Events diary, a Media centre and a database of Gate-
way Links to HIV/AIDS-related sources. 

Medical information on AfroAIDSinfo is sourced from Health on the Net 
Foundation (HON) accredited organisations. Editorial articles that 
are not peer-reviewed are assessed for accuracy by medically-
qualified editorial consultants and other experts. Non-medical con-
tent is sourced from educational, non-governmental and private com-
mercial sources.

All of the content, information and services are developed and pub-
lished independently of any commercial or other interests. And the 
content, or information carried in the links, is not intended to be a 
substitute for medical examination.

Contact: 
Megan Rusi
Urban Soul Communications
Tel.: +27-21-447-7292 or +27-72-186-1388
mailto:megan@urbansoul.co.za

Victoria Ives
Editor of AfroAIDSinfo
Medical Research Council
Tel.: +27-21-938-0388 or +27-71-198-5223
mailto:victoria.ives@mrc.ac.za 

Issued on behalf of the Medical Research Council
Francie Van Zijl Drive, Parow, Cape Town.

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