By SAT News Desk
Geneva, Switzerland, 22 October 2020: A new step to fight the misinformation epidemic about COVID-19 is all set with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that administers Wikipedia, announcing today a collaboration to expand the public’s access to the latest and most reliable information about COVID-19.
The collaboration will make trusted, public health information available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license at a time when countries face continuing resurgences of COVID-19 and social stability increasingly depends on the public’s shared understanding of the facts.
Through the collaboration, people everywhere will be able to access and share WHO infographics, videos, and other public health assets on Wikimedia Commons, a digital library of free images and other multimedia.
A WHO media release says, ” With these new freely-licensed resources, Wikipedia’s more than 250,000 volunteer editors can also build on and expand the site’s COVID-19 coverage, which currently offers more than 5,200 coronavirus-related articles in 175 languages. This WHO content will also be translated across national and regional languages through Wikipedia’s vast network of global volunteers.”
“Equitable access to trusted health information is critical to keeping people safe and informed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. Our new collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation will increase access to reliable health information from WHO across multiple countries, languages, and devices,” it adds.
Currently, readers can access WHO’s myth-busting series of infographics on Wikimedia Commons. The infographics, which focus on addressing common misconceptions about COVID-19, are also available for Wikipedia editors to incorporate into Wikipedia articles.
In the coming months, the Wikimedia Foundation and WHO will continue uploading resources to Wikimedia Commons and collaborating with Wikipedia volunteer editors to better understand gaps in information needs on Wikipedia articles related to COVID-19 and how WHO resources can help fill these gaps.
Additionally, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, other organizations, individuals, and websites can more easily share these materials on their own platforms without having to address stricter copyright restrictions.
WHO myth-busting series of infographics on Wikimedia Commons
