Approximately 7000 stillbirths
occur daily worldwide, and the vast
majority of them (98%) take place
in low-income and middle-income
countries (LMICs).1
Despite this
enormous burden, progress to reduce
the death toll is slow and insufficient.2
WHO released its Making every baby
count3 guide in 2016, which includes
strategies aimed at addressing the
challenge of stillbirths. Given the flurry
of activity and attention on stillbirths
from the Lancet Stillbirth Epidemiology
investigator group and WHO, we expect
that the wealth of information about
stillbirths that is generated will filter
down in a timely manner to where it is
needed most: the general public.
As is often the case for Wikipedians,
we found that the stillbirth page4 on
the English language Wikipedia was
missing important information—eg,
the major causes of stillbirth (malaria
and syphilis) were not mentioned,
and details on epidemiological aspects
were scarce.1
Unsurprisingly, the
Wikipedia pages on stillbirth in about
20 other languages were less detailed
than the English language version.
This worried us because not only
is Wikipedia the world’s most used
source of health information online,
but it is also one of the most widely
used sources by medical students,
doctors, and other health-care
providers.5,6
It is not difficult to
imagine that the first online port of
call for a woman, her partner, or her
family following a stillbirth would be
Wikipedia. Furthermore, many policy
makers and other key stakeholders
also read Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is particularly relevant for
LMICs, where internet access is often
slow and expensive. We have been
involved in developing mobile apps
for offline use which contain all of
Wikipedia’s anatomy, pharmacology,
medicine, and sanitation content in an
attempt to address this issue. We have
seen tens of thousands of downloads
of the apps, with the majority from
LMICs.7 There is clearly a huge unmet
need for health-related information,
to the extent that some mobile
network operators in LMICs do not
charge for data costs when users are
accessing Wikipedia (Wikipedia Zero8).
However, this generous practice has
been cautioned against because some
people feel it infringes upon internet
neutrality (the principle that internet
providers should treat all data equally).
In addition to the stillbirth article
there are many others on Wikipedia
associated with global health that
require further attention. Wikipedia
has the potential of being bolstered
as a key tool for global public health
promotion.9
However, Wikipedia
struggles to attract medical doctors
or other trained health professionals
as editors. We echo previous authors
in inviting the medical community—
and in particular medical journals—to
incentivise Wikipedia editing with
the goal of bringing about increased
access to reliable, understandable,
and up-to-date health information9
in multiple languages. PLoS
Computational Biology, for example,
encourages its authors to post topics
on Wikipedia.10 Promoting inclusive
and equitable learning opportunities
for all speaks to the aspirations of the
Sustainable Development Goals. We
suggest that medical journals actively
promote and incentivise Wikipedia
editing by the health-care community
so that the most commonly used
source of online health information is
as reliable as possible.