Dear All,

I am writing to share with you a very inspiring initiative regarding health and medicine articles on Wikipedia. Crores of Wikipedia readers read up about health related issues either when they or their loved ones fall ill or before or after they have consulted doctors or when they are curious about a particular disease or drug. In fact, quite a few doctors and nurses also read up these articles to improve their knowledge.

Wikipedia's medical articles have 15-20 crore page views every month. The top 300 articles are viewed more than 1 lakh times every month. The challenge is that the majority of these articles are only available in English.

This initiative ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task...) has been conceptualised by WikiProject Medicine, Wikimedia Canada and very interesting organisation called Translators Without Borders. It seeks to translate a set of 80 of the most important health care articles into as many languages as possible.

Given the state of our health care system as well as the increasing readership of Indic language projects, there is huge positive impact that we can have if we participate in this initiative and have these articles in all Indic languages. The project page (referenced above) includes an outline of the project, FAQs, useful links and a sign up for interested volunteers.

The ways that we can participate are as follows

- English Editors to improve articles on en-wp - English Editors to convert articles into simple English Wikipedia (so that non-English editors who don't have a medical background can also help out) - Indic editors to help translating either by themselves or by helping the translators at Translators Without Borders

Remember, you don't have to be a health care professional to help out. All you have to do is simply care.

I am really happy to note that 5 editors from 5 Indic languages have already signed uphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force#People_involved_.28with_language_ability.29for this wonderful project. Of these 2 languages - Assamese and Malayalam - have already started wiki project and started working on articles (really big comprehensive articles) related to Medicine.

Assamese wikipedia medicine project page: ৱিকিপিডিয়া:ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্প চিকিৎসাবিজ্ঞানhttp://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%A1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%E0%A6%BE:%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%8D%E0%A7%B0%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%B2%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA_%E0%A6%9A%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A7%8E%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%9C%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%9E%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A8

Some of the articles created:

- কৰ্কট ৰোগhttp://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%9F_%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8B%E0%A6%97 (Cancer) - সৰ্পদংশনhttp://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%82%E0%A6%B6%E0%A6%A8 (Snakebite)

Malayalam wikipedia biology project page: വിക്കിപീഡിയ:വിക്കിപദ്ധതി/ജീവശാസ്ത്രംhttp://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%A1%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AF:%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%A6%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A7%E0%B4%A4%E0%B4%BF/%E0%B4%9C%E0%B5%80%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%B6%E0%B4%BE%E0%B4%B8%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%A4%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%B0%E0%B4%82

Some of the articles created:

- ആസ്മ (Asthma) http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthma - ന്യുമോണിയ (Pneumonia) http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia - മസ്തിഷ്കാഘാതം (Stroke) http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke

Please note that this project do not involve machine translation or bots. It is really happy to note that both in Assamese and Malayalam wiki these projects are run by doctor (or medicine students) wikipedians :) Yes, Indic wikipedias has editors from all wakes of life.

There is so much potential on the articles related to medicine both in Indic and English. I encourage interested wikipedians to join this project by adding your name herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force#People_involved_.28with_language_ability.29 .

I welcome and invite everyone to join in.

Healthy Editing

Shiju Alex