TITLE:
Evaluating the Quality of Malaria-Related Health Information in the Nigerian Internet Context
AUTHORS:
Trout Kate, Puricelli Perin Douglas, Davy Timothy, Ashish Joshi, K. M. Islam
KEYWORDS:
Malaria; Nigeria; Health; Information; Internet
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Infectious Diseases,
Vol.4 No.1,
March
5,
2014
ABSTRACT:
Background: Patients and public are increasingly relying on Internet for
health information. Health care providers are using internet for dissemination
of health information. However, health information available on internet is not
well regulated, and information quality
varies greatly. Malaria is the leading cause of death
and disease in many developing countries and has serious health burden around
the world. The Internet could become a major resource for malaria education and
information in Africa. This may potentially save millions of lives. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of malaria health
and treatment information available on the internet provided by the Nigerian context. Methods: Two key terms
(malaria & treatment) were entered into three search engines: Google,
Yahoo! and Bing. In order to retrieve articles as if the searches were
conducted in Nigeria, the Local Area Network (LAN) settings were changed to a Nigerian
proxy server, with a local Internet Protocol address. Three raters evaluated
the quality of information using the DISCERN [9] instrument criteria. Kendall’s concordance
coefficient (W) was calculated to
determine the level of agreement among the three raters. Results: Thirty-eight websites evaluated, and the highest inter-rater
average score was attributed to the Patient.co.uk website, followed by
Wikipedia web site and Malaria Site. The “Home Remedies for You” website received
the lowest score. Most evaluated websites were .com domains. The highest
average score was given to .co.uk domains while .int had the lowest score. Conclusions: Improving the quality of malaria-related health information could lead
to empowering communities, engaging
and assisting them to strengthen their health and social information sharing
and support.