USING HINARI

USING HINARI


“Why is the unemployment rate so high in Nepal?”
1. They don’t have skills
2. They are filthy lazy

Working for Bal-Utsav I heard this over 10 times from Gaurav.

Few days back out of curiosity I asked our Librarian how many students had asked him for the HINARI user name and password? I got a fairly small number(less than a percent); and to be true it did not intrigue me (until today).

After having an apnea like attack yesterday night I went for a checkup. When a medical student goes to a doctor for a medical checkup the session often turns into a class where you get to learn in depth about your  disease(I guess I can skip my college classes on apnea now!).

“Things were very different when I was a student like you” said the old man, “now it’s difficult for me to catch up because we do not have enough resources to learn about the modern medical discoveries”

His prospect got me thinking! I came back home and immediately turned up pages of my medical books to look how old is the stuff that we are reading. I got to know that the text books that we are reading are based on research papers published over a decade back. By the time we are doctors (MDs and PhDs) we will be treating patients based on knowledge that was set up by researches done over 3 decades back!

As doctors you need to be updated!

 My dad tells me that if I read the health section of the daily news paper every day, I will get all the knowledge I need to know about the modern medical discoveries!
News Papers do cover a lot don’t they? It turns out that the information that’s in the news paper is meant only for the general public! The articles that are published in news papers and health magazines are based on true researches but the essentials of a medical article are ripped off so that it will suit the general public. So as medical students you can look at a fascinating medical article in health times and say “Oh Wow!” But you won’t learn much! Same is the case with much of the stuff that you find in websites!

You can go for medical journals but how many will you subscribe {each journal costs over 25$(Nrs. 2300) per issue, there is no way one can afford it here.}

Here is where HINARI comes to into play

HINARI Programme set up by WHO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. More than 8,500 journals and 7000 e-books (in 30 different languages) are now available to health institutions in more than 100 countries, areas and territories benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improve world health.

Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative  (HINARI)-Access to Research in Health Programme provides free or very low cost online access to the major journals in biomedical and related social sciences to local, not-for-profit institutions in developing countries.

HINARI was launched in January 2002, with some 1500 journals from 6 major publishers: Blackwell, Elsevier Science, the Harcourt Worldwide STM Group, Wolters Kluwer International Health & Science, Springer Verlag and John Wiley, following the principles in a Statement of Intent signed in July 2001. Since that time, the numbers of participating publishers and of journals and other full-text resources has grown continuously. Today more than 150 publisher partners are offering more than 15,000 information resources in HINARI and many others are joining the programme including famed medical journal like Lancet which joined HINARI few months back.

Few days back, out of curiosity I asked our Librarian how many students had asked him for the HINARI user name and password? I got a fairl small number(less than a percent); and to be true it did not intrigue me (until today).

This is a sad reality that despite having a nearly priceless articles on modern medical discoveries and researches the use of such resource has not been  particularly noteworthy. Nearly all of the medical students haven’t even heard about HINARI and those who have rarely put it to use.

Our Pharmacology HOD Prof. Ravi Sankar told our class once that Nepal  makes least use of HINARI amongst all the 100 countries that can access it.

Lets modify the initial statements to fit this condtion
1. a. you don’t have the skill to use HINARI
    b.  you don’t use HINARI so you won’t learn and thus you won’t gain any new skills
2. You complain about not having enough resources but you are too lazy to use HINARI!!

Lets start using HINARI the login information can be gathered from the administration/ Library of your respected colleges!(its always free)


Arun Upreti is a medical student, aspiring writer, social activist and a cricket enthusiast. He is currently working as news analyst in Cricnepal.

8 comments:

View Your Choice said...

Arun Upreti , it really brought a big smile in me today after reading the post :) I knew about HINARI just reading your post and a bit surfing it on the web. I just wanna share here is we meet everyday but Arun indirectly told me about Hinari becuase i was subscribing to his blog post. Until and unless he would have come and share i wouldn't have known hence i always say this to every one stop putting assumptions that the next person to you might know the same thing that you know. Just SPEAK OUT and share it :) that was what i most often say

“Why is the unemployment rate so high in Nepal?”
1. They don’t have skills
2. They are filthy lazy

If you wanna know more, you must be subscribing my post here at View Your Choice- तपाईको सोचाई हाम्रो रोजाई -

With love,
Gaurav

Social Junkie said...

Oe Arun malai hinary ko password pathau ta

~Kafle

Shubash Yadav said...

I loved the way you intorduced about HINARI in the write up!!

Really helpful

Regards,
SHubash, KUSMS

NEpali said...

I was looking for how one could use the hinari! turned up to to be something totally different!

Can you write something on how to make optimal use of HINARI?

subhash said...

how to access it
nep028 is it changed or is webste down

Arun Upreti said...

Every college has a few HINARI username and the respective passwords so its the college you have to talk to regarding the change in password and/or User name.

HINARI is definitely not down :)

ossama said...

if u please to send me the updated username and password

ogheith@yahoo.com

Abeer Ibrahim said...

could you please send me the recent username and password to Hinari
my email: ab_elsayed2003@yahoo.com

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