Habla Espaņol?
National Library of Medicine Consumer Web Site Launches Spanish Version

MEDLINEplus, the National Library of Medicine's consumer-friendly health Web site, now speaks Spanish. The new site can be accessed at http://www.medlineplus.gov/esp.

Recent library surveys show that more than 50 percent of Hispanic adults in the U.S. use the Internet, and more than half of those look to the Web for medical and health information. In response to this, the National Library of Medicine has introduced its popular consumer health information Web site, MEDLINEplus, in Spanish. Here, users will find many authoritative, full-text resources that were previously only available on MEDLINEplus in English.

"The department is using tools at our disposal to increase health education and awareness to Americans across the country," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson. "MEDLINEplus en Espaņol is one more step to ensuring that Hispanic Americans have real-time access to the important health information they need."

"A primary part of the National Institutes of Health's mission is to translate medical advances into health information that the public can use," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., NIH director. "Making MEDLINEplus information available in Spanish greatly expands NIH's ability to carry out its mission to communicate with the public."

MEDLINEplus, located at http://www.medlineplus.gov and available free of charge 24 hours a day, debuted in October 1998. Today the site has more than 560 health topics and receives more than 1 million visitors per month. Hundreds of Spanish-language topics point users to appropriate, credible information from the NIH and other federal government agencies, professional medical associations, and health-related organizations. On the medical encyclopedia pages, full-color illustrations and photographs accompany more than 4,000 articles on diseases, injuries, tests, and surgeries. The interactive health tutorials, narrated guides to various health topics, use animated illustrations and plain-language to describe medical procedures, surgeries, and disease symptoms and effects.

Non-Spanish-speaking doctors, nurses, librarians, and others looking for Spanish-language materials for clients should find the new service useful. A single click of the "Espaņol" link will take users from the English MEDLINEplus page to its corresponding Spanish page.

"Our rapidly growing Spanish-speaking population will find this information-rich Web site in their own language to be convenient to search for answers to their health questions," said Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., National Library of Medicine director. "We plan to add more Spanish-language health information in the future."

Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Library of Medicine, the world's largest library of the health sciences, is a component of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services.

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URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/10_01_02/page_24.html