Welcome to Datelinehealth-Africa.net: the world-class leader in online Africa-centred health information and communications services.

Our Mission

• To raise living standards in Africa by promoting communication and access to information needed to improve health and wellbeing.

Our Goal

• Promote access to timely, reliable, culture-relevant and trusted health information and communication services for increasing number of Africans.
• Be an authoritative source of Africa-centred health information and communication services.

Our General Objectives

• Disseminate credible content
  
• Build respectful shared community
  
• Promote secure online commerce
  
• Foster safe clinical self-care
  
• Achieve sustainability

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Our Specific Objectives

• Serve as a platform for the dissemination of credible health news and information from Africa to the rest of the world and from the rest of the world to Africa.
  
• Provide searchable databases in health that is of relevance to Africa.
  
• Create communities for learning and interaction through such facilities as Message board, Listserv, live chats, "Ask the expert", "My health risk appraisal", etc.
  
• Promote country-specific policy reforms, programmes and development towards better health in Africa.
  
• Provide opportunities for wellness-promotion and safe clinical self-care generally.
  
• Facilitate secure e-commerce transactions in health-related products and services either directly or through affiliate programmes.
  
• Serve as a platform for advertisers/vendors of health products to reach middle to high-end African health markets with superior and beneficial products and services.
• Contribute to training of health workers in Africa.
• Source and donate culture-appropriate health and well-being related books, brochures, audio-tapes, videos, CD-ROMs to community libraries and schools throughout Africa.
• Collaborating with public and private organizations and individuals to promote health literacy in local communities.
• Create and support the sustenance of health information resource centres either as stand alone facilities or within public and school libraries.

Datelinehealth-Africa (DLHA) helps in three important services areas to make health consumers, providers and the overall health systems in African countries work well for the promotion of better health to all constituents:

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These services areas are focused

• Consumer Portal Services
  DLHA is Africa's world class and leading consumer-focused healthcare information Web site. DLHA is committed to provide the most objective, credible and trusted healthcare information and to help people play an active role in managing their own health. Consumers can access health news, articles, reports, condition-specific centers and support communities, interactive tools and programs, as well as online health and lifestyle product catalogues and ordering services.

• Professional Portal Services
  DLHA also offers online services for physicians and other health care professionals including access to medical research, news, professional journals and continuing medical education. All these facilitate personal professional empowerment for cutting edge delivery of better care.

• Health Industry Portal Services
  DLHA also offers online portal services to the drug, medical equipment and consumable industry in order to service the market for products and services that add value to human health.

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Our News Centre
Creating a content organization that delivers on the promise of enhancement of human health through the Internet is a daunting but challenging task. To achieve its purpose, DLHA shall provide credible information, community, and services. It shall go beyond being simply an aggregator of disparate sources to "The Source". It shall put policies in place and more importantly, into practice to guarantee independence and objectivity (see the Datelinehealth-Africa News Credo of Editorial Independence, Datelinehealth-Africa Advertising Policy and Datelinehealth-Africa Content Policy).

• Health news for the public
• Medical news for physicians
• Creating and maintaining up-to-date medical reference content databases
  
• Medical imagery, graphics, and animation
  
• Communities
  
• Live Web events
• User experience
  
• Interface design
  
• e-commerce
  
• Interactive applications
  
• Clinical informatics

DLHA will consistently build up top quality news content staff members to include board-certified physicians; other licensed health professionals, journalists of proven competence in health reporting, and committed full-time community moderators.

All staff members at DLHA are solely dedicated to enriching your daily information experience at the DLHA Site. They are dedicated to quality and medical integrity. They would help you find the health and medical information, support, and services that you need.

Notwithstanding DLHA's serious commitment to accuracy and integrity, we are acutely aware that often times, health information can and should be engaging, exciting, and entertaining. Consequently, we pride ourselves in knowing what visitors to our site need and in delivering the most appropriate experience to them.

We know that there is a difference between using a health site for health "performance" issues (e.g., big biceps) vs. health information needs (e.g., what causes nose bleeding?) vs. community support (e.g., "Does anyone else suffer from depression like me?") vs. e-commerce and connectivity (personal health record, physician correspondence). Our mission is to fulfill all these content needs in the most appropriate way possible and for the enhancement of human health.

We are committed to continuously improving our site. We will continuously increase and improve on our content, communities and services: to make your life better; to help you find your way in the myriad of health care issues; to help you feel good about your health -- your family's health -- your body and your mind.

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Our Health & Medical News
Our Belief: Beneficence and Editorial Integrity is our Foundation

As the Internet becomes an important source of news and information for a growing segment of diverse population including Africa's, it presents complex challenges and opportunities for all content providers, especially in the areas of health and medicine.

As with several other media of information, the Internet can also be a hot spot for outdated, bogus and inaccurate medical information where non-statutorily approved drugs and unproven remedies stand parallel with legitimate medicines. There are also web sites that offer information that is biased for commercial or political reasons.

As Consumers enthusiastically embrace self-care - they must not be misled by information that may cause them harm. Consequently, visitors to the DLHA site are assured of contents that are credible, beneficial and of integrity.

Clear reference to authorship and source of data with direct link to the data as appropriate would always be provided. In addition, any content with claims relating to the benefits or performance of a specific treatment, procedure or product would always be supported by clearly appropriate, balanced and attributable evidence. Those that do not meet this standard would not be presented. The dates of content creation and modification would always be clearly shown in association with the content.

For us at DLHA the classic caution, "Buyer beware" is not good enough. We function under an established set of ethical guidelines that strive to provide users with news and information on our site that are accurate, thorough, and credible. This code of ethics is drawn for the international arena without any compromise for the African environment.

Be aware, however, that any information on DLHA or any other Internet site should not be construed as advice for your particular health situation and that you should always consult your health care professional before acting on any information seen on DLHA or any other Internet site.

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What We Do and How We Do It
We are a health information and communication organization. Our goal is to be a world class and authoritative leader of Africa-centred health information and communication services.

Each day, our expert staff of medical editors plans and sources health and medical news around the latest news. Our experienced health reporters write daily articles covering the most important topics of the day. In addition, in-depth analyses, updates, and profiles are created to give our health news a qualitative and unique perspective.

Our consulting and advisory group of board-certified physicians and other health-related professionals reviews every news article we write. In addition, more articles flow into our editors' hands from affiliated or licensed sources. Our editors select the most accurate and important of these for your viewing.

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Our News Is Dstinct
It's more reliable. In a medium famous for shallow, outdated, inaccurate, and sometimes fraudulent information, DLHA stands for credible, authoritative source of health news.
Our originally written news stories are based on our editors' selections from various primary sources: national newspapers and wires, reports in peer-reviewed medical journals and presentations at major medical meetings around Africa and the rest of the world. Our news articles would contain not only interviews with the medical researchers who authored them, but also interviews with objective expert sources that can put the research into a context of what it means today.

For articles that we do not write ourselves, we would rely on some of the most credible sources available to all news organizations.

Beneficence: DLHA shall give clear value in its news stories, and steer you to other related resources within our site - Online live events or message boards, reference information, and related news. We promise never to knowingly do harm through the content that is provided on our Site.

Editorial Integrity: DLHA shall make a clear distinction between news and other information, so that individuals can readily distinguish independent editorial information from paid promotional information and other non-news content.

Editorial Independence: DLHA shall maintain the highest principles of fairness, accuracy, objectivity, and responsible independent reporting.

Journalistic Excellence: DLHA shall uphold traditional high principles in reporting original news for the Internet and in reviewing and corroborating information from other sources.

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Our Credo of Editorial Independence
The Datelinehealth-Africa News Centre is an editorially independent daily health and medical news service designed to provide the latest information to the general public, patients, physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals.

The editorial products provided by the DLHA news team are solely the responsibility of the DHLA news staff. The intent is for the news and information to be unbiased and not influenced by commercial interests.

Anyone who serves on the DLHA News staff must agree to full disclosure of any financial or other interests that he or she may have in any drug, biotech, medical device, or other company that could influence journalistic integrity. Such disclosure must be made to the individual's immediate supervisor at the time that the individual is hired, or at the time that the financial or other interest develops. The individual must also report any changes in these interests, should they occur.

DLHA shall keep its news staff for health and medical news separate and distinct from the staff that deals with sponsors and partners having commercial interests.

DLHA subscribes to the view that editorial integrity and independence are necessary for DLHA to achieve credibility with its target audiences. Activities on the part of a staff member to undermine the spirit or intent of this goal are unacceptable.

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Our Content Provider Policy

Content providers to DLHA may include:

• Medical associations, colleges, societies
  
• Government agencies
  
• Publishers of "Licensed Content" (e.g., from a for-profit medical publisher)
  
• Private, non-profit organizations
  
• Corporations
  
• Content providers to DLHA are made aware of the fact that a Sponsor promotion and/or advertisement identifier may be seen on the interface wherein their content appears.
  
• Sponsored Content is content that has been created with a commercial purpose to benefit a particular entity. All Sponsored Content on DLHA is displayed in a highly visible fashion such that a DLHA user would not confuse Sponsored Content with editorial information. Furthermore, DLHA users will know that content is sponsored before they try to access such Content.
  
• DLHA believes that valuable content is available from DLHA sponsors, advertisers, and partners, but that such content must be clearly labeled.
  
• DLHA asks that its content providers keep their information up-to-date, and that the review and update to their content is given to DLHA on a timely basis, but we cannot guarantee this for third party content.
  
• DLHA makes every effort to clearly date and attribute content to its original source, creative data, review date, and update.

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Our Advertising & Promotions Policy
The following regulations have been established by DLHA to govern various aspects of Advertising. For these purposes, "Advertising and Advertisements" include banner, badge and contextual Advertising, Sponsorship Messages, and Promotions.

These regulations govern issues such as acceptance of Advertisements and Promotions by DLHA, the manner of display of Advertisements and Promotions on the DLHA Site, and the removal of Advertisements and Promotions from the DLHA Site.

DLHA shall have sole and absolute discretion with respect to interpretation and enforcement of this policy and all other issues associated with Advertising and Promotion on the DLHA Site.

DLHA may change this policy at any time in its sole discretion by posting a revised policy to the DLHA Site.

1. DLHA has sole discretion for determining the types of Advertising and Promotion that will be accepted and displayed on the DLHA Site, and under no circumstances shall DLHA's acceptance of any Advertisement be considered an endorsement of the product(s) and/or service(s) advertised or of the company that manufactures, distributes, or promotes such product(s) or service(s).
   
2. DLHA will not accept Advertising that, in DLHA's opinion, is not factually accurate and in good taste. DLHA will not permit at any time the placement of any Advertising for illegal or objectionable products. Advertising must not contain fraudulent, deceptive, or offensive material, including material that misrepresents, ridicules, or attacks an individual or group on the basis of age, color, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap.
   
3. Advertising must not be related to any of the following: alcohol, firearms, ammunition, fireworks, gambling, pornography, tobacco, or the simulation of news or an emergency.
4. Advertisers must only offer products or services, which are readily available for purchase at the advertised price (with noted tax and delivery fees as applicable). The Advertising must also clearly identify the advertiser. Any Advertising that could be misconstrued as editorial content will be clearly labeled as Advertising.
   
5. DLHA recognizes and maintains a distinct separation between Advertising content and editorial and decision-making content. All Advertising content on the DLHA Site shall be clearly and unambiguously identified as such, and DLHA will not run any Advertising on the DLHA Site that is not so identified. Additionally, DLHA retains the right to dictate the form and substance of all editorial content appearing on its Site.
   
6. DLHA retains the exclusive right to determine the way in which any and all search results for specific information by keyword or topic are displayed on the DLHA Site. DLHA may display search results based on monetary incentives provided by Advertisers.
   
7. DLHA reserves the right to reject, cancel, or remove at any time any Advertising from the DLHA Site for any reason and will provide prompt notice to the advertiser upon rejection, cancellation, or removal of any Advertising, together with an explanation following the rejection, cancellation, or removal. DLHA also reserves the right to determine the appropriate placement of the Advertising on the DLHA Site.
   
8. It is the responsibility of the Advertiser to comply with all applicable domestic and foreign laws, including applicable laws and regulations of regulatory bodies. This includes pharmaceutical advertising to physicians and consumers that must be in compliance with International guidelines for Direct to Physician (DTP) and Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertising. DLHA will not monitor compliance with applicable laws and regulations. However, DLHA reserves the right to review all Advertising for compliance with applicable laws and regulations and, if DLHA becomes aware of any breach or potential breach of any applicable law or regulation or of these guidelines, DLHA may remove the Advertising.
   
9. No Advertising shall be permitted which may injure the good name or reputation of DLHA or the DLHA Site.
   
10. The use of the DLHA site by Sponsors and Advertisers shall constitute an acceptance by them and compliance therewith of the general Terms and Conditions of DLHA's Advertising Policy.

October 2001

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Corporate Information