WikiTropica: Wikipedia for tropical diseases

From now on, health workers and students from South-East Asia and the Global South will have a unique tool for accurately diagnosing infectious and tropical diseases: WikiTropica. The Institute of Tropical Medicine launched the platform in collaboration with 12 international institutions.

Accurate diagnosis is crucial. After all, misdiagnosis leads to unnecessary medical interventions and thus a waste of time, energy and resources. And this is definitely not good for countries with limited resources and a high disease burden. Accurate diagnosis also allows for a quick decision as to whether or not a patient needs urgent medical care. And being able to make that distinction is one of the most important tasks for a doctor.

Real-life medical practice

From now on, health workers from South-East Asia and the Global South will have WikiTropica at their disposal. Indeed, a kind of Wikipedia with the latest clear and detailed information on numerous infectious and tropical diseases, whether caused by viruses, unicellular agents, bacteria, nematodes, fungi and so on.

The tool also discusses in detail actual cases of patients, while what it calls 'panoramas' are a tool for correctly interpreting symptoms. As such, WikiTropica reflects the complexities of a real-life medical practice in tropical environments, allowing the user to learn to make the correct diagnosis and formulate appropriate treatment.

As such WikiTropica also makes for a solid teaching tool in itself as well. And this is more than welcome, given the increasing number of infectious diseases and zoonotic outbreaks and the high demand for health workers in South-East Asia and the Global South.

Support from our FPS

The Institute of Tropical Medicine (Antwerp) is the project leader for WikiTropica and received financial support from our FPS's Directorate General for Development Co-operation. A number of higher education institutions from Cambodia, Indonesia, Spain and the Netherlands also collaborated.

WikiTropica itself is part of HITIHE (Health Information and Technology for Improved Health Education in South-East Asia), an Erasmus+ project supported by the EU. Although the focus was originally on South-East Asia, the tool is usable in other countries as well.