:o%, @ Health\BSGN0s Consumer WebSite Gets Spanish Flavor (NAPSA)—There’s good news for Spanish-speaking Americans who look to the Internet for information about health. Recent surveys show more than 50 percent of adult Hispanics in the U.S. use the Internet. More than half ofthose look to the Web for medical and health information. In response to this, the National Library of Medicine is introducing its popular consumer health information Web site, MEDLINEplus, in Spanish. Now users will find many of the authoritative, full-text resources that are available on MEDLINEplus in Spanish as well. Called MEDLINEplus en Espafiol, the site offers credible information from the National Institutes of Health and other federal government agencies, professional medical associations and health-related organizations. On the medical encyclopedia pages, full-color illustrations and photographs accompany over 4,000 articles on diseases, injuries, tests and surgeries. The interactive health tutorials, narrated guides to various health topies, use animatedillustrations and plain-language to describe medical procedures, surgeries and the symptomsandeffects of disease. “I knowfirst-hand the importance of our Spanish-speaking citizens having good health information in their primary language,” said Richard Carmona, M.D., the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service. “This is another example of Recent surveys show that a growing number of Spanish speaking Americans look to the Internet for health information. how the Department of Health and HumanServices continues its commitment to provide information resources to Hispanic Americans.” Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., the Director of the National Institutes of Health, noted that “A primary part of NIH’s mission is to translate medical advances into health information that the public can use. Making MEDLINEplusinformation available in Spanish greatly expands NIH’s ability to carry out its mission to communicate with the public.” The National Library of Medicine, a part of the NIH, is in Bethesda, Maryland.Accordingto its director, Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., MEDLINEpluscontinues to expand rapidly and now counts more than one million visitors each month. To learn more, visit the Web site at www.medlineplus.gov/esp. Those who are not connected to the Internet can usually have access from a public library.
