Yet more good news for Africa. Following on the announcement that there was a 75% reduction in measles deaths in Africa, comes the news that the SAVIC website has been granted status to join the Vaccine Safety Network (VSN) of the World Health Organisation (WHO), making it the first site from Africa to join the network.
The VSN was established in response to the growing number of websites offering unbalanced, misleading and alarming information of vaccine safety, making it difficult to identify and access reliable information on the internet. A key player in the VSN Project is the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS), established by WHO in 1999 to respond promptly, efficiently, and with scientific rigour to vaccine safety issues of potential global importance.
Four criteria for good information practices regarding credibility, content, accessibility and design were developed by the GACVS, and to comply with credibility and content criteria, websites should clearly indicate the purpose of the site, disclose their ownership and information sources, reveal their sponsors, provide contact information, have a data protection policy, and provide quality information in sufficient quantity.
The SAVIC website is among the latest sites to be evaluated and the first from Africa to join the network. In future, the SAVIC site will be listed on the VSN page of the WHO web site.
