Health Education to Villages Programme Forums

The HETV Forums aim to encourage discussion and the sharing of experiences among health care providers as well as the general public by providing an online forum for posting and reading of messages. These forums aim to promote the exchange of ideas, best practices and solutions to health, water, hygiene and sanitation issues facing village communities. They may also be used to post suggestions, questions, and topics for discussion.

The forum is not a listserv or an email distribution list. Those wishing to view messages can into the HETV Forums. People wishing to receive an e-mail if when message are posted to certain forums may do so. To post, users must register, which is free.

The aim of HETV is to establish and promote health educational programmes that will provide rapid and long-term capacity-building to improve health and quality of life, and will give mothers and communities more control over their health status. These forums are considered to be a part of this strategy.

A range of forums are provided including topics designed for mothers, health-care providers, programmes for the community and issues around safe water management.

Health, Safe Water, Sanitation

According to the projects's website, in developing countries some 1.1 billion people - one sixth of the world's population - do not have access to clean water, and almost 2.5 billion lack knowledge of basic hygiene. Without safe and sufficient food and water, disease spreads far too easily. According to the World Health Organization, 250 million people suffer yearly from diseases caused by dirty water, and 6,000 of these people die every day. These water-related diseases are the leading cause of death around the world, far ahead of war, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction combined. HETV believes that health education at the community level, along with social development, is the first and most important step toward prevention.