Impact of Internet on diseases awareness and patient empowerment — A study in Benin (West Africa)

Discussing medical concerns at various online forums is a worldwide trend that reveals how patients are becoming interested in medical education. There is a global trend of building online communities such as Patient-like-Me those patients use to learn from each other. The Internet penetration is continually increasing in developing countries in West Africa. However, there are not any existing studies conducted in African developing countries on how people use online communities to get informed on certain diseases, medical treatments and medicines like in the developed countries. In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of use of health information materials from the internet on diseases awareness, health literacy and patient education among the population in Benin which is a developing country in West Africa.