Since it was set up in 1965 with the aim of breaking the cycle of poverty and ill-health in the developing world by providing health workers with low-cost educational and training materials, the UK-based charity TALC (Teaching Aids at Low Cost) has distributed more than 12 million books, slides and accessories. The materials have helped doctors and health workers make the right diagnosis and provide the right treatment, saving many lives and alleviating much pain and suffering.

Currently TALC supplies more than 10,000 doctors, nurses, midwives, lab technicians, and other health workers in the developing world with health materials including low cost health text books, videos, CDs, weight charts, etc. TALC operates as a trading company and development charity combined.

The late Professor David Morley (CBE, MD, FRCP) founded TALC when he was lecturer at the Institute of Child Health, in response to many requests from overseas students for teaching equipment to use in their own countries. It began in a small way by sending out transparencies. Then, as demand grew, TALC expanded into distributing books and teaching-aids.

TALC materials are chosen because they are specially written for conditions in poor countries. TALC either buys the books and CDs and distributes them at as low a cost as possible, or finds the funds to produce and/or distribute new materials such as its e-TALC CDs.

TALC also works with authors of key texts to help them reach a wider audience. Translations of essential TALC publications have been made into more than 22 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Mongolian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

e-TALC bridges the digital divide in health by disseminating up-to-date, high quality health information on CD-ROMs free to health care workers in developing countries who often have great difficult in accessing the internet due to poor infrastructure and cost of connectivity. CD-ROMs are cheap to produce and post, can hold thousands of pages of information, and can be used on almost any computer.

Since 2001, e-TALC has produced ten issues of the e-TALC CD-ROM and distributed over 60,000 disks to countries across the developing world. The TALC CD-ROMs include journals, books, newsletters and interactive educational content donated by NGOs, publishers and individuals involved in health and development in developing countries and chosen by an expert editorial board based on relevance to health care workers in resource-poor settings.

Organisations that regularly contribute material include the World Health Organisation, The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, The Wellcome Trust, World Anaesthesia, and the International Centre for Child Health.

Contact information:

TALC, PO Box 49, St Albans, Herts, AL1 5TX, UK.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1727 853869

Email

This story was prepared from information on the TALC website. The pictures also come from the TALC website and show TALC books, TALC in the field, and TALC founder David Morley, whose death at the grand age of 86 on July 2, 2009 is mourned by his friends and colleagues and the many students he trained over the years. The announcement on the TALC website reads as follows: "David was a visionary who cared passionately about sick children in countries across the world. He inspired so many of us and will be greatly missed. We will continue the work he began through TALC - as his legacy to health workers everywhere."