Netha Hussain

Netha Hussain (born 11 June 1990) is an India-born medical doctor and Wikipedian known for her efforts to tackle the spread of misinformation in Wikipedia about the origin of the coronavirus.

Biography
Hussain was born on 11 June 1990 in Kunnamangalam in the state of Kerala.

Career
Hussain embarked in her Wikipedia career in 2010 when she was still at first-year medical student at the Calicut Medical College in Kozhikode. She pursued her higher studies in 2016 by joining the University of Gothenburg. She also worked as a blogger at Huffington Post until 2018. In 2020, she obtained her PhD in clinical neuroscience from the University of Gothenburg.

In mid 2020, she began focusing on creating and curating Wikipedia articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic in English, Malayalam and Swedish language editions. She has written nearly 30 articles on Wikipedia relating to COVID-19 including List of unproven methods against COVID-19 with the purpose of preventing the spread of misinformation about the pandemic in internet and social media platforms.

She also launched WikiProject in order to improve and expand the information regarding the topics about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines and about the COVID-19 vaccine safety on Wikipedia.

She received the 2020 Women in Open Source Academic Award, recognising her contributions regarding disseminating and sharing medical knowledge and information in Wikipedia. She also received honorable special mention from the United Nations through its official Twitter handle in 2020. She received a Wikimedian of the Year 2021 Honourable Mention during the 2021 virtual Wikimania conference.