Noticed this at Gulf News:
Manila: Online misinformation is leaching out from cheap mobile phones and free Facebook plans used by millions in the Philippines, convincing many to reject vaccinations for polio and other deadly diseases.
Childhood immunisation rates have plummeted in the country - from 87 per cent in 2014 to 68 per cent - resulting in a measles epidemic and the reemergence of polio last year.
A highly politicised campaign that led to the withdrawal of dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in 2017 is widely seen as one of the main drivers of the fall.
But health experts also point to an explosion of vaccination-related misinformation that has undermined confidence in all types of immunisations.
In the northern city of Tarlac, government nurse Reeza Patriarca watched with horror the impacts of Facebook posts that falsely claimed five people had died after receiving an unspecified vaccination.
The problem is the popularity of Facebook in the country, even with the poor:
Most of the Philippines' 73 million internet users have a Facebook account, according to Britain-based media consultancy We Are Social.
Many poorer Filipinos rely on Facebook's Free Basics plan to use the internet, trapping them in the social media giant's information bubble.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended the service, saying it gives people who could not otherwise afford it an opportunity to use the internet.
Posts about President Rodrigo Duterte flooded Facebook in 2016 and were seen as playing a key role in his election victory - and officials say the site has been a boon for anti-vaxxer groups too.
Wilda Silva, the health department's immunisation programme manager, said fake news about vaccines "travels faster and wider than correct information".
1 comment:
How do you imagine that you are in a position to make snap judgements on what is misinformation and what is not. My same friends I've mentioned before .... The Dad recently got bitten by a friends dog. Here they worry, probably in error, about tetanus when this happens. But in Manilla rabies is rampant among the wild dogs and so a home dog can have it too.
So anyway he wanted to get the three-shot vaccine. I was looking into it. I'm a pretty strong anti-Vaxxer I guess. But in this case the evidence that favoured the three-shot vaccine was totally overwhelming. It wasn't just another money-making scam or another population damage conspiracy. My friend really had to have the vaccine and there was no good alternative to it.
So many ordinary people other then yourself make up their mind according to evidence. Not television public servant exhortation. Not everything on the television is real Steve. Its not real stuff. Your Leninist centralism is not a valid substitute for evidence.
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