{"id":42298,"date":"2020-01-17T06:23:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T06:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42298"},"modified":"2020-01-17T06:23:51","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T06:23:51","slug":"pakistan-says-facebook-to-help-in-drive-against-polio-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=42298","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan says Facebook to help in drive against polio efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pakistan<\/a> says Facebook<\/a> will help the country in its fight against polio after authorities blamed anti-vaccine <\/a>content posted last year on the social network site for a leap in the number of cases.<\/p>\n

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio has not been eradicated, but a years-long effort began to show fruit with a major drop in cases from 2016.<\/p>\n

By 2018 just 12 cases had been recorded, but to the dismay of Pakistani authorities and the World Health Organization, that number soared to 136 last year.<\/p>\n

More:<\/h4>\n

Pakistani officials quickly tied the surge to a slew of fake news reports and videos claiming many children had been killed by the vaccine that garnered thousands of views and shares on social media.<\/p>\n

They called on Facebook do more to remove harmful anti-vaccine content from the site, saying it was jeopardising eradication initiatives and putting the lives of polio workers at risk.<\/p>\n

Health authorities later said Facebook had removed dozens such videos.<\/p>\n

This week a delegation from the company visited Islamabad and reaffirmed their commitment to the campaign, a Pakistani government statement said.<\/p>\n

“We stand behind the national and global efforts to create a polio-free world and will continue to support these efforts,” Rafael Frankel, a Facebook regional director, was quoted as saying in a statement released by Pakistan’s Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n

Dr Zafar Mirza, a Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on health, highlighted the importance of communicating correct health information online and stressed “the need to counter harmful content on social media”.<\/p>\n

Facebook did not immediately respond to the AFP news agency’s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Vaccination campaigns have faced resistance for years in Pakistan, with many refusing to have their children inoculated because of misinformation and conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

Opposition to all forms of inoculation grew after the CIA organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.<\/p>\n

As Pakistan tries to reach its goal of eliminating polio, the growing global movement against vaccinations – fuelled by social media – has presented a new challenge.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan and Nigeria are the two other countries where the disease has not been entirely eradicated, although the latter is expected to be declared polio-free later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pakistan says Facebook will help the country in its fight against polio after authorities blamed anti-vaccine content posted last year on the social network site for a leap in the number of cases. Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio has not been eradicated, but a years-long effort began to show fruit with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":42299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}