The Kano State government has cautioned its information and health officers against giving out unverified information which is liable to cause unnecessary tension and fears in the state.
The state commissioner for health, Dr. Abubakar Labaran, cautioned the officers during a training on dealing with misinformation for the state’s zonal information officers and health educators organised by
Breakthrough Action(BA-N) in collaboration with the state ministry of health.
The training followed a recent media report that went viral of a strange illness at Gan Dutse community that purportedly claimed 40 lives, an information that was partly sourced from health officers at the locality. However the state later debunked the report stating that only six people died of severe malaria and typhoid.
Labaran stressed that all information concerning outbreak or epidemic should come from the state government or the commissioner of health when mandated by the governor.
According to him, the state government has a way of relaying information from the grassroots upward to state level as such, they should be weary of how they give the media information and stick to the ethics of the profession in order not to cause fear among the public.
In his remarks, BA-N state team leader, Ahmad Ma’azu, pointed out that the essence of the training was to enlightened participants on how to tackle misinformation, disinformation, rumor and fake news in their various communities.
He said this information officers are critical stakeholders in tackling misinformation at the grassroots, hence the need to train them on how to identify this rumors right from the grassroots and tackle it before it get spread.