By Peter Theuri and Edna Macharia
To Prof Joconiah Chirenda, not much of what we like to assume is new is actually new. Misinformation, for example, is not new, he says. It is just more rampant due to the proliferation of social media sites, and, he subtly hints, capitulation by those who should be at the forefront, making concerted efforts to suppress it.
Even the One Health concept is not new.
“Yes, this is not a new concept. I think we are just bringing it up now because of the frequent challenges with pandemics.”
Yet with the challenges of the moment, they need to be treated with special attention, almost as if they were new.
If these issues have been with humans for so long, therefore, it could only mean that we dropped the ball at some point.
“As the health sector, we have not changed the way we, especially in Africa, respond to public health challenges or infectious diseases. We are still in our 90s, 80s, where if there is an emergency, we want to sit, have meetings, decide what we’ll do, perhaps wait for some organization to give directions on how countries should respond,” he laments. “And yet as we wait, information is already on social media, and by the time we want to respond, people have got conflicting information.”
Prof Chirenda, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Clinical Deputy Dean at The University of Zimbabwe and an Infectious Diseases Specialist, says that delayed response to health crises, lack of access to accurate information, and fragmented interaction between the public and the health, animal, environmental and other sectors has exacerbated the consumption of misinformation.
While the emergence of communication devices, various social media platforms, and high internet penetration has allowed for easier access to information, Prof Chirenda feels that the rate of misinformation and disinformation has risen to levels that seriously call for experts’ proactivity.
“A classic example is the COVID pandemic, I think, because the COVID pandemic demonstrated that easy access to information affects the way we respond to public health threats,” he says. “Because so many people were posting on the internet or social media about the adverse effects of vaccines, and as governments were trying to introduce vaccines, the acceptance was difficult, resulting in low vaccine coverage. And this was a global phenomenon; it was not limited to Zimbabwe or to Africa. Imagine the resources countries lost from unused vaccines.”
In the old days before the advent of the internet, he says, experts’ word was taken very seriously, and the community lacked a bombardment of misleading information from all around. To corner the proponents of misinformation is quite an arduous job.
“Before the internet, we could just say this is the recommended intervention, going into communities, providing vaccination, providing the appropriate treatment,” he says.
“Now we have had to come up with counter-information and communication strategies to tackle the misinformation from people who are spreading wrong information about the response to a specific public health threat. It is becoming expensive to develop counter-information measures and strategies that use the same social media, the same internet.”
A plethora of inaccurate, longstanding beliefs among communities has made it difficult for experts to have their way. Prof Chirenda recounts instances of outbreaks of anthrax in Zimbabwe, and health experts’ struggled to keep populations safe as myths overran scientific truths.
“Anthrax persists longer in the environment for years when it forms spores. Every time we have a drought, we are so sure that we are going to have an outbreak of anthrax,” Prof Chirenda says.
“In Zimbabwe, there is a belief that when you cook something, even if it died from unnatural causes, you can kill the germs. So that belief persists, no matter how much we provide correct information to the public not to eat meat from animals that die on their own without being slaughtered or that were sick.” There’s also a belief that if you kill the cow before it dies, such that the blood comes out, the blood takes out the disease from the cow, so the meat will be safer to eat.”
Poverty has also driven populations into making risky decisions that defy science, he says, and that outright go against the persistent advice of the health sector. He understands the frustrations that lead to disregard of reason.
“You are telling someone who probably last ate meat a month, or two months ago, that ‘here is a goat or cow that died from anthrax- do not eat it’.
Prof Chirenda, is, however, optimistic that experts can help address some of the teething problems on One Health in spite of raging misinformation campaigns. One of the methods is through the use of curricula.
“It should not start from university. I think it should start from primary school level, teaching them (students) appropriate knowledge on one health, how to interact with the environment, how to interact with animals, and how to make sure that when they interact with the environment and animals, they are aware of the potential for infections to occur.”
The other method is through continuous, consistent dissemination of accurate messages so that people are constantly aware of how to avoid contracting certain diseases, and what to do in the case where they accidentally fall ill.
As he outlines his frustrations, potential interventions, and dreams, it is clear Prof Chirenda feels a lot still has to be done. He is not one to bury his head in the sand; clearly, that has not worked anywhere.