Cuba's Ministry of Health fights fake news

Cuba's Ministry of Public Health bets on new technologies in the face of media campaigns against the country, assured the director of the National Center for Information on Medical Sciences (INFOMED), Ileana Alfonso.

According to the also healthcare professional, Internet is vital for truthful disclosure since the end of 2019 when the first notions of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, causing Covid-19 disease, began to circulate.

'Our INFOMED website played a key role with a truthful and reliable update. In addition to this, we have a website dedicated to the novel coronavirus with several websites to combat misinformation,' she detailed in statements to the television programme Mesa Redonda.

In this work, Cuban specialists developed a mobile application that inserts updated information in real time on the development of the Covid-19 pandemic.

INFOMED also publishes documents with analysis and metric research on the evolution of the pandemic in the world and in Cuba, where it already reports 766 positives and 132 medical discharges.

In the midst of the discredit campaigns against Cuba, the expert called for confirming the information that is circulating, in particular heeding the authorship, the context, the source, the update and the publishing house from which it comes.

Special attention must be paid to fake quotes spreading in this sensitive context, she underscored.

The specialist referred to terms such as misinformation overload and poisoning information, including rumors and the known 'fake news' that invade the population at the current juncture of the disease.