A guide to ‘preventing’ public health misinformation

Some public health emergencies strike with suddenness, others fester slowly. “Developing interventions to increase trust at the primordial and primary levels would help increase population resilience before public health emergencies occur,” and “identify communities or individuals susceptible to infodemics”, the paper noted. “This public health emergency which is already leading to disease outbreaks and worse health outcomes in the Western world needs to be urgently tackled in India.”Parth Sharma, public health physician Limitations and challenges The distinct stages of the infodemic framework “comprehensively capture both acute and upstream interventions”, and “can help practitioners identify appropriate interventions depending on the intended level of prevention”, the Lancet study noted. The Indian Medical Association’s health manifesto this year seeks repercussions for people spreading misinformation or pseudoscience -- “all acts of omission” and efforts to “fool the gullible public with ‘magic remedies’” should be punished under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, the Indian Penal Code and the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Like any public health challenge, the researchers noted, managing infodemics “combining a preventive and holistic approach requires a better understanding of the overall ecosystem”.