MISLEADING: These remarks attributed to Uganda’s health minister are fake
A Facebook post claiming to show remarks made by Uganda’s health minister about the COVID-19 vaccines is MISLEADING.
The post states that the Health Ministry is worried about the rapid COVID-19 infections among vaccinated people. It adds that it is becoming difficult for vaccinated people “to get healed, ending up dying”.
Additionally, the post has a screengrab of a NBS Television news report with a lower third captioned “MOH WORRIED ABOUT INFECTIONS AMONG VACCINATED PEOPLE”.
However, NBS Television issued an apology for carrying the erroneous graphic that has caused anxiety and debate online and stated “It is not true that the vaccine has a problem as it is insinuated”.
In the news bulletin broadcast by NBS Television on 20 June 2021, Health Minister Jane Aceng responds to multiple questions about the myths surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines. However, the minister does not mention any worries about infections among vaccinated people.
The Ministry of Health distanced itself from the post in a tweet, adding that they are false.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming to show remarks made by Uganda’s health minister about the COVID-19 vaccine and finds them to be MISLEADING.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Pius Enywaru and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. It was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.