Chandigarh: Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Friday launched an awareness campaign to counter misinformation about coronavirus on social media. Launching the drive, Sidhu said a stigma and discrimination have been attached with the disease which needed to be addressed immediately.
Sidhu, according to an official statement here, said the campaign will be conducted by the Punjab government in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Besides counselling, it is necessary that reliable and accurate information regarding COVID-19 is provided to all patients so that they do not fall for misinformation, Sidhu said.
The Punjab minister said the campaign also aims at providing relief to the patients suffering from mental stress. Asking people not to believe in rumours being circulated on social media, Sidhu said strict action will be taken against those behind it.
Divulging more about the campaign, the statement quoting Dr Manisha Mandal, state Project Officer of the UNDP, said there is a lot of misinformation being circulated, which necessitated such a campaign. Several rumours, including the alleged organ harvesting of coronavirus patients, have posed a new challenge to the Punjab Health Department as people in some villages are preventing medical teams from collecting samples, officials had said on Wednesday.
Health authorities have appealed to people not to fall prey to such canards and get themselves tested for early detection of the infection.
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