I have been a paediatrician for over three decades and have had parents come to me with many questions about their children’s health. But over the last year I have seen a new agent cause concern in parents’ minds — one that can be dangerous, even fatal.

I recently attended a parent-teacher meeting at a school in my home town Gandhidham in Gujarat, ahead of the measles-rubella vaccination campaign in the State.

I was surprised by the number of parents who came up to me after the event, asking questions about videos or messages they had received on social media. These were all spreading false information about the measles-rubella vaccine, making parents unsure about whether to vaccinate their children or not.

What they did not realise was that, by falling prey to this misinformation and not vaccinating their children, parents were leaving them vulnerable to a host of dangerous infectious diseases.

Take the case of measles, for example. Measles is one of the leading causes of death among children around the world, despite the existence of a safe and effective vaccine to prevent the disease. In India, measles still affects an estimated 2.5 million children each year, killing nearly 49,000 children in 2015.

To counter this, the government launched the measles-rubella (MR) vaccination campaign in February last year, which protects against measles and rubella — another infectious disease. It is one of the largest such vaccination campaigns in the world, and aims to vaccinate 410 million children.

False information

Although the MR campaign has seen major successes, it has not been without challenges. Prior to the launch of the vaccine in Gujarat, despite tireless efforts by the State government, several fake messages began circulating over WhatsApp, spreading false information about the vaccine.

In the days following the launch, several communities in the State had very low vaccine coverage due to parents’ refusal to vaccinate their children. In several schools I visited, students with access to smartphones refused the vaccine after receiving messages with false information from their peers.

What I found most alarming was that, like the diseases themselves, false information spread with incredible speed and, if left unchecked, could potentially damage many lives.

False information about critical public health interventions such as the MR vaccine does not simply misinform the public; it also causes real-world repercussions on children’s health.

Even more frightening, the spread of these messages drowns out expert voices and undermines the science behind programmes such as immunisation, even though science has shown that vaccines such as MR are safe, effective and critical for the health of our children.

There is also no such thing as ‘too many vaccines’ — each of the vaccines provided under our Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is critical for the health of every child.

Today, as doctors, we have an increased responsibility to not only treat patients that walk into our clinics but also take proactive action to counter dangerous misinformation circulating on social media platforms.

And not just doctors, each of us has a responsibility — as parents, community leaders and citizens — to use this powerful medium carefully and responsibly. In fact, we can harness the power of this medium to share factual messaging to counter false information when we see it in our daily lives.

The fight against fake news is not lost. Today, we have the opportunity to turn the tide, and each one of us must step up to the task.

The lives of our children are at stake.

The writer is Lead, Immunization Strategic Advisory Group, International Pediatric Association, and Director, Deep Children’s Hospital and Research Centre, Gandhidham, Gujarat.

Views are personal

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