How Could Digital Tools Help Fight Against Anti-Vaccination?

Anti-vaccination movements lure increasingly more people into skipping potentially life-saving immunization against infectious diseases, such as measles, mumps, or rubella, highly impairing herd immunity for entire communities. Social media platforms could restrict the reach of anti-vax messages, groups, and activities, with algorithms recommending tailor-made content and health apps providing information about vaccinations. Here’s our collection of the most recent steps and digital tools supporting the fight against anti-vaccination and its believers. 300 percent increase in measles globally In a widely shared social media post from around two years ago, a person planning to travel with their toddler mentioned having heard that certain airline companies vaccinate people through the air conditioning system. The person was reaching out to seek additional information on which airlines were doing this. Now, you can laugh or feel terrible about a message that is wrong on many levels (starting with the absolutely zero availability of airborne vaccines), the fact is that fake news and conspiracy theories around vaccination are thriving – and this unfortunately already shows in the statistics. The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised alarm over a 300 percent increase in the case of measles globally in the first quarter of 2019 compared with last year, and it declared vaccination hesitancy as one of its ten most important threats to global health. So far this year,...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Empowered Patients Future of Medicine anti-vaccination anti-vax anti-vaxxer digital disease disease outbreak facebook figth Health Healthcare infection Innovation measles movement social media technology Source Type: blogs