It is war around the truth: Health experts, Facebook and You tube plays catch-up with anti-vaxxers
Summary of the article
Health is a significant factor in the life of the Canadian citizens and the world in general. In order to boost immunity system of individuals against certain diseases, vaccination is usually recommended by the health practitioners. However, in Canada, the Measles anti-vaccination group has taken a central stage in manipulating the public by the use of social media platform. For instance, they use social media (Facebook and you tube) to misinform the public about the measles vaccinations. Despite the fact that the anti-vaccines group has won the battle by spreading the propaganda, measles still causes deaths of more than 110,000 people around the world as per 2017 report. Therefore, the social media companies, and public health authorities should take a swift action to prevent the anti-vaxxers from spreading the propaganda against vaccine.
The determinant of the social determinant of health
From the article, the social determinant of health which can be identified comprised of stress, and education and literacy. The determinants can be illustrated as follows:
- Stress: Due to the effect of measles to the public, the citizens succumb due to high degree of stress caused by pain and financial put by the effect of the disease. Besides, stress emanate from the anti-vaccination group who uses propaganda to discourage people against vaccination. These gives pressure to the public health authorities to find the best way in which they can reduce the spread of the misleading information in the society and restore the public confidence in undertaking the vaccination against muscles in Canada (Ratcliff, 2017).
- Education and Literacy: In relation lack of knowledge on the spread of Measles in Canada and across the globe, the ant-vaccine activists found room to spread propaganda in the social media against undertaking vaccines. For instance, they postulated that in 1998, Canada was declared measles free, a statement which was not having any legal and scientific proof. Due to the propaganda, the refusal to vaccine against preventable diseases has been identified. These thus make the vaccine hesitancy to be one of the top 10 global threats to the global health.
The relationship of social determinant of health
There is an indirect relationship between stress and education or literacy. Due to the disease burden and misinformation which is spread about vaccination by anti-vaccination group, the public health authorities, as well as the citizens undergo a series of stress which has adverse consequences on their welfare. However, for anti-vaccination group to achieve the battle in the social media, it means that most of the populace lack information about measles vaccination and its consequences. Therefore, it is due to lack facts about measles vaccination is what have enabled the anti-vaxxers to maneuver their ways to cause confusion and stress to people as they suffer from preventable disease.
The impacts of the social determinant of health
From the article, there are both direct and indirect impacts of health determinants highlighted above. The direct impact comprise of incline in the number deaths in Canada and the world. For example, in the year 2017, due to stress and low literacy about measles diseases, over 110000 people lost their lives (Nicole, 2019). On the other hand, lack of education and low level of literacy makes the public health department to incur a lot of cost in convincing the people against the propaganda or removing the ill-fated information which has been spread by the anti-vaccination group. Therefore, the average Canadian should care about these determinants since one can easily be misled by the anti-vaccination group hence causing deterioration of welfare and eventually leading to death.
References
Nicole, I. (2019, March 2). 'It's a war around the truth': Health experts, Facebook and YouTube play catch-up with anti-vaxxers. CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/measles-vaccination-information-wars-social-media-1.5037006
Ratcliff, K. S. (2017). The Social Determinants of Health: Looking Upstream. Cambridge, England: Polity.
