Those are some of the rumors that revolve around the treatments for life-threatening diseases.
Now imagine you have 24 hours to come up with a plan to discourage people from believing the rumors and encourage them to seek treatment.
That was the challenge at this spring’s Hackathon, an international competition hosted by the Task Force for Global Health’s Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center. While the competition sounds very COVID-relevant, in this case, the event challenged participants to dispel misinformation surrounding diseases like leprosy, Dengue fever and schistosomiasis.
“Rumors and misinformation are threats to progress [against diseases] and are not a laughing matter. They cost lives,” says Moses Katabarwa, a competition judge who works at the Carter Center’s Uganda River Blindness program and has seen how misinformation prevents patients from taking life-saving treatments. “Well-proven ideas can be threatened unless we tackle [rumors] intelligently and wisely head-on.”