INFORMATION INTEGRITY 6.2
The Health with Science Programme experience: Information integrity in the Global South
Health disinformation in the Global South deepens inequity and threatens lives. By empowering communities and valuing local knowledge, Brazil’s Health with Science programme offers a community-first model for lasting health resilience
themselves most starkly, ensuring access to high-quality scientific information is a matter of survival – and justice. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we experienced what could be called a global infodemic. However, the impacts of disinformation were not homogeneous. In the Global South, the absence of robust public health communication policies, coupled with limited digital access, facilitated the spread of so-called fake news and hindered community engagement in evidence-based practices. And this is not accidental. Disinformation here
Ethel Leonor Maciel, former secretary of health and environmental surveillance, Brazil
I nformation integrity is a
backdrop of structural inequality, systematic disinformation and the erasure of traditional community knowledge. Here, where the effects of social inequities manifest
fundamental pillar of public health. In the Global South, its importance becomes even more evident against a historical
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Health: A Political Choice – The Future of Health in a Fractured World
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