Islamabad (AFP)

Pakistan is joining forces with Facebook to counter disinformation about polio, the two sides said, while Pakistani authorities blame the country's upsurge in the spread of anti-vaccine content on social media.

"Combating disinformation about vaccines is an important goal for us around the world, including in Pakistan," a Facebook spokesperson said on Thursday.

"To fight against disinformation about vaccines, we have worked to reduce its dissemination on our platforms and to show people credible sources of information on immunization," he added in a written response to AFP. .

"Countering harmful content on the networks" is "a necessity", observed Zafar Mirza, the Prime Minister's special assistant for health.

"As we saw in Peshawar in April, this not only jeopardizes efforts to eradicate polio, but it also endangers the lives of our children," he said in a statement.

A wind of panic had seized the capital of north-western Pakistan in April 2019, after children had complained of reactions to the polio vaccine, without any disease being diagnosed to them.

Tens of thousands of children were then rushed to several hospitals. A health center had been burnt down. Tens of thousands of refusals of vaccination have since been recorded, and five vaccinators and police officers supervising them have been murdered.

Pakistan, one of only three countries in the world where polio has not been eradicated, is strongly committed against the disease, accompanied by the United Nations. After a sharp drop in cases (from 306 in 2014 to 8 in 2017), the trend has however clearly reversed, with twelve patients identified in 2018, then 136 in 2019.

Pakistani authorities attribute the increase to fake social media content seen hundreds of thousands of times, some of which claim the vaccine is killing children.

Facebook has removed dozens of such videos, they said recently.

The polio vaccine faces persistent suspicion in Pakistan. The organization of a false vaccination campaign by the CIA (American intelligence services) to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, killed in 2011 in Abbottabad (North-West), provoked resistance.

Some Taliban and ultra-conservative clerics also spread the rumor that vaccines contain ingredients prohibited by Islam, such as pork, or that they cause infertility.

© 2020 AFP