Misinformation circulates due to a lack of information and countries don’t have a proper data collection system
By Pushpita Dey and Fatima Majid
The World Health Organization in collaboration with DataLEADS organized a webinar on ‘Promoting access to credible health information on April 28.
Invited as a speaker, Syed Nazakat, founder and CEO of DataLEADS, spoke about the spread of misinformation and how it affects the masses. Nazakat mentioned, “The fundamental part of any society is the access to timely information. In the last couple of years, there is too much information due to the rise of social media. So a person fails to understand which information to take and if he takes on wrong information, it has serious consequences.”
The discussion pointed out that for the first time in human history, people are having access to more information than they can consume. Thus, they are not able to figure out how to separate truth from false and fiction. To this, the founder of DataLeads added, “Misinformation circulates when there is no information. Misinformation begins when don’t share the right information with the public.
Highlighting the role of data in restricting the flow of misinformation and how the lack of proper database has impacted our society so far, Syed Nazakat clarified, “Any major disease that takes a toll on millions of people every year, most of the countries don’t have a basic data collection system in place. Even if they have a data collection system in place, they don’t collect updated data. Data deficit is a major issue.”
The discussion highlighted the major dangers of lots of misinformation or disinformation will be chaos, fear and racism. They even pointed out how a whole community was targeted.
As a part of their initiative to make correct information accessible to all through the right access to data, DataLeads will soon be launching a platform. To this Nazakat added, “If we make information and data available to people that will help us build trust. Thus, we are building a data hub of all the open-source data available in the world. We will ensure it is available to all doctors, communities and other members.”
The link to the video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu34G4E1p6Q&t=6s
The post “Data deficit is a major issue”: Syed Nazakat appeared first on Health Analytics Asia.
