Harris says tech companies have to do more to tackle vaccine misinformaiton

Health Minister Simon Harris has called on tech companies, Facebook, Google and Twitter, to do more to battle online disinformation on vaccines.

Mr Harris met the companies in Dublin to discuss the measures that are taking to prevent the spread of misleading information on vaccine.

Following the meeting, he said: “The progress we have made in reducing, and in some cases eradicating, vaccine-preventable diseases will be in vain if we allow our immunisation programmes to be undermined by misinformation and disinformation about the benefits and safety of vaccines, particularly on social media."

The World Health Organisation has identified vaccine hesitancy as one of the 10 leading threats to global health in 2019, along with issues such as air pollution, Antimicrobial resistance, and HIV.

Mr Harris said there is a need to ensure the public has access to accurate and reputable information: “Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that can also be harnessed to direct people to sources of factual information about vaccination, so they can make informed decisions. It is in this context that I met with the social media companies."

"The companies themselves acknowledged they have a responsibility to their users in the area of public health.

While some of them have taken measures to combat vaccine misinformation, they acknowledged there was much more work to be done and agreed to liaise with the Department regarding the work of the Vaccine Alliance and with the HSE to progress further initiatives.

"We must do everything we can to ensure people get accurate and reputable information on public health," Mr Harris said.

A Twitter spokesperson said: “As a company, our main priority is to protect the health of the public conversation - this includes surfacing credible public health information. In October we partnered with the HSE to launch a tool on our service that directs people searching for vaccine information to a dedicated HSE web page.

"To this end, we met with Minister Harris in Dublin to continue our dialogue on combating vaccine misinformation online and to identify new areas for partnership and collaboration."

A Facebook spokesperson said: “We would like to thank the Minister for the opportunity to discuss the important issue of vaccine misinformation. We look forward to working closely with the Department of Health to make continued progress in this area and building on the resources Facebook has already put in place".

A Google spokesperson said: "Google welcomes the opportunity to engage with the Minister and share our progress on helping people find helpful and authoritative information on health topics."

This story was updated on November 26.