A branch of the World Health Organization on Monday published a pandemic preparedness report that emphasized the need for member states to crack down on misinformation and disinformation in the name of global public health.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, which was established in 2018, is a part of the WHO tasked with high-level emergency response strategy and has gained prominence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This year's annual report, titled A Fragile State of Preparedness, argued that worldwide preparation for the next pandemic or major disease outbreak was inadequate on a variety of fronts, including financing, global research and development, and an increasing lack of trust in scientific and public health leaders.
"While the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the corrosive effects of mistrust on collective action, burgeoning misinformation and disinformation have been growing concerns over the past decade," the GPMB wrote in its full report released Monday. "While trust in science and scientists has generally been found to be high across the globe, misinformation is undermining this trust, with pockets of the population in many settings strongly distrustful."
The report indicates that developing a "global mechanism to effectively address health-related misinformation and disinformation" is a key goal for advancing health equity during emergency responses and addressing the "global trust deficit."
To advance these goals, WHO has established initiatives to manage the so-called "infodemic," which the organization defines as a plethora of information from which it is difficult to distill the truth.
An infodemic, according to the WHO, "causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health ... leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response."
"With growing digitization — an expansion of social media and internet use — information can spread more rapidly. This can help to more quickly fill information voids but can also amplify harmful messages," the WHO said.
The GPMB applauded several regional-level programs and programs within other parts of the United Nations to "identify and seek to counter misinformation and disinformation," including those developed by the European Union and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Furthermore, the WHO has established a program called Early AI-supported Response with Social Listening, also known as EARS, which "aims to show real time information about how people are talking about COVID-19 online so we can better manage as the infodemic and pandemic evolve."
Since the program began in December 2020, 30 countries have participated, and the WHO has analyzed over 100 million social media posts to scan for misinformation and disinformation, including in the United States.
"While these measures have had a positive impact, they do not have the reach or scale to counter the deterioration in the information environment," the GPMB wrote, calling instead for "a more unified, proactive approach [from] both regulators and corporate governance bodies."
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The GPMB also highlighted in its report the need for countries to participate in the Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Accord, also referred to as the Pandemic Accord, in order to mitigate the difficulties of managing misinformation as well as other aspects of public health emergency governance.
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is in the process of drafting the full version of the Pandemic Accord, which will be brought to a vote by the World Health Assembly in May 2024.