A claim has been widespread on social media since May 8, 2020,that the president of Tanzania, John PombeMagufuli has sacked officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) from the country.
The claim on twitter has received over 14,000 likes, more than 13,000 retweets and about 2,000 comments. The accompanying video has also been watched more than 420,000 times.
The claim, which has been published on websites such as this and this alleges that the officials were sacked after the president tricked them by sending them samples including a goat and pawpaw for COVID-19 testing and the WHO reported that the non-human samples tested positive.
Fact-Check Ghana looked into the claim and found the reports to be completely false.
A claim has been widespread on social media since May 8, 2020,that the president of Tanzania, John PombeMagufuli has sacked officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) from the country.
The claim on twitter has received over 14,000 likes, more than 13,000 retweets and about 2,000 comments. The accompanying video has also been watched more than 420,000 times.
The claim, which has been published on websites such as this and this alleges that the officials were sacked after the president tricked them by sending them samples including a goat and pawpaw for COVID-19 testing and the WHO reported that the non-human samples tested positive.
Fact-Check Ghana looked into the claim and found the reports to be completely false.
Explanation:
Tanzania is one of the East African countries affected by COVID-19. As at Wednesday May 20, 2020,the African Center for Diseases Control (Africa CDC) reported that Tanzania had recorded 509 cases of COVID-19, 167 of the cases had recovered while 21 had succumbed.
The President of Tanzania, John PombeMagufuli has been featured in many news reports due to some controversial statements including the claim that his son had recovered from COVID-19 after taking lemon-ginger solutionand the claim that samples from a goat and pawpaw that was deliberately sent for COVID-19 testing came out positive.
To verify the claim that John Magufuli had sacked WHO officials in the country because they were behind the test results, Fact-check Ghana scanned through leading websites in Tanzania such as The Citizen and Daily News for that story but found nothing.
The most recent and similar stories were the dismissal of Deputy Health Minister, Dr. FaustineNdugulile; and the suspension of two officials of the national health laboratory in charge of testing for the coronavirus.
The two are the lab’s head, DrNyamburaMoremi; and the quality assurance manager, Jacob Lusekelo. They were suspended the day after Magufulicast doubt on the accuracy of COVID-19 test results.
To further verify the claim, we established contact with the National Professional Officer Disease Prevention & Control of the WHO Office in Tanzania via phone.
She said “no not in Tanzania. That has not happened in Tanzania, we are working in collaboration for society.”
A publicationon the website of the Tanzania office of the WHO on Thursday May 21, 2020 showed that the WHO has been involved in training health workers in the country to build their capacity in fighting COVID-19.
