A person healed with traditional medicine
One of the false image-backed claims appeared last week was a claim that a person who had a serious leg injury was recently healed with traditional medicine.
However, HaqCheck confirmed that the image doesn’t show a person healed with traditional medicine and urges social media users not to be victims of fraud.
HaqCheck inspected the image and found out that the young man in the image is named Yetbarek who is surgically treated at CURE Ethiopia Children’s Hospital, Addis Ababa branch of Cure International, a network of many pediatric hospitals throughout the globe.
According to the information on the hospital website, Yetbarek had a bad fracture on his right leg under his knee after his tibia broke while playing football. He received surgical treatment from the hospital starting in June 2019. The hospital said that Yetbarek was successfully healed and shared many pictures of him.
The image was first posted on the hospital’s website in Feb 2020. Therefore, HaqCheck rated the post false.
False images of flooding in Sudan
HaqCheck observed false images being circulating across Facebook claiming that there was catastrophic flooding in Sudan recently. One Facebook post made on Aug 9, 2022 sharing images claimed that Sudan was experiencing an ongoing flooding and the construction of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will help it reducing the risk of flooding.
However, the images were false that dont show ongoing flooding in Sudan.
It was reported that the eastern and western parts of Sudan particularly the Darfur region have been struck with flooding.
However, the images that were shared by the Facebook page dont represent ongoing floding in Sudan.
For instance, one of the images put above shows flooding due to heavy rain in Turkey in 2018.
False numbers of a Red Cross fertilizer donation in Tigray
On Aug 8, 2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) donated fertilizers to conflict-affected farmers in the Tigray regional state.
Thenafter, false information regarding the amount of the fertlizers the Red Cross distributed to farmers came out. FBC (Fana Broadcasting Corporate) reported on its Facebook page that Red Cross distributed fertlizers to 120 thousand farmers in Tigray.
However, HaqCheck confirmed that the Red Cross society itself stated that it donated fertlizers to 20 thousand households which are amounted to120 thousand persons in total.
Hours later, the media outlet edited the post making it to 120 thousand individuals.
Recommendations
HaqCheck urges social media users to be skeptical of such posts and be careful of scams.
We recommend media outlets to be heedful of the figures they report. They should also make quick edits and notify their audience that the information given was inaccurate.
Socil media users are always urged to be careful of false and malicies information and claims across offline and online networking sites.
