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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,669 published reviews in this topic

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

වකුගඩු 04ක් පරිත්‍යාග කරන ලෙස ඉල්ලීමක් සමඟින් හුවමාරු වන WhatsApp පණිවිඩයේ ඇත්ත කතාව!

Publisher’s rating: False

The review examined a WhatsApp message claiming that a man named Sudhir and his wife had died in an accident and that their kidneys were available to people in need, with phone numbers supplied for contact. It says versions of the message had circulated on Facebook since 2021 and were also shared on WhatsApp. The investigation focused on whether the contacts and the proposed donation process were credible: it reports that the listed numbers did not match Sri Lankan phone networks and that the publisher’s Indian team confirmed they were Indian numbers. The review also says the message had circulated in India and had been identified there as false. To assess the donation claim, the publisher’s Indian Malayalam team contacted an organ-donation authority in Kerala. According to the review, its representative said organ-transplant information cannot lawfully be circulated through WhatsApp, and that organs are allocated through registered hospitals to eligible patients following assessment. The representative also said the same message had been reported in 2017 and confirmed as fake. The review describes this formal process as incompatible with the message’s appeal for people to contact private numbers to obtain organs. The review’s conclusion is that the message is fake and that the process it describes—seeking recipients for kidneys through WhatsApp—is not lawful. It also cites a Sri Lankan kidney specialist’s warning against sharing similar messages and explains that organ donation and matching in Sri Lanka take place through hospital procedures and waiting lists. Thus the evidence addresses both the Indian numbers in the circulated message and the review’s account of how donation and transplantation are handled in India and Sri Lanka.

日本ファクトチェックセンターHealth & medicine

ワクチン接種で子どもを殺された

Publisher’s rating: 誤り

The review traces the viral clip to a 2021 Al Jazeera documentary about the dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in the Philippines. It says the clip was edited and given Japanese subtitles that differ from the original audio, making it appear to concern COVID-19 vaccines; the documentary did not conclude that the vaccine caused the deaths.