FALSE: Tanzania has not ejected the World Health Organization from the country
There is no evidence of such a directive and a WHO official confirms they are still operating in Tanzania.
An article claiming that the Tanzanian government has kicked the World Health Organization (WHO) out of the country is FALSE.
The article, published on a website called Great Game India on May 11, 2020, says Tanzania’s President John Magufuli, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, was sceptical about the WHO.
“With the rise in false Coronavirus cases, the Tanzanian President John Magufuli, growing suspicious of the World Health Organization (WHO), decided to investigate the claims himself,” the article reads in part.
President Magufuli sent the WHO samples of a goat, papaya, and a quail for testing. After all three samples came COVID-19 positive, the president is reported to have kicked out the WHO from the country.
In May, the Tanzanian president questioned his country’s coronavirus numbers, saying he had secretly sent samples from a variety of animals, fruits and vehicle oil to be tested for COVID-19 at the National Laboratory, and that they came back positive.
President Magufuli called on authorities to conduct investigations and then suspended the head of the laboratory.
However, there is no relationship between the WHO and the results of the samples provided in the national laboratory. The WHO representatives are not involved in testing samples in any country.
WHO communications officer, Andrei Muchnik, told PesaCheck in an email that the article’s claim is false as the UN health agency’s office in Tanzania is still operational.
“The World Health Organization has not been kicked out of Tanzania. Our office is still in operation,” the officer said.
Tanzania has not released any coronavirus infection data since April 29, 2020. The last count, according to the World Health Organization on August 11, recorded 509 positive cases and 21 deaths.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that the Tanzanian government has kicked the World Health Organization (WHO) out of the country and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Researcher Sylvia Makinia and edited by PesaCheck News Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local media and other civic watchdog organisations in 14 African countries.
