The government of Pakistan has partnered with Facebook in its fight against COVID-19.
Over 32 million people in Pakistan have received authoritative information about COVID-19 prevention and vaccination through social media messaging campaigns run by the Ministry of Health and the Digital Media Wing (DMW) of the Ministry of Information in partnership with Facebook.
Facebook provided Marketing Partner Support and Ad Credits for these campaigns and helped the GoP increase its engagement rates with the public on these posts between 16 March and 6 April 2021.
As part of these campaigns, Facebook and the ministries focused on creating videos and messages about boosting greater Vaccine Confidence in Pakistan. The messaging campaigns helped the Ministry of Health to increase its total number of page likes to 470,000, thus increasing the government’s ability to connect with and provide information to its stakeholders.
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As COVID-19 vaccines are becoming more readily available to larger groups, Facebook partnered with the Ministry of Health to launch new Facebook profile picture frames that allow users to share their support for getting vaccinated with their family and friends. Research shows that when people see others who they know and trust getting the vaccine, they will be encouraged to do the same. This can be particularly effective when it comes to encouraging those who were otherwise unsure about getting themselves vaccinated.
While speaking about the support extended by Facebook, Dr. Faisal Sultan, the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health, said, “We are appreciative of the support extended by Facebook in our fight against COVID-19. We reached 76% of our target population through our social media messaging campaigns. The pandemic has brought to the forefront the importance of using digital tools for transmitting critical health information to citizens and keeping them safe and healthy”.
Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has been working closely with the two ministries to direct people to authoritative COVID-19 information. A campaign to create awareness about spotting COVID-19-related misinformation on social media was also launched in partnership with the Ministry of Information’s Digital Media Wing in Urdu for the Facebook community in Pakistan.
The Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Fawad Chaudhry, stated, “We appreciate the hard work put in by the Ministry of Health and the Digital Media Wing of Government of Pakistan in bringing together an engaging campaign in partnership with Facebook. It is crucial to differentiate between information and misinformation in the age of digital communication. Facebook has supported the spread of accurate information through their drive of removing misinformation and fact-checking of news. We hope to partner with Facebook in the future to ensure that the people of our nation are provided with accurate information”.
Facebook has been working to take aggressive steps to remove harmful misinformation and connect people to resources from health authorities. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Facebook has removed more than 16 million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram globally for violating its policies on COVID-19-related misinformation and harm. Between March and October 2020, Facebook had displayed warnings on about 167 million pieces of content on Facebook worldwide based on COVID-19 related debunking articles written by its fact-checking partners.
Globally, Facebook has connected over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities through the COVID-19 Information Center and pop-ups on Facebook and Instagram, with over 600 million people clicking through to learn more.
On WhatsApp, over 3 billion messages have been sent by governments, nonprofit organizations, and international organizations to people through the WhatsApp government chatbots on COVID-19.
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Sehar Tariq, who leads the Public Policy for Pakistan at Facebook, said, “By working closely with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Information’s Digital Media Wing in Pakistan we’re doing our part to help the users in Pakistan in getting credible information. We would like to express our gratitude to Honorable Fawad Chaudhry, Minister of Information and Broadcasting and Dr. Faisal Sultan, SAPM on Health for the tireless coordination and support they have extended to our team throughout. We at Facebook will continuously work towards making the fight against the pandemic easier for the Government and our community in Pakistan and across the globe. We hope to keep extending our support and expertise where possible in the Government of Pakistan’s fight against COVID. It is so important that we come together as a community to protect ourselves and each other through credible health information and support vaccine confidence in our community”.
Imran Ghazali, the General Manager at the Digital Media Wing (DMW), said, “One of the important step to win the battle against COVID19 is to create awareness among masses with the latest and authentic health information and at the same time fight the disinformation on social media. In this regard, our partnership with Facebook has played a critical role in reaching the masses with information related to vaccine registration, following of SOPs and we will continue to work with Facebook to reach and engage more citizens across Pakistan”.
