Claim: Social media users claim an HIV/AIDS outbreak occurred at the HO Technical University, with over 400 students suspended by the university.
Verdict: False. The Volta Regional Health Directorate of the Ghana Education Service has described such reports as untrue.
Full Text
A news report from indostvnews.com has claimed an HIV/AIDS outbreak at the HO Technical University.
The report also alleged that more than 400 students had tested positive for the virus and were instructed to leave the university. The unverified news quickly spread among social media users, who quoted and shared it without proper fact-checking.
With over a million followers, a TikTok user, kingderek_official, has also made a similar claim in a two-minute seven seconds video. His post has amassed over 11,000 likes.
Given this, DUBAWA decided to verify the claim.
Verification
With such a story, DUBAWA conducted a thorough search across major news media outlets, including citinewsroom.com, graphiconline.com, and myjoyonline.com, to verify if any such report had been published. However, DUBAWA found no evidence of such.
In response to the claim on Twitter, the Volta Regional Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) issued a statement on Monday, June 5, 2023, dismissing the claim as false. The Directorate stated that, upon conducting a comprehensive examination of HIV testing data from healthcare facilities in the Ho Municipality and the wider Volta Region, there was no indication of a rise in reported HIV cases at any facility or across the entire region.
The health authority emphasised that there has been no significant increase in HIV cases at Ho Technical University or any other tertiary institution in the Volta Region.
Similarly, Ho Technical University has also refuted such reports. In a statement signed by the Registrar of the school, Dr C.K Amehoe, it urged the public to refrain from sharing the false publication as it could potentially tarnish the university’s image.
All attempts to contact the media platform indostvnews.com, to discover their source of information failed. The contact icon on their website is inactive.
Conclusion
The claim that the HO Technical University has recorded an HIV/AIDS outbreak with over 400 students being suspended by the university is false.
