UAE killer watermelon hoax: no HIV in Summer fruit
The advice came following a rumor that watermelons being imported from an Arab country are injected with HIV that causes AIDS.
Residents are advised to pay no heed to a malicious message, spread in the Abu Dhabi community through various channels, said an official at the Adfca,
The message, quoting a doctor at a prominent hospital in Saudi Arabia, was reported to Adfca.
“We could prove it false by conducting proper investigations,” a senior official told Gulf News on Wednesday. “It was in 2007 but the same rumor has resurfaced now,” said Mohammad Jalal Al Raisi, Director of Communication and Community Service at Adfca.
A common pattern about the rumors is they resurface after a few years although proven untrue by the authorities in the past, he said.
Rumors on food safety are not created as a joke or as the handiwork of mischief-makers but they originate from certain specific sources which have ulterior motives, he said.
“The emergence of numerous new communication channels, including social media, make their job easy so we try to tackle them at once before rumors cause any damage,” Al Raisi said.
Rumors generally originate from either businesses having hidden motives to promote their own products by discrediting other products in the market or anti-social elements who want to cause confusion in society. The authority conducts investigations and scientific tests to prove a rumor false, he said.
Regarding the watermelon rumor, the official immediately contacted the doctor in Saudi Arabia who was quoted in the message.
“He said he was not aware of it at all. The factual investigation proved it wrong still we go to the scientific information.”
The authority’s scientists made it clear that HIV cannot survive in watermelons.
“We publish these results through official channels to discredit the rumors.”
Source: www.albawaba.com
