We Need a Robust Health Literacy Policy to Tackle the Wildfire of Health Misinformation

Credible health information in India is not easily accessible.

- SUDIPTA SENGUPTA

The country is drowning in health misinformation, and at the core of this crisis is low health literacy among the Indian population.

What makes this worse is that we have hardly done any research to measure the effects of low health literacy on public health. If we go by studies conducted in the West, the evidence is clear—low health literacy leads to significant health and economic losses, affecting not just individuals but the entire public health ecosystem of a country. Even in my daily interaction with doctors, I have heard enough experiences to be able to confidently say that the result of any such study ever conducted in India will not have a very different result.