This picture of a bus warning about childhood strokes wasn’t taken in the UK
What was claimed
The UK government/NHS have put posters on buses saying “Kids have strokes too, know the warning signs”.
Our verdict
The photo was taken in Canada, not the UK. It is part of an awareness campaign by a Canadian charity about strokes in children.
Several posts on Facebook have shared an image of a bus with a poster saying “Kids have strokes too” and telling people to “know the warning signs”.
The posts suggest that these posters have been put up by the UK government or the NHS. One post claims this is to “‘normalise’ the upcoming avalanche of childhood vaccine injuries”.
None of this is true. The adverts have nothing to do with the UK government, or with Covid-19 vaccines.
Text accompanying the images say they were taken in Whitby, but this seems to refer to Whitby, Ontario, rather than Whitby, Yorkshire. The picture of the bus was not taken in the UK, but in Canada. The poster is part of a campaign by Canadian charity, Achieving Beyond Brain Injury, started by two mothers after their sons had strokes in 2015 and 2018.
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The charity said on its website in June 2021 that an advert for paediatric stroke awareness would be appearing on the sides of some buses in the Durham region of Ontario.
Later, the charity posted on Facebook: “It has been brought to our attention that a photo of our awareness initiative that we created in May 2021 for Pediatric Stroke Awareness month has been taken by some people/groups and is being shared on social media diverging from its intended purpose.”
According to the Stroke Association, childhood stroke affects around five out of every 100,000 children a year in the UK and can be influenced by factors like congenital heart disease and sickle cell disease.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the photo was not taken in the UK, but in Canada and shows a Canadian charity initiative that advertised the warning signs of strokes in children on buses in Ontario. It has nothing to do with Covid-19 vaccines.
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