Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Prime Minister KP Oli hospitalised after he had a heart attack.
Fact
No, PM Oli didn’t have a heart attack.
A viral video claiming that Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had a heart attack is going viral on TikTok.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @nepallivehd posted a video showing Prime Minister Oli lying on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask. The video also showed a photo of Hospital building. Text superimposed on the video reads, “KP Sharma Oli has suffered a heart attack and has been taken to Grande Hospital. KP Oli says ‘Balen and Durga Prasai are the protector of his country and my life is not certain.’”
The video posted on October 2 has garnered 2603 likes, 173 users have shared it and 466 people have commented until the last count. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several key frames and conducted a Google reverse search on a frame showing KP Sharma Oli in hospital bed. The search led us to an article, dated November 3, 2018, published on spotlight.com, carrying a picture of KP Oli that exactly matched the viral video.
The article indicated that the photo actually showed Prime Minister Oli in Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital bed after his health deteriorated then.
We, then, we checked the social media pages of PM Oli and found that Oli has posted videos from his recent visit to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. However, we didn’t find any indication of Prime Minister Oli having any health issues.
Further, we ran a Google search for the latest news of Prime Minister Oli and found several articles on his meeting with visiting Bangladeshi Minister for Forest, Environment, Climate Change, and Water Resources Syeda Rizwana Hasan.
An article published today on the Kathmandu Post Online noted that the visit took place at the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluwatar.
Thus, our findings clearly showed that Prime Minister Oli has been continuing his regular duties and he didn’t have any health issues until the time of publishing this article.
Conclusion
No, Prime Minister Oli didn’t have a heart attack. The viral video is exaggerated, and thus is misleading.
Result: False
Sources
Spotlight, Nov 3, 2018
Kathmandu Post, Oct 3, 2024
Grande Int’l Hospital
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
