A man is hospitalized after eating a bat.
The photo, which shows a hospitalised man with dark blemishes on his face, features text that reads: “The same person who demonstrated how to eat bats in video ended up in hospital...having his ‘Dessert’”., The post’s caption states: “The man in this video is now hospitalized.”, Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:, The novel coronavirus has killed more than 3,000\xa0people and infected more than 88,000 others, mostly in mainland China, AFP reported on March 2, 2020., The same photo and video were shared\xa0with a similar claim almost 600 times in other Facebook posts: in English here, in Chinese here and in Malaysian\xa0here., The photo and video have been shared in a misleading context., --Unrelated health condition--, The photo has previously circulated in an online fundraising page for a man with a lung disease unrelated to the novel coronavirus epidemic., A Google reverse image search found the photo was published on this fundraising page on Kitabisa, an Indonesia-based donation platform., According to the page, the man in hospital is Aden Sugiantoro, a 28-year-old Indonesian national who underwent treatment at a hospital in Beijing for an acute lung condition., Juliani Ferdyani, who set up the Kitabisa fundraiser, told AFP on February 26, 2020, that Aden\xa0suffered from a “final-stage lung disease” and was admitted to hospital on December 28, 2019. He died in January 2020, she said., “It was after his death that the coronavirus information started to emerge,” Juliani added., Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo from the misleading post (L) and the photo on Kitabisa (R):, --Video of Palau restaurant--, AFP conducted a keyword search on the Chinese online search engine Baidu and found the video of the man eating a bat was previously published here on Weibo on January 26, 2020., Various blog posts have shared pictures of their experience at a restaurant in Palau here, here and here, where the same matching wall decorations and plates can be seen., Below is a screenshot comparisons from the misleading video (L) and from bloggers’ posts\xa0(R):, French television network France 24’s fact check team The Observers separately found the video showing a man eating fruit bats at a restaurant in Palau in this report published on February 2, 2020., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This photo has circulated in an online fundraising page for a man with a lung condition unrelated to the novel coronavirus | AFP Fact Check