Social Stigma Associated With COVID

With the unprecedented challenge of COVID when doctors are being hurled abuse, people committing suicide, and discriminatory behaviour being faced by cured patients from society. We spoke to Dr. Aditya Tiwari, read to know what he has to say.

When we make a phone call, before the call is connected, there is a voice educating us on how we have to fight the COVID infection and not the infected. Yet there have been certain instances where certain sections have been targeted. Could you talk about it?

There are reports where housing societies are not allowing family members to enter the society for fear of contracting the infection, there are viral videos where a doctor is being hurled abuses by a neighbor due to the fear that she may get the infection from her clinic in a residential building, a doctor, who tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized, felt very guilty that the entire building had to be sealed and sanitized. He felt relieved only after he apologized to the people. There are people who go absconding or commit suicide while waiting for their test results or after getting a positive report.

People are not only scared of the infection but are more scared that they will be targeted by the people around them. “Social distancing” has somehow become “social out-casting”. This is the bitter truth that we need to acknowledge, accept, and deal with.

What according to you is causing this kind of reaction to the disease- COVID-19?

Whenever there is a fear of catching an infection, as a knee-jerk reaction people choose to distance themselves from the infected. This may be a kind of protective survival instinct, but is deeply rooted in a lack of knowledge about the phenomenon or simply put ignorance. The root cause of any stigma is ignorance. Ignorance generates fear and fear causes discriminatory behavior. This happened when those with leprosy were casted away by villages into sanatoriums when mentally ill people were incarcerated into asylums, people with tuberculosis faced a similar fate, the same with HIV-AIDS was such a huge problem. COVID-19 is the latest addition to this list. It only reflects that we as people haven’t changed much despite such advances in technology and other things.

There have been a lot of myths around COVID 19.

Warm climate will kill the virus and hence not to worry, people drank sanitizers, bleach, methanol, ethanol, etc. with the idea of killing the virus. There were people who believed that their god will save them from the infection and they need not practice sanitization and social gatherings. Numerous religious programs and processions were seen in defiance of the social distancing advisory. With COVID, there have been a lot of confusing stories across the mainstream media, social media and WhatsApp. This has led to a lot of confusion and fear. Misleading media reports even communalized the infection and its spread. This has led to a widespread disruption in human lives and livelihoods.

How do we ensure the right information reaches people?

Government, health care professionals, health workers, prominent social figures, celebrities, etc. have a big role to play in spreading the right information. I remember the HIV-AIDS awareness campaign that helped in the right awareness about it. The success of the pulse polio campaign was a result of a big celebrity endorsing it. Similarly, there has to be a will from the government agencies and support from the prominent members of the society in putting out the right information out there.

Inputs from

Dr. Aditya Tiwari

Consultant Homoeopath, Psychiatrist and Art based therapist at Angel’s Clinic,

Mumbai