Govt mulls campaign to counter Covid stigma

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 25

The government may have driven home the importance of lockdown to fight Covid- 19, but is now having to battle on a whole new front — stigma around the disease.

The Health Ministry’s internal surveys on people’s perception of official Covid messaging have thrown up startling results, with 95 per cent respondents viewing the virus as “highly dangerous” — a trend that is fuelling fear leading to Covid warriors and patients being stigmatised.

Having addressed the violence against Covid warriors by amending the Epidemic Diseases Act to make assault on health workers punishable, the government is now mulling a campaign to destigmatise Covid.

The campaign appears urgent. With the infected hesitant to seek help, the disease may go underground, as had happened with HIV/AIDS. “What is needed is an intensive campaign like Swachh Bharat… Digital communications on Covid will have to be accompanied by voices of faith leaders and role models whom the community trusts,” reads a ministry note. It speaks of engaging organisations working against stigma in the fields of HIV, TB and leprosy.

Health Secretary Preeti Sudan today shared the ministry’s new strategy with top development partners and stressed that messaging should “target the heart”. “Instead of asking people to stay home to stop transmission, we should re-frame the message and ask people to stay indoors to protect themselves and their loved ones,” the new communication package says.

Many stakeholders felt the term “social distancing” was also to blame and should be replaced with “physical distancing.”

NEW STRATEGY

• The govt will stress that the cured are virus-free and can’t transmit the disease
• That they are, in fact, healers whose antibody-rich plasma can cure others