As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, killing tens of thousands, India is facing a centuries-old problem. A problem where suspected patients and carriers of the disease hide or are concealed by family members and society. In many parts of the country, health workers and doctors were chased away, attacked, abused and heckled when they tried to enquire about people suspected of being infected with the killer virus.
“The resistance to quarantine and isolation is nothing new. People see it as a stigma and resist it. That’s human psychology. The patients and their families see it as an unwelcome branding,” says Johnsey Thomas, a psychologist, explaining the rationale of people’s behaviour.
Though the link between patients with the disease infecting others is clearly established, there is great resistance to getting tested or going into self-quarantine. “I think it is due to the fear factor where people are not using logical reasoning. Officials are reaching out to patients and suspected carriers for treatment but the reactions have been wholly illogical,” says Afshan Jabeen, a clinical psychologist.
“It is a paradox. People know that they will be saved by the doctors and hospitals but they resort to this irrational behaviour. One explanation is that the information about the disease is a grey area. So many theories are floating about online and that might be triggering the state of distress,” says Ms. Jabeen.
“When police officials came to enquire about a suspected patient in the neighbourhood, there was curiosity but no fear. But things have changed. Earlier, children would play outside that house. Not any more. Even when people are out for grocery shopping they walk on the other side of the road near that house,” says a resident of Anandbagh Colony, where a person was taken for testing as part of contact-tracing. The person tested negative.
More than a century earlier, civic officials faced a similar problem of patients hiding or families concealing themselves. “The removal of the sick and segregation of the contacts has led to the concealment of cases because people do not like the idea of being removed from their houses and from their friends and relatives. The contacts also do not like to leave their houses to be taken to camp, nor do they like the disinfection of their houses. This has led to concealment of cases, and the concealment of cases has led to the spread of the disease. In fact, we found at a certain stage that the remedy, that is segregation and removal of the sick, was worse than the disease,” said D. A. Choksi, Chief Plague Officer in Bengaluru, when asked about the reaction of people to the measures to fight the disease.
