Rural infrastructure of hills and the battle against COVID-19

Kajal Parmar

As per the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for outbreak communication, the at-risk population need to be informed about the infectious disease outbreaks so they can take decisions to stay safe (https://www.who.int/ihr/publications/outbreak-communication-guide/en/).  India has 1.353 billion people and most of its population living in rural surroundings.  The decision of massive lockdown to control the covid-19 cases in India is as ambitious and aggressive as the Chinese government took. China successfully controlled the pandemic with strict decisions like massive lockdown and electronic surveillances through Artificial Intelligence big data. This model may not be fully adopted in a country like India, but the social distancing has been proved to be best way and a possible to adopt measure to reduce the infection spread.

Covid-19 cases are surging in India with a fast pace. With the declaration of nationwide lockdown, people have started panicking. Covid-19 viral infection cases are increasing and started claiming lives in Himachal Pradesh with the reporting of first death of a 69 year-old Tibeti refugee in Kangra district of the state. The hilly state has seen severe health challenges with lack of other facilities like road and transportation.

Before the Corona outbreak, the newspaper pages were full of lack of medical facilities and poor road connectivity related issues in rural HP. The situation is still same, only the attention has diverted. Our medical facilities are still in the same situation of incapability of handling patients as before.

In this grave scenario, the government is trying its best to contain the virus. But the efforts will not meet the saturation point if the unaware folks of the state will not be well informed about the outbreak and the efforts government is making to control the infection.

With the ban of print media in the district people are now dependent on internet for their information urge. The newspapers and broadcast media are considered credible sources of information with the people depending mostly on newspapers (https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-06/global-advisor-trust-in-media-2019.pdf). There is a lot of misinformation and fake news being circulated over the social media platforms like Facebook and Whatsapp about the deadly infection.

The memes on facebook which are getting more and more publicity for their creativity and dark humour about the virus and its lethal effects are indirectly making people more afraid. People are believing number of myths from drinking gaumutra (cow urine) to wash utensils with ashes to kill the virus. Covid-19 is being considered as the disease of rich people and poor ones from the rural Himachal thinking they are safe from the infection.

Government authorities are using internet in best possible way to aware people but the villagers who do not have proper access to internet services in far flung villages of Himachal or are having poor media literacy believing each and everything coming online. Thus, internet is surely not a best way to aware the people. There are number of authentic pages on social media to get information, there is corona dashboard available online to get appropriate statistics, helpful links and other information about the outbreak.  But poor media literacy is not allowing the rural people to avail the benefits.

The local authorities of the state need to be more vigilant and committed to make the folks aware about the dos and don’ts of the infection. With the banning of the local papers in Kangra district, police officials with the help of local elected bodies and health workers need to inform people about the outbreak.

The district administration of the region announced and urged people to register their names who have arrived to Kangra from foreign as well as other parts of the country. But the people have no information about this appeal or how to inform the authorities. The Panchayat members can come to rescue of this failing appeal made by the district administration to identify possible corona suspects. The Pradhans of the villages need to visit door to door with other panchayat members to get their names register. They also need to inform the poor and illiterate folks about the various measures made by the government during the lockdown and the contact persons during emergency.

Proper communication channels need to be developed with the help of ASHA’s and anganwadi workers in every village. Many people believing the virus to be a city thing and are roaming around the villages freely. While the other halves are overly worried about the symptoms and emergency health care services as those people do not even have roads to their villages. Thus ASHA’s and anganwadi workers need to join hands immediately to provide the villagers with all necessary information about the deadly outbreak.

The government should provide these workers and panchayat members with the required materials for their own safety from the deadly virus like masks, gloves, hand sanitizers and information material. The government’s approach for fighting this outbreak should be reached to ground level. All the citizens should be well informed so they can join hands with the government to fight this deadly virus back to hell.

Kajal Parmar, PhD Scholar, Public Health Communication from the School of Journalism, Mass Communication and New Media, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala, India

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Mar 28, 2020