ABSTRACT
Aim: Frontline Health Care Workers (FLHCWs) are the key workforce in the fight against ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. They hail from the community and are responsible for supporting the health system in generating awareness, implementing preventive strategies, contact tracing and isolating potential cases. In their job responsibilities, FLHCWs thus may perceive heightened risk of exposure to the virus, leading to overwhelming emotional response and psychological distress. The objective of this study was to investigate risk perception, cognitive awareness and emotional responses among FLHCWs trained to deal with Covid 19, to identify unmet needs of this training in India. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a total of 131 frontline workers selected by a multistage sampling process from two states (Odisha and Himachal Pradesh) of India. The FLHCWs were interviewed personally (when feasible) with the help of a predesigned pretested semi-structured questionnaire. Results: The findings suggested that majority (90%) of the FLHCWs perceived that they are susceptible to nCoV-19 infection and 77.1% of FLHCWs felt high probability of them getting infected with the nCoV-19. Almost 90% of them responded that it is something they think about all the time and 41% of FLHCWs admitted that they feel helpless in the situation. About 63% of FLHCWs perceived that the nCoV-19 infection was a severe illness and 35% perceived it to be very severe and life threatening. Although most of them had received some unstructured and non-uniform training on preventive measures against COVID-19, yet only 38% felt that the knowledge was adequate to protect themselves from the nCoV-19 infection. The training sessions lacked psychological component for capacitating them with coping skills to address their emotional and psychological responses. Conclusion: The FLHCWs experienced heightened risk perception and symptoms of emotional distress in significant numbers even after trainings. A more inclusive public health policy dialogue to address the emotional and psychological coping skills is needed for capacitation of these frontline workers to address the challenges of Pandemic response now and in future. © 2022 Dobe et al;This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
ABSTRACT
Mumbai-The economic capital of India, shrivelled with panic as its infamous slum ‘Dharavi’ rec-orded its first positive case of COVID-19 on 1st April 2020. Dharavi is the largest slum in India and one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Its narrow lanes, teeming with people and chock-a-block with settlements, make physical distancing practically impossible-posing as an excellent breeding ground for the deadly virus. However, with a policy of ‘chasing the virus’ based on strategy of ‘Tracing Tracking Testing and Treating’ Dharavi flattened its epidemic curve within a hundred days. This was achieved through the immediate public health response with strict containment measures, aggressive active and passive surveillance and integration of resources from government and private sectors to provide essential services. In this paper, we have summarized the ongoing measures for successful prevention and control of COVID-19 in Dharavi, which could provide useful learning for other similar settings worldwide. © 2020 Sahu et al.