Srinagar: A recently published study has revealed high levels of adequate and accurate information about Covid-19 in Kashmiri community, yet gaps exist between knowledge translating these into behaviour.
A staggering 83 percent of the over 1000 participants from Kashmir in an online survey believed to varying degrees that being diagnosed with SARS-COV2 infection could have them stigmatised in society.
Even with this fear, over 86 percent participants said they would self report history of contact or symptoms of the infection.
The study has been carried out by a group of researchers from GMC Srinagar and some other institutes in Jammu, Chandigarh and New Delhi.
Interestingly, 86 percent people held China responsible for the pandemic, the study reveals.
The study was published in the August issue of Indian Psychiatry aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) about Covid-19 among Kashmiri population and to determine the association of KAP scores with the socio-demographic variables.
Only 68 percent of the participants accepted that they wore masks regularly while stepping out of their homes.
Interestingly, 5 percent acknowledged that they never donned the protection in the form of masks.
Around 98 percent of the respondents believed that lockdown would help in containing the spread of infection, yet only 50 percent had the faith that the pandemic would be successfully controlled.
“The study revealed the presence of some negative attitudes in the respondents. For example, the tendency to conceal potential history of infection, pessimism toward implementation of control measures, and certain stigmatised views regarding the disease,” the findings state.
Underlining the importance of controlling rumours and debunking myths that crop up due to unregulated content, the study found that over 70 percent of the respondents relied on social media and television was the source of information for 20 percent of the population.
These were the two-most preferred sources of information on Covid-19.
Attributing a cause to the pandemic, 70 percent of the respondents believed that Covid-19 was an infectious disease, 25 percent thought of it to be a curse from God, and the remaining 5 percent felt that it was “an international conspiracy”.
The KAP studies could help in devising better policies for public health and control of the pandemics.
The researchers noted, “Despite widespread efforts made by the government to implement prevention and control measures against Covid-19 in Kashmir, evaluation of public access to information, its practicability as well as a contextualised understanding of perceptions and reactions of Kashmiri population to Covid-19, remains largely under-assessed.”
The study found that awareness campaigns had been reasonably successful with the population in Kashmir, but the acquired knowledge had not found proportionate realistic transcription that would reflect in positive attitudes or good practices of the section under study.
The study has been carried out by researchers Bushra Syed Imtiyaz, Chahat Jamwal, Arshad Hussain, Fazle Roub, Rabbanie Tariq, Imran Qayoom, Juvaria Syed and Mahvish Renzu.