Meghalaya’s worst case scenario happened a week ago. A renowned doctor who became a victim of Covid -19 could not be cremated or buried until people were persuaded that the dead body of a Covid victim cannot spread the virus. Humanity then rose to the fore and a burial place was gracefully offered to the family of the deceased. The last rites were conducted with the dignity and solemnity due to the doctor. This is a worst case scenario because the state had taken optimum precaution to ensure that the Covid19 virus did not find its way to Meghalaya. When it did arrive here it, was from very unexpected quarters. A medical specialist and the owner of a hospital tested positive on Monday April 13 and by early morning Tuesday he had expired. The suddenness of it all shocked the citizenry of Shillong. Doctors meet several patients besides other persons for various purposes on a daily basis. To do contact tracing by doing a back-check was a monumental task. It was made worse by the fact that some family members of the doctor including his wife and domestic helpers, tested positive. The hospital was sealed; the doctors, nurses and other caregivers had to be quarantined. The inmates of the hospital also had to be tested and removed elsewhere for quarantine. It took all the resources of the Government to tackle the crises.
But Meghalaya is not the only state to be afflicted by the conundrum of a Covid casualty being denied burial or cremation. Dr Simon Hercules, a neuro-surgeon who ran the New Hope private hospital in Chetpet, Tamilnadu expired on Sunday and faced similar stigmatization. He was refused cremation and those who accompanied his body for the last rites were attacked. Dr Simon had battled Covid for 15 days at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai before succumbing to it.
This is where risk management communication becomes imperative. The fear and paranoia surrounding Covid-19 is worse than the disease. It springs from the perception that the disease is incurable and has the potential to jump from the dead body of the deceased to infect others. Tackling public perception should have been the first task of not just the government but other institutions such as universities and societal stakeholders as well. Perceptions are rooted in the sub-conscious and are not always logical. Many of the perceptions people carry are influenced by culture and coloured by emotions. Risk management communication also involves managing public fear and outrage. In fact, fear management should have gone alongside the awareness creation on hygiene.
It is important for the government to widely communicate that, “We Are All In This Together.” Covid-19 has to be fought by the government and public together. It has to be all of us against Covid-19. The government is just one of the stakeholders in the system with resources at its command. A prudent government would have involved members of the public as partners to take up tasks they are professionally competent at in the fight against this X factor.