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Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the multiple vulnerabilities of people living in urban informal settlements globally. To bring community voices from such settlements to the center of COVID-19 response strategies, we undertook a study in the urban informal settlements of Dharavi, Mumbai, from Sep...

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Autores principales: Ramani, Sudha, Bahuguna, Manjula, Tiwari, Apurva, Shende, Sushma, Waingankar, Anagha, Sridhar, Rama, Shaikh, Nikhat, Das, Sushmita, Pantvaidya, Shanti, Fernandez, Armida, Jayaraman, Anuja
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9075633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35522676
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268133
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author Ramani, Sudha
Bahuguna, Manjula
Tiwari, Apurva
Shende, Sushma
Waingankar, Anagha
Sridhar, Rama
Shaikh, Nikhat
Das, Sushmita
Pantvaidya, Shanti
Fernandez, Armida
Jayaraman, Anuja
author_facet Ramani, Sudha
Bahuguna, Manjula
Tiwari, Apurva
Shende, Sushma
Waingankar, Anagha
Sridhar, Rama
Shaikh, Nikhat
Das, Sushmita
Pantvaidya, Shanti
Fernandez, Armida
Jayaraman, Anuja
author_sort Ramani, Sudha
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the multiple vulnerabilities of people living in urban informal settlements globally. To bring community voices from such settlements to the center of COVID-19 response strategies, we undertook a study in the urban informal settlements of Dharavi, Mumbai, from September 2020-April 2021. In this study, we have examined the awareness, attitudes, reported practices, and some broader experiences of the community in Dharavi with respect to COVID-19. We have used a mixed-methods approach, that included a cross-sectional survey of 468 people, and in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 49 people living in this area. Data was collected via a mix of phone and face-to-face interviews. We have presented here the descriptive statistics from the survey and the key themes that emerged from our qualitative data. People reported high levels of knowledge about COVID-19, with television (90%), family and friends (56%), and social media (47%) being the main sources of information. The knowledge people had, however, was not free of misconceptions and fear; people were scared of being forcefully quarantined and dying alone during the early days of COVID-19. These fears had negative repercussions in the form of patient-related stigma and hesitancy in seeking healthcare. A year into the pandemic, however, people reported a shift in attitudes from ‘extreme fear to low fear’ (67% reported perceiving low/no COVID risk in October 2020), contributing to a general laxity in following COVID-appropriate behaviors. Currently, the community is immensely concerned about the revival of livelihoods, that have been adversely impacted due to the lockdown in 2020 as well as the continued ‘othering’ of Dharavi for being a COVID hotspot. These findings suggest that urban informal settlements like Dharavi need community-level messaging that counters misinformation and denial of the outbreak; local reinforcement of COVID-appropriate behaviours; and long-term social protection measures.
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spelling pubmed-90756332022-05-07 Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai Ramani, Sudha Bahuguna, Manjula Tiwari, Apurva Shende, Sushma Waingankar, Anagha Sridhar, Rama Shaikh, Nikhat Das, Sushmita Pantvaidya, Shanti Fernandez, Armida Jayaraman, Anuja PLoS One Research Article The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the multiple vulnerabilities of people living in urban informal settlements globally. To bring community voices from such settlements to the center of COVID-19 response strategies, we undertook a study in the urban informal settlements of Dharavi, Mumbai, from September 2020-April 2021. In this study, we have examined the awareness, attitudes, reported practices, and some broader experiences of the community in Dharavi with respect to COVID-19. We have used a mixed-methods approach, that included a cross-sectional survey of 468 people, and in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 49 people living in this area. Data was collected via a mix of phone and face-to-face interviews. We have presented here the descriptive statistics from the survey and the key themes that emerged from our qualitative data. People reported high levels of knowledge about COVID-19, with television (90%), family and friends (56%), and social media (47%) being the main sources of information. The knowledge people had, however, was not free of misconceptions and fear; people were scared of being forcefully quarantined and dying alone during the early days of COVID-19. These fears had negative repercussions in the form of patient-related stigma and hesitancy in seeking healthcare. A year into the pandemic, however, people reported a shift in attitudes from ‘extreme fear to low fear’ (67% reported perceiving low/no COVID risk in October 2020), contributing to a general laxity in following COVID-appropriate behaviors. Currently, the community is immensely concerned about the revival of livelihoods, that have been adversely impacted due to the lockdown in 2020 as well as the continued ‘othering’ of Dharavi for being a COVID hotspot. These findings suggest that urban informal settlements like Dharavi need community-level messaging that counters misinformation and denial of the outbreak; local reinforcement of COVID-appropriate behaviours; and long-term social protection measures. Public Library of Science 2022-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9075633/ /pubmed/35522676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268133 Text en © 2022 Ramani et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ramani, Sudha
Bahuguna, Manjula
Tiwari, Apurva
Shende, Sushma
Waingankar, Anagha
Sridhar, Rama
Shaikh, Nikhat
Das, Sushmita
Pantvaidya, Shanti
Fernandez, Armida
Jayaraman, Anuja
Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title_full Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title_fullStr Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title_full_unstemmed Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title_short Corona was scary, lockdown was worse: A mixed-methods study of community perceptions on COVID-19 from urban informal settlements of Mumbai
title_sort corona was scary, lockdown was worse: a mixed-methods study of community perceptions on covid-19 from urban informal settlements of mumbai
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9075633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35522676
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268133
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