Doctors come under attack in India over virus stigma

Bloomberg

Trupti Katdare was in a slum in the central Indian city of Indore when the mob attacked.
She and a group of other public-health workers had been tracking down a man who might have had contact with a recently confirmed case of the coronavirus. When they found him, he cursed at them, asking why they wanted his information and accusing them of trying to take him away.
Almost immediately, at least 100 people surrounded the team, throwing stones and other objects. Luckily, they managed to escape.
“At that time, I was only thinking how we can save our lives,” Katdare said. “My husband, my kids, my family members were in front of my eyes as I wondered if I’d see them again.”
Katdare’s experience is one of the more dramatic in a phenomenon that is becoming common in India: healthcare workers being subjected to violence and abuse as they try to contain the virus. Assaults have been reported across the country as people panic about catching the disease from medical workers or being stigmatised for having contracted it themselves.
In the southern city of Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore), health workers were attacked as they went door to door checking people for symptoms. In the central city of Bhopal, doctors returning from an emergency shift were stopped by the police, accused of spreading the virus, and beaten with batons. And in New Delhi, one doctor was assaulted by a shopper at a local fruit
market, while neighbours of one of her colleagues attempted to force the woman from her apartment building.
Particularly Bad
Medical workers have also been attacked from Australia to the Philippines, but the situation is particularly bad in India. So much so that the government released a public service announcement last week pleading for an end to the stigmatisation.
“When you become a doctor, you know there’s a risk of contracting infection,” said Nirmalya Mohapatra, a senior doctor at a public hospital in New Delhi and vice president of his institution’s resident doctors’ association. “We are not scared of infections, we were mentally prepared for that as an occupational hazard. But getting beaten up, that wasn’t something we mentally prepared for. That’s not an occupational hazard we signed up for.”
The backlash comes from people across the country’s diverse social classes, religions, language groups and geographies, making it harder to isolate one explanation for why the trend is more widespread and intense in India.
But there are some contributing factors. Trust in the health-care system was already
low, while misinformation is ubiquitous on social media. And an unprecedented nationwide lockdown, given with just four hours’ notice, has intensified the hysteria.