SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
PLoS One. 2022 May 6;17(5):e0268133. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268133. eCollection 2022.
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.
新冠疫情大流行凸显了全球居住在城市非正规住区的人们的多种脆弱性。为了将这些住区的社区声音置于新冠疫情应对策略的中心，我们于 2020 年 9 月至 2021 年 4 月在孟买的达拉维城市非正规住区进行了一项研究。在这项研究中，我们检查了达拉维社区对新冠疫情的认识、态度、报告的做法以及一些更广泛的经验。我们使用了混合方法，包括对 468 人的横断面调查，以及对居住在该地区的 49 人的深入访谈和焦点小组讨论。数据通过电话和面对面访谈收集。在这里，我们展示了调查的描述性统计数据和我们定性数据中出现的主要主题。人们报告说对新冠疫情有很高的了解，主要信息来源是电视（90%）、家人和朋友（56%）和社交媒体（47%）。然而，人们的知识并非没有误解和恐惧；人们害怕在新冠疫情早期被强制隔离和孤独死亡。这些恐惧导致了与患者相关的污名化和寻求医疗保健的犹豫，产生了负面影响。然而，一年后，人们报告说，他们的态度从“极度恐惧到低度恐惧”发生了转变（2020 年 10 月，67%的人报告认为新冠风险低/无），这导致人们普遍对遵守新冠适当行为的态度变得松懈。目前，社区非常关注生计的恢复，由于 2020 年的封锁以及达拉维作为新冠热点地区而持续受到“他者化”，生计受到了不利影响。这些发现表明，像达拉维这样的城市非正规住区需要社区层面的信息传递，以对抗错误信息和对疫情的否认；在当地加强新冠适当行为；并采取长期的社会保护措施。
