Department of Statistics, Govt. College University, Lahore, Pakistan.
College of Statistical Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 28;14(1):29614. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-74613-z.
Quantifying the COVID-19 burden is critical to public health response, resource allocation, and policies to mitigate the pandemic, reduce its impact on health and well-being, and ensure recovery and resilience of affected communities. Though a lot of research has been done worldwide on the issues of caregivers during the pandemic, the information about the Pakistani context is not sufficient. The present study aims to explore and quantify the social burden of family caregivers of COVID-19 patients in Pakistan on scientific grounds, which will be a foundation for the policy, support services, and eventually the improvements in the caregivers well-being who are facing the unrepresentative challenges during the pandemic. The present research is a cross-sectional study of family caregivers in Punjab-Pakistan during the pandemic and quantifies the social burden of COVID-19 on caregivers through a 22-item scale developed on a binary response. The study's findings proposed a model of the social burden of caregivers based on five domains . In addition, the study observed significant associations between social burden and some profile variables, such as gender, age, marital status, occupation, income, living arrangements, and caregiving types. The research quantifies the social burden of COVID-19 on family caregivers in Pakistan and will be helpful for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to understand the social challenges caregivers face during the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan.
量化 COVID-19 负担对于公共卫生应对、资源分配以及减轻大流行、降低其对健康和福祉的影响、确保受影响社区的恢复和恢复能力的政策至关重要。尽管全世界已经就大流行期间护理人员的问题进行了大量研究，但有关巴基斯坦情况的信息还不够充分。本研究旨在从科学角度探讨和量化巴基斯坦 COVID-19 患者家属照顾者的社会负担，这将为政策、支持服务以及最终改善在大流行期间面临代表性不足挑战的照顾者的福祉提供基础。本研究是在大流行期间对旁遮普邦巴基斯坦的家庭照顾者进行的横断面研究，并通过对二元反应开发的 22 项量表来量化 COVID-19 对照顾者的社会负担。该研究的研究结果提出了一个基于五个领域的照顾者社会负担模型。此外，研究还观察到社会负担与一些特征变量之间存在显著关联，例如性别、年龄、婚姻状况、职业、收入、居住安排和照顾类型。本研究量化了 COVID-19 对巴基斯坦家庭照顾者的社会负担，将有助于研究人员、从业者和政策制定者了解巴基斯坦 COVID-19 大流行期间照顾者所面临的社会挑战。
