SPECIAL ARTICLE   Free access

Minerva Psichiatrica 2020 December;61(4):184-7

DOI: 10.23736/S0391-1772.20.02088-9

Copyright © 2020 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Addressing the COVID-19 related stigma and discrimination: a fight against “infodemic” in Bangladesh

M. Tasdik HASAN ¹, Sahadat HOSSAIN ² ✉, Tanjir R. SARAN ³, Helal U. AHMED ⁴

¹ Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; ² Department of Public Health and Informatics, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Bangladesh; ³ Telepsychiatry Research and Innovation Network Ltd, Dhaka, Bangladesh; ⁴ National Institute of Mental Health, Dhaka, Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic is evolving rapidly as an overwhelming burden on human health and health systems of many countries includes low resource settings like Bangladesh. The country is facing crisis and several challenges to manage confirmed and symptomatic cases with limited administrative and logistic support, inadequate governance and widespread panic and stigma throughout the country. As the number of persons with COVID-19 and death are increasing there is a potential of heightened mass panic, stress and discrimination in coming days which can be predicted from recent protests in different parts of the country, spread of rumors and falsehoods, non-scientific information, limitations in governance and growing discrimination towards certain group of population and professionals. As World Health Organization (WHO) speculated this trajectory of pandemic is uncertain, this emerging body of stigma and discrimination needs to be addressed by proper authorities, “infodemic” should be controlled by legal steps and mass awareness campaigns should be launched without further delays.

KEY WORDS: COVID-19; Social stigma; Social discrimination; Bangladesh