The Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus defines “stigmatise” thus: “To accuse or condemn or openly or formally brand as disgraceful”. Persons suffering social stigma are avoided, marginalised, rejected, or banished, with unsavoury rumours peddled about them.
Two main sources of stigmatisation are the commission of abomination and being inflicted with a terrible, contagious disease, such as leprosy, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, Ebola Virus Disease, mental illness and others. In the case of diseases like leprosy, special settlements are often built far away from normal society where the sufferers are quartered and often spend the rest of their lives there.
Viral diseases and flus break out in one part of the world and spread to other parts, wreaking great tolls on the health of people and the economic and social lives of nations. People who come from the outbreak spots tend to suffer stigmatisation.
Chinese and Asian nationals all over the world are experiencing the stigma attached to the new Coronavirus Disease, COVID-19, because it broke out in Wuhan, China. It was the attempt to minimise this that made the World Health Organisation, WHO, to rename it COVID-19.
Here in Nigeria, the stigmatisation of COVID-19 positive patients or those whose family members died from the affliction or those who were fortunate to survive after treatment at the isolation and care centres is a growing worry. It is a replay of the past scenes associated with the HIV/AIDS and Ebola outbreaks.
We must move very fast to deal with this dangerous social menace, otherwise we might lose the fight. Stigmatisation forces many people who know they have the symptoms to hide and in the process continue to spread it to their family members and from there to other members of the public.
This could result in the explosive doomsday scenario that we and our concerned foreign friends have been deeply afraid of.
We strongly call for the war on stigmatisation to be deliberately emphasised in our various enlightenment and sensitisation agendas. While the identities of patients and survivors should be handled in line with the WHO guidelines and medical ethics, we encourage the enlightened ones not to be afraid. Let them come out and help in demystifying it.
The strange thing is that many of our governors, prominent politicians and wealthy compatriots who tested positive and successfully underwent treatment have been openly owning up, yet they are not stigmatised.
It is the poor and helpless among us that engage in this deadly practice of hiding and stigmatising, thus endangering themselves.
Experts suggest that COVID-19 survivors develop stronger immunity and that their plasma could be used in treating other infected persons. This means that the survivors are great assets to us in this war.
Let us eschew stigmatisation and hasten the defeat of the Coronavirus pandemic.
