FEARFUL of the social stigma associated with Covid-19, the 64-year-old widow of PH 6783 took a pair of scissors when a medical team came to fetch and bring her to the Northern Mindanao Medical Center.
Mayor Oscar Moreno said the woman and her 35-year-old daughter have tested positive for the coronavirus and were supposed to be brought to the hospital for treatment.
“But she was afraid of the stigma associated with the coronavirus. She refused to come along,” Moreno said.
Moreno said the woman and her daughter already suffered when the man of the house, PH 6783, a storekeeper died in Pinikitan on April 18.
He said their neighbors avoided walking along their houses and at times, threw stones at their direction.
“People are so scared of the Covid-19 that they tend to fault those who were infected,” Moreno said.
Dr. Joselito Retuya, epidemiologist of the Cagayan de Oro Health Office, said doctors and barangay health workers had a hard time convincing the widow and the daughter to go with them.
Retuya said, eventually, they were able to convince the widow and her daughter to agree to be quarantined and treated at an isolation facility in the hinterland Barangay Lumbia here.
“The two are asymptomatic. They are healthy despite their close contact with their father,” Retuya said.
The stigma associated with Covid-19 has also impacted medical and barangay health workers who doing the contact-tracing in the affected barangays.
Retuya said health workers feel they are unwelcome in their own communities, every time they come home from work.
“Their neighbors would close their windows and doors whenever they see the health workers coming,” Retuya said
He said these experiences hurt the health workers emotionally and make it harder for them to convince suspected coronavirus carriers to undergo treatment. (Froilan Gallardo)