Doctors and medical workers in India are being ostracised from communities, evicted from their homes and forced to sleep in hospital bathrooms and on floors over fears they may be carrying coronavirus.
In cases reported across the country, healthcare professionals described the growing stigma they are facing from their neighbours and landlords, resulting in many being refused taxis, barricaded from their own homes, or made homeless.
One doctor who is overseeing a coronavirus rapid response team asked to remain anonymous to avoid trouble with the authorities, described how two fellow medics had requested to stay with him after their landlords had become increasingly hostile to them and asked them to leave their homes.
As the coronavirus pandemic has begun to fully take hold, with almost 1,000 reported cases, and the entire country of 1.3 billion people has been placed under the world’s largest lockdown, fear has gripped India, particularly because of concerns that population density and poor sanitation and healthcare provision could be disastrous for local transmission of the virus.
But while last Sunday evening, following a call by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, millions took to their balconies and terraces to applaud, bang pots and celebrate the healthcare workers who will be on the frontline of the outbreak, in day to day life doctors, nurses and paramedics said they faced prejudice, ostracisation and eviction over fears they have come into contact with the virus.
