Experts cite high anxiety levels as COVID-19 patients are discharged

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | As patients recovering from coronavirus COVID -19 are discharged and sent back home, there are worries that many are not well prepared for the communities they are facing back at home. Up to 46 people have so far recovered from the viral respiratory infection.

But some of those that have so far been released report feeling unwelcome. A recovered patient who spoke to URN on condition of anonymity says that he hasn’t moved an inch from his home since he was released last week. Somehow, he says people in the neighbourhood got to know about his return and he has received information from relatives that the community is scared.

He couldn’t reveal much about what happened in his community before he returned but Pat Robert Larubi, a Public Relations officer at an NGO Mental Health Uganda says a lot more needs to be done in the community to prepare them for returnees like these and even the returnees themselves.

He asks the Ministry of Health to reconsider some of the initiatives they are using while reuniting these people back with their communities as these might be breeding more stigma. For instance, he said that a day or two before a COVID-19 patient is discharged back, one of the ways reported to be used by the Ministry is alerting the community many times through public address systems that there’s someone coming back soon.

“Just imagine that community, already disturbed by the strangeness of the disease but someone moves around telling them there’s someone coming back, he is completely cured please don’t stigmatize them. It’s all wrong especially with a lot of misconceptions circulating about COVID”, he told Uganda Radio Network.

For him, psycho-social support shouldn’t stop in quarantine and treatment centres but these people need more support when they are sent back to the communities. With the help of a counselor, a patient will decide at what point they are ready to go back to their work places or moving freely in the community.

Like Larubi, Prof Wilson Winston Muhwezi, a lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry at Makerere University said COVID 19 being a new disease, there are a lot of questions that need answers and reassurance to the community.

He says psychosocial teams need to reassure communities by going back to the communities where contacts and those that are quarantined were picked from.

Prof Wilson says as a result, the levels of anxiety are quite high.

But Muhwezi adds not all the people discharged from treatment need psychosocial interventions.

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URN