Creating panic during disasters

From August 7 to 10, 2006, Surat faced an unprecedented flood. Armed with previous experience, the state authorities rushed rescue teams to the city on August 7 itself, though many of them could enter the city only after the flood waters receded. When compared with disasters in the past, the response was rapid. Over a thousand health personnel were deployed in these teams, which had a mix of medical college faculty and senior state and district health care personnel. The teams reported on various aspects of active and passive disease surveillance, solid waste disposal, slush removal, water logging, vector breeding, chlorination and safe water supply, animal carcasses removal, safe housing, etc. in addition to providing health care.

Meanwhile, numerous media reports predicted impending epidemics and newspapers carried incorrect reports of the causes and number of deaths. For example, on September 2, there were reports of the death of an 18-year-old due to unknown causes (1, 2), when in reality this youth was suffering from active tuberculosis and had defaulted on his treatment of AKT category II (DOTS) therapy. Other incorrect reports spoke of plague and hantavirus cases and incorrectly reported deaths from leptospirosis. In some reports, people who were still alive were declared dead.

Such alarmist coverage creates undue panic and distorts the community’s perception of the risk of diseases. This kind of reportage negates planned behaviour theories such as the health belief model, communication/ persuasion model, theory of reasoned action, trantheoretical models or the precede/ proceed model, and makes it difficult for safer behaviours to be adopted by the community (3). Medical professionals must encourage the media to be more ethical in their reporting of such events.