A recent large-scale study spanning 10,000 participants from various countries, including Colombia, South Africa, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Vietnam, has unveiled a notable shift in public perception regarding the seriousness of health problems. Contrary to earlier concerns during the pandemic, Covid-19 is no longer perceived as the most serious health issue by the majority of respondents.
The study, published in the journal Communications Medicine, asked participants to rank the seriousness of seven health problems: alcoholism and drug use, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, lung cancer and respiratory diseases caused by air pollution and smoking, and water-borne diseases like diarrhea.
Interestingly, in most countries, respiratory illnesses were ranked as more serious than Covid-19. While people in the surveyed middle-income countries still considered Covid-19 to be a significant concern, it was not deemed as serious as other respiratory illnesses, such as lung cancer and diseases caused by air pollution and smoking.
Dale Whittington from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, one of the researchers, emphasized the importance of not overlooking other health issues in the midst of pandemic concerns. He stated, “An important lesson for health ministries is to not get too carried away by what media focuses on at a particular point in time. It is important to avoid crowding out ordinary health services.”
The study also revealed variations in public perception within and across countries, as well as among different population segments defined by demographics and knowledge. Surprisingly, water-borne diseases were consistently ranked as the least serious health problem in six of the seven countries, with alcoholism and drug use perceived as more serious than Covid-19 in some regions.
The researchers highlighted the value of their survey-based approach in quickly understanding how the threat of a newly emergent disease, like Covid-19, fits into the larger context of public perceptions of health problems.
