Accepted Panels

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc and is creating confusion, panic, and anxiety among people all over the world. No such systematic information is available from the tribal areas. A survey involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques was undertaken for three months (September to November 2021) in four geo-cultural tribal-dominated areas of Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to understand the situation. The cross-sectional survey focused on awareness about the disease transmission mechanisms, disease prevention aspects, misconceptions prevailing in tribal populations, and coping methods adopted by the tribes to face the economic and emotional crisis during the pandemic.  Very interesting results emerged from the study. Further, it is evident that awareness of symptoms of COVID-19 infection was not uniform in all the tribal regions considered in the study and there is a need to strengthen the need-based localized IEC activities to improve the situation and promote the preventive practices and also better equip the public health infrastructure in these tribal areas.