COVID-19: A Threat to Human Existence (original) (raw)

Background: COVID-19 is a global pandemic. Almost all of the countries of the world are facing this challenge. The uncertainty of the COVID-19 has affected both the people's physical and mental health. The present study was conducted to explore the level of fear of COVID-19 among the people of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Materials and Methods: Through an online survey, following Purposive Random Sampling Technique, 920 respondents (566 from Bangladesh and 354 from West Bengal, India) participated in this study. Among them 444 were male and 476 were female. The age range of the respondents was 18-60 and above. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale developed by Ahorsu et al 8 along with the Bengali translation was used to assess the fear of COVID-19 among the participants. Results: The level of fear was significantly higher (p<.001) among the people of Bangladesh than that of West Bengal, India. Again the female had showed higher (p<.001) level of fear than the male. Conclusion: As it is suggested that the reason behind the higher level of fear of Bangladeshi people is due to the lack of proper health services, the government should ensure the adequate medical facilities so that people can trust on it and feel secure in case of future uncertain and unavoidable health crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. The results also points to a necessity of adequate policy building on the part of the government to successfully insulate the community from the myriad mental health issues like anxiety, fear and the like, and make provisions for proper counselling of the mass in the face of existential threats of such global proportions.

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact