Divyabharathy R*, Angelin R.G and Abhijit V. Boratne
Background: COVID-19 pandemic is an unexpected event, which has many effects on people and their lifestyle. Fishermen community possess a unique folk characteristic. Their occupational impact, and health seeking behaviour were not studied much.
Aims and objective: To assess the occupational impact on fishermen community, health seeking behaviour during COVID-19 and their knowledge, attitude, practice of healthy habits in preventing COVID-19 transmission.
Materials and methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among the fishermen community in Puducherry. The sample size was estimated as 216, assuming that 50% of the study population had occupational impact due to COVID-19. Simple random sampling method was employed. The data was collected using a pilot tested semi-structured questionnaire for 2 months and analysed using SPSS 20 version. Frequency distribution along with correlation was employed to test statistical significance.
Results: Out of 216 subjects, 121 (56%) had high negative impact, 74 (34.3%) had moderately negative impact on their occupation during COVID-19 pandemic. Among the study participants, 26 (12%) were not willing to seek health care for their illness with reasons being no trust on healthcare facility and belief of fishermen are naturally immune to any infections. A statistically significant association was reported between the knowledge and practice (r-0.518, p value-0.000). Conclusion: The fishermen community were having high negative occupational impact during COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendation: Awareness can be created about COVID-19 transmission to improve their knowledge, practice of healthy habits and their health seeking behaviour.
