Nearly 44 percent of Indians felt that the lack of trust in pharma companies and vaccine makers resulted in more confusion during the pandemic, a recent health survey done by The Healthy Indian Project (THIP) in association with CyberMedia Research (CMR).

Lack of proper communication from the authorities and constantly-changing guidelines regarding vaccines were among the other top reasons with 40% and 28% of respondents polling for them respectively.

The THIP – CMR survey measured the health attitude of Indians after the pandemic. As high as 96 percent of the Indians who polled in the survey said they will be more health aware from now on. As much as 89 percent of the respondents said that they will be more careful in the short and the long term about fake health messages, while 95 percent of the people shared that now onwards they would prefer to read up and stay updated about health.

“The survey brings to light an average Indian’s changing attitude towards health. It also highlights the fact that the importance of health education is increasing rapidly. Now, people are more aware of both information and misinformation about health,” says Neelam Singh, Editor, The Healthy Indian Project (THIP).

The survey was done among 1,602 citizens between 18 to 50 years of age, residing across Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Pune.

Commenting on the changing scenario of health awareness in India, Sudipta Sengupta, Founder, and CEO of The Healthy Indian Project said, “With the increasing awareness about health, we now will see more people being careful about random dubious health claims. Thus it is necessary to build up evidence-based credible health information systems. Also, the importance of proper communication from pharma companies, vaccine makers, and health authorities has never been higher.”

The Healthy Indian Project (THIP), is a health literacy platform. THIP is a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and has been fighting the infodemic in the healthcare space. THIP publishes verified health information and fact-checks health misinformation. THIP works with Facebook as a third-party fact-checker to fact-check health misinformation in seven different languages.