Ekarini Daroedono¹, Linggom Kurniaty², Jap Mai Cing³, Forman Erwin Siagian^4,5*, Lusia Sri Sunarti⁶, Evy Suryani Arodes⁶, Fransiska Sitompul² and Maria Basa Pamungka Natalia⁷

¹Department of Community Medicine, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
²Department of Pharmacology, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
³Department of Biochemistry, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
⁴Department of Parasitology, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
⁵Center of Biomedic Research, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
⁶Department of Microbiology, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
⁷4th Year Medical Student, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia

*Corresponding Author: Forman Erwin Siagian, Department of Parasitology, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Received: November 23, 2021; Published: December 21, 2021

Abstract

During the early phase of second wave of Covid pandemic in Indonesia, the number of infected individuals increasing rapidly and exceed the capacity of the hospitals. Sick people who cannot be admitted to the hospital were forced to conduct self-isolation. During that time, a lot of information about covid drugs was circulating on social media and tempt sick people or those who care for them to buy drugs like those in social media chain messages. The aim of this study is to reveal the role of social media on the behavior and choices of self-medication for covid-19 among post-infected individual or to healthy people who are forced to take care of infected people independently. This simple cross-setional, questionairre based study conducted in the 1st and 2nd week of August 2021. Out of 308 respondents, 123 are male and 185 female. Most of the respondents has high level of education (University or diploma). 216 subjects are positive patients infected with covid and 92 people were taking care of their family members. most of the respondents obtain information regarding Covid self-medication actively, and they consider the information reliable, regardless their educational background. Nevertheless, most of them also consider the need to cross-checking the information.

Keywords: Antivirus; Telemedicine; Placebo Effect; Infodemics; Cross-checking

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Citation

Citation: Forman Erwin Siagian., et al. “Health Communication in the New Age: The Role of Social Media on the Behavior and Choices of Self-medication for Covid-19". Acta Scientific Clinical Case Reports 3.1 (2022): 46-52.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Forman Erwin Siagian., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.