The Sociocultural and Economic Barriers to Self-Care Culture for COVID-19 Control in Developing Societies: The Case of Iran

There are natural and unnatural problems for human beings. Communicable and incommunicable diseases are common issues in human life. The prevalence of COVID-19 since December 2019 is an ongoing and mysterious danger, and its control is a critical concern. According to the traits and dangerous consequences of COVID-19, self-care plays an inevitable role in its control. This chapter has reviewed the sociocultural and economic barriers to self-care for COVID-19 control in developing societies with an emphasis on Iran. Using the documentary method, databases about concepts, research, theories, and economic, social, and cultural indexes were reviewed. The most used databases were PubMed, Magiran, Noormags, Google Scholar, Sid, Iran Statistic Center, Trading Economics, and World Meters. Reviewing data on life expectancy, mortality, and other indexes among developed and less developed societies, the most barriers for developing societies such as Iran were introduced. Findings showed that the most important barriers are short-term (economic factors), medium-term (social factors), and long-term (cultural factors) barriers. In each time/subject period, two levels, micro and macro, are presented. The macro-economic barriers are economic poverty, economic recession, and inflation. The micro-economic barriers are malnutrition, lack of financial ability to use health-care facilities, lack of living facilities, and the work time in epidemiological conditions. The macro-social barriers are social inequality, lack of attention to prevention, weakness of social organization, and family size in less developed areas while the micro-social barriers are a weakness of education and socialization, and unstable job conditions. The macro-cultural barriers are fate-orientation, weakness of preventive insight, application of common beliefs, low social trust, social traps, and traditional habitus in health care while the micro-cultural barriers are poverty of knowledge and living awareness, self-medication belief, self-healthy imagination, misunderstanding of disease risks, social indifference, and social irresponsibility. As a result, cultural factors are the most important barriers to the self-care culture for the control of pandemic diseases such as COVID-19.