Press Release - International Women’s Media Foundation Releases Report on Health Reporting in Africa and Announces Project to Create “Centers of Excellence” with African Media Houses
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International Women’s Media Foundation Releases Report on Health Reporting in Africa and Announces Project to Create “Centers of Excellence” with African Media Houses
Nairobi, Kenya – The International Women’s Media Foundation today released Deadline for Health: The Media’s Response to Covering HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria in Africa, a study conducted with the African Women’s Media Center, a project of the IWMF, to document the challenges the media face in covering health in five African countries.
The IWMF also announced that it will partner with media houses in three countries - Botswana, Kenya and Senegal - to create “Centers of Excellence” to improve the quality and consistency of health reporting.
Deadline for Health is a study of health reporting in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal. The study developed quantitative and qualitative information about the media’s response to covering HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria using a combination of focus groups with the media, government officials and nongovernmental organizations, individual interviews and analysis of newspapers.
Among the findings in Deadline for Health are:
- HIV/AIDS overwhelmingly dominates health coverage. Still, the frequency and content of stories on HIV/AIDS is, in general, inadequate.
- The focus of media coverage of HIV/AIDS has been to the detriment of coverage of other health concerns, including malaria, TB, diabetes, reproductive health, yellow fever, hepatitis, immunization and maternal and child health.
- Most health coverage focused on personalities, for example pronouncements from government officials. There was too little analysis or service journalism, and almost no attempt to analyze health in a larger developmental context.
- Even though women bear the burden of disease in Africa - women are 58 percent of those infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS - there is a critical lack of attention to health information targeted at women. In addition, there is little reporting on gender inequalities, discrimination against women and violence against women as it relates to their health and well-being.
- There is too little coverage of the problems of stigma of HIV/AIDS, an issue noted by journalists themselves.
- There is an urgent need for editorial material that engages young people.
- Journalists lack training in health and science reporting, and have limited time and resources to pursue stories.
- Very few newsrooms have coherent policies about sustaining coverage of health issues. In the print media, there are very few reporters, desks or columns dedicated to the health beat. In the broadcast media, there is little dedicated programming on health.
“The media have incredible power to help Africa come to grips with the challenges of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria,” said Akwe Amosu, executive editor of allAfrica.com who is currently working with the Economic Commission for Africa and who sits on the IWMF board. “But despite work by some trailblazing reporters and editors, these findings demonstrate a lack of capacity and a lack of courage in the media.”
"In the next phase of the project, we will be working with selected media houses, in both print and electronic mediums, to suggest innovative approaches to public health reporting that will take better advantage of the resources of the media,” said Emily Nwankwo, a Nairobi-based media consultant and member of the IWMF board.
The six media houses selected to partner with the IWMF in the Centers of Excellence project are: In Botswana, Mmegi, a daily newspaper, and Botswana Radio and Television; In Kenya, The Nation and The Standard; In Senegal, Le Soleil, a daily newspaper, and SUD FM, a radio network.
The International Women’s Media Foundation was launched in 1990 with a mission to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide, based on the belief that no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice. The African Women’s Media Center, a project of the IWMF, was founded in Dakar, Senegal, in 1997. The IWMF network is made up of more than 1,500 women in the media in more than 130 countries worldwide. The Deadline for Health study and the Centers of Excellence are part of Maisha Yetu (“Our Lives” in Swahili), a project made possible by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For more information about the IWMF, visit www.iwmf.org. For more information about the AWMC and the Maisha Yetu project, visit www.awmc.com. To read a copy of Deadline for Health online, go to: http://awmc.com/pub/.
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