Deadline for Health: The Media’s Response to Covering HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria in Africa
Introduction

The statistics are well known – and devastating. According to figures from UNAIDS for the end of 2003, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s HIV/AIDS infection, 25 million of the 37.8 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. African girls and women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection. Women are about half of all people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, but in sub-Saharan Africa women are 58 percent of the people living with HIV/AIDS. Young women aged 15 to 24 were 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men.*

Sub-Saharan Africa also carries the overwhelming global burden of malaria and TB. According to the World Health Organization’s Roll Back Malaria Campaign, 90 percent of the more than one million deaths worldwide caused each year by malaria take place in Africa, and malaria constitutes 10 percent of the continent’s overall disease burden. In areas with high malaria transmission, such as Cameroon, Senegal and Malawi, malaria accounts for up to 40 percent of public health expenditure, 30-50 percent of inpatient admissions and up to half of outpatient admissions. According to a Médecins Sans Frontières report issued in April 2003 in anticipation of the annual G8 summit, the worldwide prevalence of TB has increased 1.5 percent, while in Africa it has increased at four times that rate. Even though TB is preventable and curable, it is the most common co-infection and a leading killer of people with HIV. In some countries, more than 35 percent of those infected with HIV are at risk of death from TB, according to the Open Society Institute’s Network Public Health Program.

Clearly, HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria are posing major health, social and economic challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, where resources are dwindling in an already economically disadvantaged region. Life expectancy has decreased, adult morbidity and mortality has increased, infant mortality has increased, the numbers of orphans have multiplied and economic growth has been reduced.

Challenges in tackling these diseases are multidimensional. They involve the lack of public policy, poorly organized health systems, the high cost of pharmaceuticals and the difficulty of delivering free ones, the stigma of the disease and the discrimination against girls and women in many societies. They also include major bureaucratic obstacles. In Botswana, for example, the National Security Act is seen as an impediment to media effectiveness because it prevents the free movement of journalists into health facilities and blocks doctors and nurses from talking to the media.

Public awareness and understanding of these diseases are crucial to minimizing the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria – and the media is a strategic resource in shaping and influencing public attitudes. Yet, according to a report by the Global HIV Prevention Working Group in May 2003, only 43 percent of Africans at risk are currently reached by mass media awareness campaigns. Given this, there is a critical need for high quality, in-depth and diverse media coverage of public health in order to improve the health of the African people. The media in Africa must fulfill its role as watchdog of public policy and spending, bearer of information about medical treatments and support networks, and catalyst for shaping opinion and attitudes.