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

There is an urgent need for a well-informed, reliable and vigilant media to help enhance the flow of healthcare information to Africans, to improve the quality of reporting, to educate people about these diseases and to inform them of their rights and responsibilities. But the media cannot do it alone. It needs the support and collaboration of the government, nongovernmental organizations and health professionals. These recommendations are addressed to all these constituencies.

The Media

• The media, in general, must be encouraged and supported in improving the quality and consistency of healthcare coverage. Within media houses, support means the provision of computers, resources and health materials, training of technical staff and reporters, funding, time for research and investigation, and space in which to report their findings in detail.
• All the data collected in this report confirm that health stories have greater prospects of being reported if concerted attention and resources are committed to covering them. Strong networks of journalists and health practitioners should help media houses develop editorial policies and guidelines for healthcare coverage in their respective outlets. Media houses should establish health desks, if none exist, and develop special pages, columns, supplements or programs specifically devoted to reporting on health.
• Media organizations and journalism schools should develop training modules and short-term courses on the full range of health reporting with the support of nongovernmental organizations and public health institutions.
• The media should integrate gender interests and inequalities with public health issues and target health information to the specific needs of girls and women. For example, since the overwhelming majority of HIV infections are sexually transmitted or associated with pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, health initiatives should acknowledge the linkages between HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health, and explain their relationship within the broader issues of public health, development and human rights. In addition, nongovernmental organizations in public health, media advocacy and gender should lobby for increased sponsorships for specific publications and programs to show how women are affected by health issues. At the same time, information programs on family and home-based care should also be directed at men.
• Local language newspapers and rural/community radio, in particular, need support as well as practical resources to serve the needs of the rural majorities. In addition, mobile cinema in the villages, community TV and audiocassettes produced in local languages would benefit those starved of health information, especially in the rural areas.
• The media should identify and engage appropriate health professionals to serve as expert resource persons and to contribute features for their newspapers and programs. For example, health professionals in Botswana, including doctors, nurses and pharmacists, reported a commitment to work with the media to improve the quality of public health information.
• Given that political figures receive the most media attention, journalists should be encouraged to question politicians (and candidates at election time) on healthcare, development policy and delivery services and not simply accept “news” pronouncements from government and public officials.
• An average of 85 percent of the content of health stories studied had a national, domestic focus. Journalists, nongovernmental organizations and professional associations should develop a network across sub-Saharan Africa to better enable the exchange and sharing of health information, experiences and research results.
• The introduction of competitions, annual awards and sponsorships would be effective ways to encourage media houses to produce quality health reporting.

The Government

• Orientation seminars and workshops should be organized for parliamentarians and other legislators to discuss the potential and capacity of the media in regard to preventive health education.
• Health budgets should have information components that could help support more education and communication on public health issues.
• Government and health administrators should demand airtime from the national broadcasters for health issues and insist that public health programming be made a precondition for licensing new television and radio stations.

Health Professionals and Nongovernmental Organizations

• Health professionals should be given basic communication training on how to package health information in language that is accessible to the media and the public. They should “take the news to the media” by creating information desks and improving their media liaison.
• Health professionals and associations (for example, medical associations) should be more proactive in leading debates on policy formulation and implementation. They should also be available to the media and health nongovernmental organizations as expert reference groups and form think tanks on specific health subjects.

One recommendation, in particular, was addressed to all of the constituencies:

• Advocacy and education efforts should aim to sensitize all stakeholders – media managers, policymakers, nongovernmental representatives and health professionals – to treat public health issues, and especially HIV/AIDS, within the broader context of development and human rights.