The Center for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI) has urged health journalists to use their reports to combat stigma against women’s health, promoting diversity and always ensuring accuracy and balanced reports.
This was just as the body appealed to media practitioners in Nigeria to set a media agenda on salient issues around women’s health to bring some of their challenges to the front burner for stakeholders to tackle.
The CCSI Technical Advisor, Programme, Mr. Oluyemi Abodunrin made the call in Kaduna during a one-day training organised for Kano-based journalists on media advocacy for women’s health with support from Pathfinder International.
However, while delivering his lecture on the role of the media in improving women’s health, Mr.Abodunrin, stated that journalists need to always explore available data in their reportage.
According to him, “You don’t just use data percentage; you need to operationalize the data by putting human angle to the figures especially on women’s health to raise awareness about their challenges.”
Abodunrin said this could be simply achieved by initiating women’s health related topical issues to hold people in power accountable through investigative journalism and fair and balanced reporting.
There should be a paradigm shift in the media contents which mostly focus on politics and economy by also prioritizing other compelling health issues and women’s health in particular.he said
Earlier,one of the facilitator, Beevan Magoni, one of the facilitators, identified gender imbalance, stereotype and lack of diversity in health journalism among others editorial issues in reporting women’s health in the country.
Magoni outlined some of the challenges in covering sensitive women’s health topics to include limited representation, narrow focus and lack of training for health reporters.
He however, harped on the importance of intersectionality in women’s health coverage and the need for journalists to be ethical by respecting the women’s privacy, seeking consent and being empathetic in their reportage.
Speaking in the same vein, CCSI Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Mrs. Toyin Akande, delved on the existing policies for women’s health planning in Kano State that could enhance reports of the health reporters.
The policies, according to her, include Health Sector Task Shifting and Sharing Policy (TSSP), Family Planning Policy and Kano State Health Financing Policy.
Others are Kano State Action Plan for Health Security (KSAPHS), Free Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Policy, Policy on Building Capacity of Healthcare Providers.
The Senior Technical Advisor, Pathfinder Nigeria Dr. Sekina Amin Bello, said journalists were expected to facilitate visibility of the women’s health project in Kano on their respective platforms.
Dr Bello disclosed that the one year project focuses on the key challenges affecting women’s health in Nigeria including high maternal mortality rate and limited access to healthcare and poverty.
She then added that the project was aimed at identifying factors that contribute to good health outcomes for women in Kano and using the AFP SMART approach to develop advocacy strategies for improvement of their health.
Nigerian Tribune
