Tukur Muntari
The Centre for Communication and Social Impact has called on media practitioners across the country to set media agendas on issues and challenges around women’s health to spotlight and attract stakeholder’s attention to them.
The appeal was made by the CCSI Technical Advisor, Programme, Mr Oluyemi Abodunrin, in Kaduna, on Thursday, at a one-day training organised for Kano-based journalists on media advocacy for women’s health, with support from Pathfinder International.
Delivering a lecture on the role of the media in improving women’s health, he stressed the need for journalists to always explore available data in their reportage.
Abodunrin said, “You don’t just use data percentage; you need to operationalise the data by putting a human angle to the figures, especially on women’s health, to raise awareness about their challenges.”
He noted that this could be achieved by initiating women’s health-related topical issues to hold people in power accountable, through investigative journalism and fair and balanced reporting.
The CCSI technical advisor advised health journalists to also use their reports to combat stigma against women’s health, promoting diversity and always ensuring accurate and balanced reports.
Also speaking, one of the facilitators, Beevan Magoni, identified gender imbalance, stereotypes and lack of diversity in health journalism, among other editorial issues as affecting reporting on women’s health in the country.
She outlined some of the challenges in covering sensitive women’s health topics including limited representation, narrow focus and lack of training for health reporters.
The CCSI Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Mrs Toyin Akande, on her part spoke 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, included the Health Sector Task Shifting and Sharing Policy, Family Planning Policy and Kano State Health Financing Policy.
He listed other policies including the Kano State Action Plan for Health Security, Free Maternal and Child Health, and the Policy on Building Capacity of Healthcare Providers.
The Senior Technical Advisor, Pathfinder Nigeria, Dr Sekina Bello, said journalists were expected to facilitate the visibility of the women’s health project in Kano on their respective platforms.
He noted that the one-year project focused on the key challenges affecting women’s health in Nigeria, including the high maternal mortality rate and limited access to healthcare and poverty.
She noted that the project was aimed at identifying factors that contributed to good health outcomes for women in Kano and using the AFP SMART approach to develop advocacy strategies for the improvement of their health.
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