Media practitioners in Nigeria have been urged to set media agenda on salient issues around women’s health in order to bring some of their challenges on the front burner for stakeholders.
The Center for Communication and Social Impact CCSI 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 the Pathfinder International.
Mr. Oluyemi Abodunrin, the CCSI Technical Advisor, Programme, while delivering his lecture on the role of the media in improving women’s health, said journalists need to always explore available data in their reportage.
“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.” He said.
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.
He advised the health journalists to also use their reports to combat stigma against women’s health, promoting diversity and always ensuring accuracy and balance reports.
According to him, 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.
Also speaking, 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.
On her part, Mrs. Toyin Akande, the CCSI Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, 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.
In her earlier remark, Dr. Sekina Amin Bello, Senior Technical Advisor, Pathfinder Nigeria said journalists were expected to facilitate visibility of the women’s health project in Kano on their respective platforms.
DrmBello noted 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 noted 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.