The Centre for Communication and Social Impact, in partnership with Pathfinder International 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, Oluyemi Abodunrin, at a one-day training organised for Kano-based journalists on media advocacy for women’s health, on Thursday.
Delivering a lecture on the role of the media in improving women’s health, he laid emphasis on 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, 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 also 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.
