From Mustapha Adamu, Kano
The Center for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI) has urged journalists in Kano state to hold the state government accountable for budgetary allocation on women’s health programs.
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.
The NGO tasked media practitioners in the state to advocate for increased budgetary allocation for women’s health programs, lobby government officials to ensure proper training and sensitization of healthcare providers on gender-based care and push for increased transparency and accountability mechanisms to monitor policy implementation.
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.
