By Ruth Masita
In a ground-breaking move to enhance health reporting, journalists in Mombasa county have been urged to accurately disseminate health information to improve health reporting in the county.
Speaking during a 5 day training on health investigative reporting, Media council of Kenya Mombasa regional coordinator, Maureen Mudi called on local journalists to develop interest in health reporting.
Mudi reiterated the need for a good strategy to bridge the gap between the county government officials and journalists to ensure free and frequent flow of information.
“We have realized that most journalists are yet to specialize in health reporting. Another reason being most of the media houses cannot facilitate their journalists to persue investigative stories on health.” attributed Mudi.
“Journalists need to take up health stories very seriously as it affects them at a personal level, the USAWA training will act as an eye opener to more health stories as well as collaboration among stakeholders.” she added.
Similarly the USAID – USAWA program coordinator, Lorna Sempele said there’s need to empower journalists on how to report accurately on health stories. She revealed that they aim to empower almost 50 journalists in 5 counties in order to bring out into lime light the negative and positive aspects on health stories.
“Citizens are the ones suffering from corruption and misappropriation of funds taking place in the health sector. In this training in Mombasa we aim in equipping journalists how to find the reasoning behind loss of funds in the health sector and let citizens know what is happening.” attributed Sempele.
The USAWA program is spear headed by Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWIK) funded by USAID, aiming at reducing fraud, waste and abuse in Kenya’s health sector.
Sempele encouraged journalists to ensure they are familiar with the reports in order to understand the health documents and report on them accordingly and appropriately.
The training aimed at covering health stories and reporting by utilizing the USAID USAWA Training manual, fact checking, Data visualization from government accounts and budgets from OAG, OCOB and digital content creation.
