Writing for Our Lives: How the Maisha Yetu Project Changed Health Coverage in Africa

From the Foreword

"In 1998, the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) launched leadership training to strengthen the role of African women in the news media. The HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub- Saharan Africa had escalated to crisis proportions, and the IWMF wanted to make a contribution to the worldwide response to this crisis. The IWMF realized this would require increased leadership by women journalists, who are the majority of radio reporters and a significant proportion of other media health reporters in Africa. Beginning in 2000, the IWMF trained women journalists in Africa to accurately and consistently report on HIV/AIDS.

As part of this commitment, in 2000 the IWMF published a media resource guide entitled Reporting on HIV/AIDS. This guide has been used widely in African media houses. In 2002, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the IWMF broadened its concerns to include TB and malaria and launched the Maisha Yetu ("Our Lives" in Swahili) project.To lay the ground for future work, the IWMF conducted a study of the media’s coverage of HIV/AIDS,TB and malaria in five African countries – Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal.

Published in 2004 as Deadline for Health, the findings were used by the IWMF to develop the next phase of the project, a revolutionary model for engaging media houses in promoting better health reporting in Botswana, Kenya and Senegal, the three countries selected for the project.

This publication, Writing for Our Lives, documents best practices from Maisha Yetu, a media project involving continuous in-house mentoring and training on health care reporting in six African media houses over a two-year period. The uninterrupted presence of journalist-trainers (as opposed to the more widespread model of one-time workshops on health care reporting) has allowed for the integration of theory and practice, resulting in changes in the quantity and quality of reporting on HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. It has created champions of health care journalism in mid- and upper-level management where there was little or none before. It has helped journalists to recognise the centrality of women's stories in the HIV/AIDS crisis."

Maisha Yetu's Impact [from pages 106-107 of the document]
"One quantifiable impact of Maisha Yetu was the increase in the number of stories produced on HIV/AIDS,TB and malaria at the two Centers of Excellence. According to Kasse, from September 2004 to May 2005, Le Soleil ran 106 stories on HIV/AIDS, nine on TB, and 43 on malaria. He estimates Maisha Yetu influenced about one-third of the stories produced during this time.

It is harder to asses the impact at Sud FM because provincial radio stations produce stories that are not monitored in Dakar. Gueye, the Maisha Yetu contact at Sud FM in Dakar, estimates that at least one story every week was influenced by Maisha Yetu, or some 40 stories between September 2004 and May 2005.

Another impact was the increased attention given to health topics as political issues. For example, both Centers of Excellence produced continued coverage of the mismanagement of the national malaria and HIV/AIDS programs. Maisha Yetu training empowered the journalists to hold public officials accountable.

Maisha Yetu also prompted stories with specific gender and sexual orientation angles. For example, journalists broke new ground by reporting on the impact of malaria and AIDS on women, said Kasse. And when a nongovernmental organization published a study about the link between HIV/AIDS and men who have sex with men, reporters at Sud and Le Soleil closely followed the story. In Senegal, as in other parts of Africa, sex between men is a taboo topic. Covering this story was a breakthrough for the Centers of Excellence. At first, heads of the media houses were against covering the subject, but because of their work with Maisha Yetu, they became convinced that it was important.

According to El Bachir Sow of Le Soleil, Maisha Yetu:

• Improved reporting because of the information that Tidiane Kasse provided at workshops and through online mentoring. "Our correspondents increased their awareness about the importance of these diseases and how they relate to local development," said Sow. "They also learned to have a wider focus and to include community actors. Giving them opportunities to go into the field also helped them to give a human touch to their stories."
• For the first time, journalists from the two Centers of Excellence shared experiences with one another and with reporters from their outlying bureaus at joint training workshops. This was Kasse's idea. It had never happened before because the journalists were used to working independently.
• Maisha Yetu put TB in journalists' and editors' agendas for the first time by highlighting the magnitude of this hidden epidemic. Prior to Maisha Yetu,TB had been a neglected disease in Senegal’s media. After Maisha Yetu, the newspaper ran significant reports on TB from the field. By providing minimal financial support, Maisha Yetu also helped journalists report on malaria from the field.

According to Ndeye Fatou Sy, chief editor at Sud FM, Maisha Yetu:

• Boosted interest in health coverage among the reporters selected to work with Maisha Yetu. Being selected to become a Center of Excellence motivated reporters to put maximum effort into the project. It also made them proud because they perceived this as recognition of their efforts in promoting health coverage as a public service.
• Sensitized the entire newsroom to HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB, which meant they produced more stories on these diseases.
• Increased by 20 to 30 percent the number of stories on the three diseases done by reporters in the provinces.
• Introduced gender perspective on the three diseases into stories. For the journalists, considering gender impact on disease was an entirely new way to approach coverage.

Maisha Yetu trainer Kasse noted that there were several problems in getting the project up and running. He said that the initial time frame of six months was too short to see significant changes in the way journalists report on health. Extending the project another six months was very helpful. He also said that the core group of 19 journalists was too big and diverse in terms of skills, interests and commitment to health issues.

This made it more difficult to design a training course that would meet the needs of all the people being trained. "The project would have benefited from a precise agreement on the output expected – number of stories to be produced every month – and the material and financial support to be provided to each Center of Excellence," added Kasse.

Finally, the Pan-African aspect - sharing experiences among all trainers and Centers of Excellence in Africa – could have been stronger, with exchange visits and shared publishing of stories, he said."

The report also contains a section on Nine Best Practices for Better Health Reporting.