The Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) has collaborated with Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria to train media professionals and health educators on health reporting of tuberculosis in Nigeria.
According to IHVN Communications Manager, Ms. Uzoma Nwofor, the one-day virtual training is to empower the media to “create educative media content that will help audiences make informed decisions about their health and the health of those around them.”
Ms. Nwofor urged participants to partner with the Institute as it implements the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nigeria Tuberculosis Local Organizations Network project.
“With your support we can achieve our objective of rapidly finding and treating people infected with tuberculosis,” she said.
Over 30 participants drawn from print and broadcast media, Ministries of Health and Information participated in the training. Facilitators from IHVN and Breakthrough ACTION sensitized the professionals on tuberculosis facts, prevention, signs and symptoms, treatment, and factual and human interest reporting of the tuberculosis situation in Nigeria.
Training Participant from Vanguard newspaper, Mr. James Ogunnaike, described the training as interesting. “Many people do not know about tuberculosis and now the media can enlighten the public on TB,” he said.
Another participant, Wale Oluokun, from Paramount Radio, Ogun State, called for aggressive enlightenment on tuberculosis, and specialized media programming by the media as has been done for COVID-19.
