Journalists to Undergo Training on Reporting on Health using ICTs

Penplusbytes will on Tuesday, June 23rd, provide training for 15 Journalists selected from a cross section of Ghana’s media space on how to effectively deploy ICT tools in covering stories in Ghana’s health sector as a way to increase awareness and to elicit greater responsiveness towards improving health conditions in Ghana. The one day workshop on “Reporting on Health using ICTs” will take place at the New Media Hub in Osu, Ako-Adjei, Accra.

The workshop seeks to build the capacity of the media in the use of ICTs for better health reportage, improve the quality and output of scientific or medical stories backed by data and devise new ways to tell old stories.

The importance of the health sector notwithstanding, coverage is often criticized for being misleading, inaccurate, or speculative. The emergence of new diseases leading to newer medical research activities has led to a steady increase in the availability of health information. This, invariably, affects the behaviors of the recipients of such information with influences on physicians, the general public, and the government. Thus, the need to raise the standards of health reportage in Ghana is even now more critical as global efforts increase to combat emerging new health challenges.

Driven by the need to shore up the capacity of the media to effectively capture and propagate health issues including general healthcare delivery and spending, the workshop is designed to provide knowledge and skills for the participants in identifying sources of data for reporting health stories, undertaking online research, using new digital technologies to tell compelling stories and multimedia publishing.

The Participants are drawn from media organisations including Joy FM, Graphic Communications, Ghana News Agency, Peace FM, Metro TV, TV3, Citi Fm, GBC, Daily Guide, TV AFRICA, ETV and The Sun Newspaper.

Excited by what she stands to gain from the training, Lydia Kukua Asamoah of the Ghana News Agency (GNA) describes it as a ‘necessary intervention’. Adding that “it is an opportunity to sharpen skills and pick up new and effective ways by which mainstream media outlets could better disseminate health information through ICT techniques in order to attract greater responsiveness from duty bearers while achieving the aim of informing citizens”.

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Penplusbytes is a not-for-profit organization that seeks to empower the media through the use of Information and Communications Technology to advance journalism in the coverage of governance and accountability, new media and innovations, and mining, oil and gas.