Package spotlights maternal health in 5 countries
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The team at the Pulitzer Gateway (a site from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting) have turned their focus toward worldwide maternal health and produced “Dying for Life,” a package that spans five countries and three continents. Here are its components:
Nigeria
A reminder that despite a slight improvement in global maternal health, the situation in some countries is still deteriorating. The end result will be “Edge of Joy,” a documentary set to be released this summer.
Ethiopia
Hanna Ingber Win visits maternal health programs administered by the UN Population Fund. She filed five dispatches.
Mexico
Samuel Loewenberg investigated the social, medical, economic and political factors behind the “health crises” affecting two impoverished Mexican states. He filed three stories.
Guinea-Bissau
Marco Vernaschi photographed the everyday realities of a region with critical health care access and delivery issues.
India
Hanna Ingber Win investigated maternal health disparities and efforts to improve the situation in India, particularly the province of Assam. She posted five stories.
Center names 15 Vietnam Reporting Fellows
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Renaissance Journalism Center, at San Francisco State University, has selected a mix of “mainstream, ethnic and student journalists” for its Vietnam Reporting Project Fellowships.
The 15 fellows will be expected to “investigate the toxic legacy left in Vietnam by the use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.”
Prominent names include AP photographer Nick Ut, Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz and Victor Merina, a former investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. The full list of winners can be found here.
The center hopes the journalists will put a human face on the health and environmental issues that might not otherwise be covered by cash-strapped publications.
Hospitals, infrastructure focus of World Health Day
In Pakistan's most-affected areas during the 2005 earthquake, 49 percent of health facilities were destroyed. A woman receives medical care outside a hospital in Muzaffarabad after the earthquake. (Photo: WHO/Christopher Black)
The World Health Organization has designated tomorrow (April 7) as World Health Day and this year the WHO is emphasizing the importance of “importance of investing in health infrastructure that can withstand hazards and serve people in immediate need.”
A 36-page brochure about World Health Day looks at how emergencies threaten hospitals and the delivery of care, especially what happens if the hospitals are destroyed or damaged - something that may be an issue in the wake of the earthquake in Italy.
Structural and infrastructural damage may be devastating exactly at the time when health facilities are most needed. Health workers have been killed in collapsing hospitals. The number of other deaths and injuries is compounded when a hospital is destroyed or can function only partially. Health facilities should be the focus for assistance when disaster strikes but, if they are damaged or put out of action, the sick and injured have nowhere to get help.
The WHO lays out things that governments, financial institutions and donors, universities, health institutions, international agencies, NGOs and the media can do to support better health care in emergencies.
More information, including videos and photos that can be used, are available from the WHO.
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