PREMIUM TIMES’ journalist wins media award on epidemic prevention in Nigeria

A Senior Health Reporter with PREMIUM TIMES, Nike Adebowale-Tambe, on Friday emerged winner of the third edition of the Prevent Epidemics Journalism Award (PEJA).

The annual award is organised by Nigeria Health Watch, a non-profit health communication and advocacy organisation that seeks to advocate better health for Nigerians.

Ms Tambe won the print/online news category with her story titled: “2022 World TB Day: Stigma, poor funding, other factors threaten disease elimination in Nigeria,” and published in March, 2022.

The story focuses on the challenges hindering the elimination of Tuberculosis (TB), a killer disease, from Nigeria.

Although, a vaccine-preventable disease, statistics from the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that every year, about 245,000 Nigerians die from the disease, and about 590,000 new cases occur.

TB is identified as the number one infectious killer disease in the world and also among the top 10 causes of death worldwide.

Other winners of the prestigious award are Ezedimbu Ogom of the African Independent Television (AIT) who clinched the award for the television programme category, and Blessing Enebeli of Voice of Nigeria (VON) who won the radio category of the award.

Annual award ceremony

The annual event celebrates television, radio, and print journalists whose reporting on epidemic preparedness and response has been exemplary in drawing public and policymakers’ attention to the need to adequately fund programmes to prevent, detect and respond to public health emergencies.

The third edition is tagged: “Celebrating Media Excellence for Epidemic Preparedness and Response”.

Speaking at the ceremony in Abuja, the Managing Director, Nigeria Health Watch, Vivianne Ihekweazu, said the importance of epidemic preparedness and the role of media in achieving this cannot be over-emphasised.

Ms Ihekweazu, while commending the winners, urged other journalists to shift attention to epidemic preparedness and adequate health funding.

In his remarks, the WHO country representative, Walter Mulombo, commended the organisers for facilitating a strong collaboration with the media through the “prevent epidemics project”.

Represented by Tugumizemu Victor, Mr Mulombo said the project has helped to raise public and policymakers’ awareness while demanding epidemic preparedness.

He said the event underscores the need to meaningfully engage critical stakeholders to accelerate and make Nigeria and the world safer from epidemics with advocacy and action.

“We all know that epidemic outbreaks have multiple determinants, affect many people, and require action from all of us,” he said.

He said every country needs to be able to find, prevent and stop epidemics and also build a resilient health system.

Mr Mulombo said the COVID-19 pandemic and other emerging diseases like Lassa fever have revealed the gaps in epidemic preparedness of many countries including Nigeria. “If unchecked, this can result in terrible danger.”

“There is no single pathway to epidemic prevention, therefore, all countries must find their way in the context of their own socio-political and economic circumstances.”

The Nigeria coordinator, Prevent Epidemics, Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), Emmanuel Alhassan, said PEJA is always a time to recognise great work done by journalists in ensuring issues of epidemic preparedness are brought to the front burner of health discussions

Mr Alhassan said prevention is always better than cure, which is “why we must all collaborate with journalists to ensure that governments make the necessary investments and take the issue of health security in Nigeria more seriously.”

He said working with partners is essential for expanding this advocacy work, and collaborations with organisations such as Nigeria Health Watch will ensure the health security of Nigeria is strengthened.