Health official decries low media coverage on health issues

JUBA – The Director of Nursing and Midwifery at South Sudan’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Janet Michael, on Wednesday decried low media coverage of health-related issues.

Speaking during a three-day workshop on multi-hazard response, Ms. Janet urged media outlets to help the ministry spread its messages to create awareness on health issues.

“I want to say the Ministry of Health is an institution that does a lot of things with the media. When we have programs, especially in health education,” she said.

“We have our own people that we say they should talk to the community, but that is not enough. But if we have the media around with all their channels, whether it is on paper, on radio, or on our television, then the word will spread faster,” she added.

She underscored the importance of media coverage on communicable diseases to help reduce the spread of infections.

“But it’s unfortunate that most of the time when we look at our papers, we don’t see anything on health. We don’t see anything creating awareness for our people. Especially that many communicable diseases need a lot of information out there to our people,” she said.

She noted that the current outbreak of cholera in some parts of the country has not been intensively covered by the media.

“I was asking our DG for prevention; I said, “I have not seen any information on our television creating awareness, telling our people to be careful, to watch what they eat,’” she said.

The health official said the public needs to access information to be able to prevent the spread of diseases.

“Even the small messages of saying ‘wash your hands, avoid eating outside the house, a place that you are not sure’ – those kind of messages that would have liked to be taken out,” she said.

Last month, health authorities in South Sudan reported six people died of cholera, with 27 positive cases and 243 suspected cases nationwide.

Minister of Health, Yolanda Awel Deng, said cholera continues to pose a public health challenge, intensified by the ongoing humanitarian crisis, constrained access to clean water, and sanitation.

Ms. Awel stated that her docket re-established an Incident Management System (IMS) with a national incident team to ensure a multi-sectoral response intervention, including surveillance and lab tests for cholera cases.

On October 28, the national ministry of health declared an outbreak of cholera in Renk, Upper Nile State, and later on spread to Juba, Malakal, and Northern Bahr El Ghazal – Wedwiel refugee settlement.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by contaminated food and drinking water, which can cause diarrhea, severe dehydration, and death if treatment is not promptly given, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).