Igbawase Ukumba
The Civil Society-Scalling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), last week in Abuja, organised a three-day capacity building of journalists for improved nutrition reportage and visibility.
The CS-SUNN’s three-day media capacity building was aimed at improving the understanding of the media on the impact of malnutrition, media’s capacity for effective nutrition reporting and securing media’s commitment to writing nutrition stories based on agreed nutrition themes.
In a communique issued at the end of the capacity building training, participants called on governments at all levels to address the issue of inadequate funding as a major driver of malnutrition and improve investments for nutrition programmes.
They also advocated for a move from emergency treatment of malnutrition to preventive and provision of routine nutritional services.
The communique read: “Journalists should be creative and innovative in their reportage of nutrition issues. The media should drive discussions around nutrition with all relevant stakeholders.
“Journalists should link nutrition reportage with relevant sectors. Stories from media practitioners on nutrition should be compelling and solutions based with in-depth research.”
The communique urged the media not to concentrate on health pages and programs alone, but to look into other non-health related issues and link nutrition to them.
“Journalists should explore collaborative story development, cross border reporting with adequate scientific research and data analysis for greater development impact.
“They should develop skills to monitor, track, analyse and report budgetary allocations for nutrition,” the communique added.
The communique also encouraged Journalists to embark on field investigations on related community-based related interventions such as Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) Centres, etc and translate findings from the field to stories.
Participants at the capacity building training were drawn from media platforms from five states of Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Kaduna and Kano, including Abuja where CS-SUNN is currently implementing the Partnership for Improving Nigeria Nutrition Systems (PINNS).
