By Kemo Cham
“All malaria commodities are free,” said Dr Saini Turay, an official of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS), while elaborating on the Sierra Leone government’s malaria treatment policy.
"Even if you have severe malaria, all the commodities are free," he stressed.
On the table where I sat in the conference hall of the Catco
International Hotel, it turned out that two of us had personal experiences that negated the point the speaker was trying desperately to emphasise on.
“No wonder they don’t like talking to journalists,” I said, mostly speaking to myself.
It was September 1st, 2020, the Zero Malaria Starts With me (ZMSWM) alliance in Sierra Leone was holding the second national conference of its Malaria Media Coalition (MMC).
The MMC is a partnership of journalists, the international NGO Speak Up Africa and the National Malaria Control Programme (MNCP) of the Ministry of Health; it’s a major component of the ZMSWM campaign, which is a Pan-African initiative with the goal of eliminating malaria.
Speak Up Africa, a Strategic Communication and advocacy agency based in Dakar, Senegal, is leading the communication aspect of this campaign in Sierra Leone, thanks to funding from the UK charity Comic Relief and the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
Together with the NMCP, Speak Up Africa hopes to leverage the “power of communication” through collaboration with media practitioners to shore up support for the prioritization of anti-malaria response. The conference is one of several activities lined up within the year through which the ZMSWM alliance intends to achieve its goal.
In Sierra Leone, the NGO is working with the Health Reporters Network (HRN-SL). The journalists in attendance were members of the network, drawn from across all 16 districts of the country.
It was the second such gathering of the MMC since it was launched six months ago in Freetown. Organizers said it was a stocktaking event, to assess the performance of the media within the period, in light of the interruptions caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
But as you would expect in any forum that brings together journalists and any set of duty bearers, the event at some point took the form of a press conference.
It was the question and answer session. And on the hot seat was Dr Turay, who is the Deputy Programme Manager at the NMCP.
A lot of issues were raised, but the sticky ones included the claim by the ministry that malaria treatment is free.
As journalists, we tried to tell the officials present that the situation on the ground was different, even if that was clearly the intention. Sadly, they wouldn’t hear it.
There was also the issue of refusal of health workers to talk to journalists.
Most of the time in Sierra Leone health officers offer to talk to reporters only on the condition that they have clearance from their superiors. Almost all the time they request for a letter from either the permanent secretary at the MoHS, the District Medical Officer or the Chief Medical Officer. Even when you need information as basic as the availability of rabies treatment in a peripheral health facility, you will be required to get permission.
The MoHS has always defended this policy with the excuse that it's meant to shield themselves from rouge journalists.
This was the same excuse given at the Catco International Conference Center, in the face of a barrage of complaints from the participants.
As usual, the segment ended with the unilateral conclusion that journalists were at fault, and some officials laid it down to lack of capacity.
One of the speakers, a representative from the Catholic Relief Services, one of the top funders of anti-malaria programmes in Sierra Leone, said expression of concerns by journalists about the lack of drugs in health facilities signified the need for capacity training on drug distribution. He basically implied that we needed training to be able to report on drug shortage in hospitals.
That, to say the least, was absurd, I thought, because drug shortage is a very common occurrence in this country. And I don’t know of any journalist who needs any training beyond editorial guidance to report on such an issue.
What we do is simply transmit the complaints we get from the people who seek medical treatment daily, and sometimes from even the health workers themselves, when they feel neglected by their superiors. Yes, they sometimes talk to us, when they feel in rebellious mood.
It's very painful having to put up with such obviously wrong notion that the few bad journalists among us behave the way they do because of incapacity. We can say the same for every institution in the country.
With the media, I know there is a whole lot of factors behind this view, one of which is this policy of shutting the door on us.
MoHS officials always complain that journalists report what they don’t tell them. In other words, we always misinterpret them when they grant us interview.
Again, there may be isolated cases of this. But generally it feels like the main reason for barring journalists from talking to health workers without approval that is difficult to get is to simply shield us from the reality.
There was ample evidence of that in the journalists’ testimonies.
Sometimes it’s just sheer disrespect by medical practitioners with poor media literacy.
I have personally experienced how such deep-seated disrespect for pressmen has exposed the weakness in the very chain of command we are led to believe exists within the MoSH.
Exactly one year ago, in September 2019, a woman delivered conjoined twins at the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital. When a group of independent journalists visited the hospital, the official in charge sent them away, demanding that they sought clearance from the Ministry of Health.
I personally spoke to the doctor-in-charge on the phone. As expected, the cheeky female medic referred me to the MoHS. But before that she tried to justify her decision not to allow “any journalist” report on the issue, citing privacy of the family and all of that stuff. She said she was concerned about getting images of the babies flooding social media.
Ironically, a video of the babies was already circulating on social media. It was how journalists learnt about it in the first place.
I told the doctor that I didn’t even want to go near the ward where the babies were, assuring her that all I was interested in was the science of the event. I just wanted to talk to a doctor familiar with the case. She then said that I should get her interview from SLBC, which she had spoken to. Imagine that!
When I pushed her, she asked that I seek clearance through the MoHS.
It’s not always that such historic medical events occur. As a journalist and a health reporter at that, there is a special feeling to cover them when they happen.
Inspired by this thought, I reached out to Solomon Rogers, the then PRO in the MoHS. I must have called Rogers at least five times, trying to plea for him to call the hospital and get them grant me interview.
Eventually he got back to me with the contact for the Hospital Secretary at the PCMH. The official said he had tried to convince the doctor in charge and that she refused to grant us interview.
I can write a whole book on multiple such experiences that have caused us to discard countless stories because of stonewalling by health ministry officials.
This is what we tried to explain to the MoHS officials at the MMC conference. We wanted them to know that those were the obstacles hindering the fulfilment of our part of the pact.
You would think that such a partnership is a perfect platform to iron out such issues. Sadly, it was all defensive.
Surprisingly, not even a single official promised to do something about our concerns. Instead, everyone expected us to persevere and respect the official policy, which doesn’t really exist.
I say that’s hardly the way to build partnership. If the MMC is to play its part successfully in the ZMSWM campaign, the way forward calls for a review of the MoHS’ view of media practitioners.
The prevailing barrier of suspicion is like a corrosion on what binds us together. We cannot possibly report effectively if health officials can only talk to us when they need us. That’s not how partnership work.
You may well succeed in keeping us at bay, but it’s just for temporary period. We will always have our way.
Like I always like to say, we are going to be reporting anyway, whether you talk to us or not. But the best thing for the masses is if you talk to us.
If the media’s role is very important, as officials always say before the camera and mic, then this policy must be reviewed. And I expect the NMCP to champion this, at least in the name of out coalition.
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