West Africa Health Organization Awards Journalists for reporting on Women, Newborn, Children, and Adolescents in West Africa

By: Sulaiman Stom Koroma

Women, Media and Change (WOMEC) in collaboration with Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR), the Consortium for Mothers, Children, Adolescents, and Health Policy and Systems Strengthening (COMCAHPSS), West Africa Health Organization (WAHO), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has awarded nine journalists from West Africa who sent entries for the WNCAW and Sexual Reproductive Health Reporting category. 

This event took place at the Alisa Hotel in Ghana. The media award for Excellence is in recognition of the enormous contribution of journalists to the promotion of the health of women, and children in the West African sub-region.

Giving an overview and rationale of the wards Dr. Charity Binka who is the Executive Director of WOMEC, said that over the years they have trained journalists who have an interest in reporting gender issues or whose articles have gender balance.

Initially, they were purpose to train seventy-five (75) journalists in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Senegal, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic and other related issues, they could not conduct for Burkina Faso and Senegal. 

Journalists, she says are the people who are on the front line to bring out issues of interest to the public and also engage with key stakeholders to find answers and solutions to the many issues affecting women, children adolescents, and other people.  

She continued that, the objective of the training was to ensure that they have a network of trained journalists to engage policymakers and hold they accountable to WNCAW commitments and community scorecard assessment findings in policy development and implementation and also to institute an award scheme for journalists which will serve as motivation for those reporting on children, women, and adolescent issues. 

“We want to ensure consistency on this awards, recognizing journalists and creating a platform like this to share ideas and dialog issues of women, newborns, children, and adolescents, because these groups are vulnerable in our society.” She said. 

She ended by encouraging journalists to network, cross-reference, and share related ideas on the various issue they cover. 

Professor Richard Adanu was the chairman of the award ceremony, he said that it is good to talk about issues of women, children, and adolescents as these categories of people are very much neglected and are always relegated to the background, which is why he encouraged civil society and advocacy groups to talk about their issues. 

He encouraged the WAHO team to continue their partnership with journalists so that more and more stories of women, children, and adolescents will be unearthed. 

Three journalists from Sierra Leone, Abass Sesay, Sulaiman Stom Koroma, and Alhaji Manika Kamara, and three from Ghana Bertha Badu-Agyei, Eunice Menka, and Benedicta Folley Gyimah, and Mame Mbagnick Diouf, Aminata Diouf and Fana Cisse from Senegal won this year’s award. 

Giving his reaction as an awardee, Abass Sesay from Sierra Leone explained how gratified he was for winning such a prestigious award “I feel very good, excited and emotional, who would have thought of me in this stage? 

I reported a story that was a national issue, and as I speak I am still making regular follow up so that the right thing is done. I want to thank the organizers for such an award it goes a long way to motivate us as journalists to report on issues affecting children, women, and adolescents”. He said.