Nine leading newspapers and about 15 journalists in eight West African countries have highlighted a dysfunctional health system in the region and called for action by the authorities and the public through demanding accountability.
A press release issued Monday by “Ouestaf News” operated by the nine newspapers says “the extent of the Ebola outbreak…has exposed the dysfunctions and mismanagement of health systems and services in the region”.
Their investigations revealed the lack of facilities, human resources, and at times mismanagement of the few available resources, or professional flaws.
They uncovered huge amounts of money being spent by governments to send abroad a privileged minority to be cured for diseases as benign as a cold.
Ouestaf News, which comprises one newspaper each from four francophone and four Anglophone countries including Politico for Sierra Leone, will start its online publication this week focusing on West African health systems in the context of the Ebola crisis.
The other newspapers are Le Progrès (Benin), The Daily Graphic (Ghana), La République (Guinea), Front Page Africa (Liberia), Les Echos (Mali), Daily Trust (Nigeria) and Enquête (Senegal).
It will publish a series of reports, in-depth stories, interviews, profiles, etc., on the state of national health systems, emphasizing their weaknesses.
About 15 journalists assigned by Ouestaf and its partners have been working independently on the topic for weeks.
“They examined different aspects of the health systems: be they the shortage of doctors in Nigeria, medical negligence or errors in Senegal, neglected diseases in Ghana, the cost of medical evacuations in Guinea, the impact of Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone,” the release says.
The project aims to produce high quality journalism “to inform decision makers and the public on the need to find lasting solutions to the health crisis”.
“The journalists who worked on this project felt concerned by the media coverage of the Ebola crisis, which mainly focused on the death count and sensational information. A situation which created trauma and stigma amongst the populations, without dealing with the root causes of this disaster and its impact on the infected communities” the release concludes.
(C) Politico 23/06/15
