HIV/AIDS training for journalists

A network of Angolan journalists concerned about HIV/AIDS is taking shape, following a workshop on reporting on HIV/AIDS held in Luanda last month, the first such training to take place in Angola.

Twenty journalists, half from the provinces and half from the capital, attended the 15-18 May workshop sponsored by the UN agencies UNAIDS and UNICEF under the "Telling the Story" (TTS) project. TTS focuses especially on youth and HIV/AIDS and is supported by grants from CNN mogul Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation, which targets seven countries in Southern Africa, where the pandemic is most serious.

Angola, with a population of 13.4 million, has an infection rate of 8.6 percent as indicated by sentinel sites in four out of 17 provinces. The rate may be higher when all provinces start collecting data. An estimated half a million people are living with HIV/AIDS.

Uruguayan journalist Mercedes Sayagues, who has designed a training manual on the topic for the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and led similar workshops in Mozambique, facilitated the Luanda workshop.

"The Angolan media has saturated its public with the message 'AIDS Kills' for the last five years to the point of generating resistance to the information," she said. "It is time to shift the focus, from reporting on how people can die of AIDS, to how people can live with HIV."

Topics included confronting journalists' own fears and prejudice about the disease; gender awareness of how men and women are vulnerable in different ways; lifting the silence on male homosexuality; identifying the main problems in HIV/AIDS coverage and finding solutions.

There was also a strong ethical component on how to report, awareness of the power of the media to reinforce or dispel myths and prejudice; use of non-discriminatory language, and a call for journalists to help reduce the stigma surrounding people living with HIV/AIDS through "socially responsible" reporting.

Among the resource persons were two young women living with HIV/AIDS from the NGO "Luta pela Vida" (Fight for Life), who requested anonymity for fear of discrimination.

"Their request, and their heartfelt testimony of daily rejection, showed how society isolates people living with HIV, and why the media must help reduce stigma," Sayagues said.