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AJAAT campaign to hinge on prevention of...
2008-06-30 09:44:43
By Guardian Reporter
The Association of Journalists Against AIDS in Tanzania (AJAAT) will run a media campaign on prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV for a period of one year in 2008/09.
The media campaign to be sponsored by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will involve various activities including training workshops for journalists.
A statement issued yesterday in Dar es Salaam said the workshops aimed at building conceptual and professional capacity of journalists in writing about HIV/Aids, particularly prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT).
The first workshop will be conducted in Dar-es-Salaam to be followed by similar workshops in other regions.
At the end of each workshop, journalists with assistance from AJAAT facilitators, will prepare an action plan for writing and publishing stories and preparing programmes on PMTCT.
Themes that will be covered are quality of, and access to services, efforts to prevent further infections, general knowledge on PMTCT, gender relations and male involvement.
Other themes will include nutritional aspects, caring for the child, the role of community, stigma and discrimination.
The PMTCT drive began in 2002 under the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare leadership through the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) after it was realised that HIV infection from mother to child was increasingly unabated.
Latest statistics indicate that the HIV/Aids infection rate among pregnant women is 8.7 per cent with the annual deliveries among HIV+ women put at 122,000.
Likewise, more than 48,800 children are infected with HIV annually, with 90 per cent cases arising from mother to child transmission.
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