Vusumuzi Dube
Senior Reporter, Robin Muchetu
THE media has an integral role to play in the fight against Tuberculosis (TB) as they are one of the tools through which information is disseminated and awareness is raised.
This was highlighted on Wednesday morning at a Kunda-Nqob’iTB (KN-TB) Media Orientation on TB Control that is underway in Kwekwe.
The National TB Programme (NTP) together with the Union Zimbabwe Trust (UZT) are orienting various media personnel from across Zimbabwe on the key concepts in TB and its control to enable adequate and informed reporting whose aim is to raise awareness in the local communities.
UZT Technical Director, Dr Sithabiso Dube said it was critical to engage the media as they are conduits for information dissemination.
“We have engaged the media because they are the ones who have a wide reach of people through their various platforms. So we have come to orient them to ensure they send out factual information around TB. They need to understand the disease so that they are able to also write about it. We also seek to identify the bottlenecks that may exist in TB stories reporting,” she said.
The KN-TB project with guidance from the Ministry of Health and Child Care is conducting the orientation with other objectives of also updating the media on new developments on TB control and to also discuss bottlenecks in TB reporting.
Furthermore, the training seeks to build a workable relationship between the media and NTP.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Tuberculosis Local Organising Network funding mechanism is supporting a national TB –HIV response in Zimbabwe in eight districts across three provinces, Matabeleland South, Midlands and Masvingo.
The districts were selected on account of high disease burden, poor TB treatment outcomes and a high concentration of artisanal small scale miners, an important and often neglected risk group for silicosis and TB.
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Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter