Ghana Institute of Journalism to offer courses in health reporting

Ghana’s premier journalism institution, the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) will from next academic year, offer training in Health reporting, Mr. David Newton, Rector of the institute has announced.

Announcing this in Accra recently at a two-day Health Reporting Workshop for Health Professionals and Journalists, the GIJ Rector said “Many senior health journalists say the lack of training for health reporters has led to poor quality stories. In view of this, we intend to run diploma and degree courses in health for journalism students and health professionals in the coming academic year.”

“If we are able to educate people on health issues, we will cut down health costs”, Mr. Newton added.

For his part, Dr. John Yabani, Director at the Accra Health Directorate said, “this training is to build bridges to report information in a very simple way so that the common person can apply it to his life”.

He added that the determinants of health, which are water and sanitation, nutrition, good housing and good roads are not controlled by the health sector, but that road accidents contribute to the country’s woes.

Also addressing participants at the workshop, Mr. Bernard Appiah, Director, Centre for Science and Health Communication, said, “This training is to bring about a lasting communication gap solution to the challenge of health reporting.”

He disclosed that the training was being sponsored by Wellcome Trust – a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health, by supporting the brightest minds.

By Pascal Kelvin Kudiabor

2 Comments
  1. Enter your name... says

    When is the GIJ masters programme going to start?

  2. Thats a good idea.it would help improve the scope of journalism

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