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News spotlight no guarantee of humanitarian coverage - MSF

by (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. Click For Restrictions. http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 20 December 2007 00:00 GMT

Loikow hospital in Myanmar, where MSF offers primary healthcare, as well as treatment for malaria and tuberculosis MSF/Claude Mahoudeau

When Myanmar stepped briefly into the world&${esc.hash}39;s spotlight this autumn, it was because the military government had launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Once the demonstrations died down, the international media moved on, having barely touched on the poverty and ill-health endured every day by ordinary people.

That&${esc.hash}39;s why Myanmar features on this year&${esc.hash}39;s top ten list of the most under-reported humanitarian stories issued by international relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The southeast Asian nation has high levels of malaria and HIV, but very few people receive treatment. There are only a handful of aid groups on the ground, and those who do have a presence work under heavy restrictions - but you wouldn&${esc.hash}39;t know it from the media coverage.

"Not enough attention is paid to the humanitarian consequences of what&${esc.hash}39;s going on there," says Jean-Michel Piedagnel, executive director of MSF-UK. "What is a political crisis if it doesn&${esc.hash}39;t have humanitarian consequences?"

Piedagnel argues that journalists should seize the opportunity of a sudden surge of interest in a political or economic crisis to explore the plight of ordinary people.

While conceding that government restrictions and poor security can make reporting difficult in some places, he urges the media to find new ways of pursing the humanitarian angle. "Maybe there is a need for more creativity," he suggests.

The same goes for Zimbabwe, where the national health-care system - once one of the strongest in southern Africa - is on the verge of collapse. The country&${esc.hash}39;s political and economic turmoil has received significant media attention in Europe in recent months, but MSF has put Zimbabwe&${esc.hash}39;s health crisis in its 2007 top ten because it believes the effects for the estimated 1.8 million Zimbabweans living with HIV/AIDS have been overlooked.

The top ten also features the impact of conflict on civilians in Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia and Chechnya, as well as the lack of new drugs to treat tuberculosis (TB) and under-use of innovative food products that can cut childhood malnutrition.

Most of the long-running conflicts featured have cropped up on a regular basis since 1998, when the annual list was launched after a devastating famine in southern Sudan went largely unreported in the U.S. media.

DRC and Colombia - both wracked by ongoing civil conflict and massive internal displacement - have dominated over the past decade, each appearing nine times. The humanitarian consequences of war in Chechnya have been highlighted in eight years. Somalia has appeared seven times, and merits a mention in 2007 because renewed fighting in the capital Mogadishu has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in recent months.

"There&${esc.hash}39;s genuinely a fatigue - these situations have been going on a long time, and that&${esc.hash}39;s very sad," says Piedagnel. "But we have to fight against this; we need to get these countries back on the table."

While aid agencies can help raise the profile of these "forgotten emergencies", Piedagnel believes the prime responsibility lies with the media. Again, in 2007, they appear to have done a pretty poor job of meeting that responsibility.

According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal, "The Tyndall Report", the countries and contexts highlighted on MSF&${esc.hash}39;s list accounted for just 18 minutes of coverage on the three major U.S. television networks&${esc.hash}39; nightly newscasts from January to November 2007. Chechnya, Sri Lanka and Central African Republic were not mentioned at all.

The figure doesn&${esc.hash}39;t include coverage of Myanmar or tuberculosis - because although both generated significant media attention, very little of it focused on the humanitarian aspects.

Although the U.S. media did report on the case of an Atlanta man diagnosed with a multidrug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, the coverage hardly touched on rising levels of this type of TB globally, or the number of people with HIV/AIDS who are also infected with TB.

"Local angles of international stories can often drive coverage," said Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of MSF-USA, in a statement. "Unfortunately, the result is that the focus is not necessarily on the most vulnerable and desperate - precisely the people whose stories deserve to be told."

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