REPORTING ON TUBERCULOSIS FROM ACROSS INDIA
A third compendium
REACH Lilly MDR-TB Partnership Media Fellowship Programme 2014-15
REACH Lilly MDR-TB Partnership Media Fellowship Programme
Every day, almost one thousand people die of TB in India. Despite being a preventable and treatable disease, tuberculosis remains a major public health challenge and India bears the highest TB burden in the world. There is a growing concern about the increase in cases of drug-resistant TB and its subsequent social and economic impact on society. All of this is compounded by a general lack of awareness of TB and its consequences—most of all, that TB is completely curable if timely and high-quality diagnosis and treatment can be accessed.
The media has a powerful role to play in informing the public about prevention and control of TB in India. Accurate, sensitive, effective and timely journalism can improve public understanding of TB, increase access to TB services and dispel the many myths and misconceptions that persist about the disease. Since 2009, the REACH Lilly MDR-TB Partnership Media Initiative has worked closely with journalists across India to improve the quality and frequency of media reporting on TB.
The Fellowship Programme
The Media Fellowships were constituted in 2010 to provide working journalists from local language newspapers and magazines across India with support to undertake in-depth analysis of various aspects of TB. These fellowships are intended to encourage journalists to explore TB as a critical public health concern, by identifying and telling stories that have remained untold. In the years since its inception, 50 journalists from across the country have written over 180 stories on a range of TB-related issues, and in multiple languages.