Press Releases

Ethiopian Journalists Get Off the Beaten Track to Report on HIV/AIDS

Photo: Solomon Teferi/Internews Network Members of the Addis-based press corps interview the head of Dera Health Centre during an HIV/AIDS reporting field trip conducted by Internews in Ethiopia.

(July 20, 2006) “The thing that struck me most on this trip? The dust!” joked Bethlehem Kiros of the Reporter newspaper after Internews Ethiopia organized an HIV/AIDS reporting field trip to one of the country’s drought-stricken provinces. 

Ethiopian media is highly centralized. It is only relatively recently that six new local community radio stations were created by the government. It is a move that has been welcomed, but it still leaves many areas without local coverage in this vast mountainous country. Internews, therefore, sees it as essential that the Addis-based press corps is given opportunities to get out of the city.

It became clear to the team of five print journalists, after visiting a voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) clinic in Dera in Ormiya province, that access to food is the most pressing issue for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in this area. Drugs are becoming available through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), administered by USAID, but without proper nutrition, they can only be partly effective. 

The journalists visited the PEPFAR partner Food for the Hungry in Ziway. The project there aims to help PLWHA with supplies of nutritional food as well as running income generation projects and advocacy.

Ziway lies on a major trucking route, as does Nazret, another town the journalists visited. The constant flow of trucks brings in welcome income for many, but, as elsewhere in Africa, the floating population of truckers and travelers has created a growing sex trade and led to a rise in HIV infection rates among the locals. 

At the Nazret offices of Tesfah Goh (“Dawn of Hope”), a support organization for HIV-positive people, the trainees met with both staff and project beneficiaries.

“I was most touched by meeting with an 18-year-old HIV-positive girl who had been raped by her stepfather and then dumped at Tesfah Goh,” said Tesfu Refera of the youth newspaper Lambadina. “Her courage and optimistic outlook were truly inspiring. I want to share that with my readers.”

Internews' Local Voices project in Ethiopia had also organized an earlier trip for radio journalists. “It is important that each medium has a separate outing,” said Jim Clarke, the project’s resident advisor. “The demands of print and broadcast are quite different and mixing the two can be frustrating for the journalists.”

The trips include on-site suggestions for improving stories, and follow up mentoring sessions with each participant to help them produce quality features for publication.

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