13 journalists get awards for excellence in health reporting

Thirteen journalists from the electronic and print media have received excellence awards in health reporting for news reports that appeared between July 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016.

The first-ever ‘Excellence in Journalism Awards 2016’ were organised by the Centre for Excellence in Journalism at the Institute of Business Administration (CEJ-IBA), Karachi, and the Centre for Communication Programs Pakistan (CCPP), according to a press release issued here on Tuesday.

Speaking as chief guest at the awards ceremony at the CEJ-IBA, Dr Seemin Jamali, the executive director of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), said, “Both the public and private sectors have to play a role in training journalists to report on issues like health with the knowledge that is required for such assignments.”

CEJ Director Kamal Siddiqi said, “Health is a neglected area in journalism and we need to do more in terms of highlighting the issues that relate to health in Pakistan.”

He added that these awards would recognise people who had written on health and encourage more reporting on this subject.

Sharing the idea behind having awards for a specific category, CCP Director Dr Atif Ikram said there was not any recognition in Pakistan for beat reporting like health and the CEJ and the CCP wanted to come up with an award for this purpose.

The winners and runners-up in the three categories are as follows: 

The mainstream broadcast (TV, Radio) award’s winners are Ovais Ahmed Tanveer of Express News and Danyal Hasan of DawnNews.

The runners-up are Safdar Hussain Shah from PTV News and Saifullah Cheema from DawnNews.

The mainstream print/online award’s winners are Independent journalist Zofeen T. Ebrahim and Muhammad Suleman of News Lens Pakistan.

The runners-up are Izhar Ullah of The Express Tribune, Sameer Mandhro of The Express Tribune and Moniza Inam from the Dawn newspaper.

The District Correspondents (Print, Online, TV, Radio) award’s winners are Adnan Khatri of The Nation and Mohammad Shahid of AWKUM VOICE.

The runners-up are Amjad Ali from Daily Mashriq and Nisar Ahmed Khan from Dawn.

Besides the winners and runners-up, work of three senior journalists—Mukhtar Alam, Asif Chaudhry and Shahida Parveen—was also recognised for their vast
contribution to health journalism.

The panel of judges included Rahimullah Yousufzai, resident editor of The News Peshawar; Wusatullah Khan, freelance journalist and talk show analyst from DawnNews; and Farah Zia, editor of The News on Sunday. 

On awarding journalists for health reporting, Rahimullah Yousufzai said that it was a good initiative to recognise the crucial work which had been largely ignored.

EVA-BHN (Palladium Pakistan) team leader Dr Fayaz Ahmed said that the voice of people on health related issues needed to be protected and amplified.

He said the Award for Excellence in Journalism 2016 on health issues must happen every year “till we achieve health-related sustainable development