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Media vital to fighting HIV/AIDS
The media and its leaders are vital to eliminating the HIV and AIDS pandemic in the Caribbean and should cease using methods which sensationalise and set back regional efforts in combating the disease.
This was the view of Ms. Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, Director, Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP), who was at the time addressing the Caribbean media fraternity at the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership (CBMP)’s 5th Anniversary Media Leaders Summit. The Summit was held on World AIDS Day 2011 in Barbados.
“The media can seek to share some of the responsibility for promoting access by holding yourselves accountable to the highest professional standards, calling out media service providers whose efforts to sensationalise, set back our regional efforts, ” Ms. Bynoe-Sutherland said.
She stressed that the media has an important mandate at this juncture of the Caribbean’s response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Ms. Bynoe-Sutherland also offered some suggestions as to how the media can assist the Caribbean in reaching the agreed 10th Annual General Meeting (AGM) targets of eliminating Mother-to-Child Transmissions (MTCT), increasing treatment by 80 percent and reducing new infections by 50 percent by 2015.
She urged the media to increase their awareness of the issues around increasing access to treatment and reducing new infections, particularly among marginalised and vulnerable communities.
PANCAP Director Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland
“You are poised to use the various means at your disposal to raise awareness and seek to encourage accountability on the part of PANCAP and its constituent governments and organizations,” she added.
The PANCAP Director also advised the media to utilize tools and techniques which ensure that their messages are factual and based on evidence driven approaches.
“We must challenge providers of public service messages or paid advertisers on the content and evidence basis of their messages and avoid having your airwaves flooded with ineffectual and weak messages.”
Ms. Bynoe-Sutherland said that everyone has a part to play in curbing the HIV pandemic and urged the media to take responsibility for shaping society’s cultural norms and attitudes towards the disease.
“In my view, media should not just reflect social values but evaluate them – not just observe what is happening, but should seek to intervene and provide leadership in the face of injustice,” she added.
The PANCAP Director noted that she was confident that the media, as new weapons of change, will assist the Caribbean in reaching its targets of “Zero New Infections, Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths.”
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