Malawi fails to achieve 3 by 5 initiative target, The Daily Times

1. Start discussions about gender and HIV.

2. Show how a greater range of sources makes a stronger article.

 

Trainer’s Notes: The article is based on a single government source.  It fails to get comment from donors, health care workers, or, most importantly, people living with HIV/AIDS. The article is therefore one sided and uncritical of the reasons provided by government why it has failed to meet its target. The article also lacks any sense of urgency – the failure of government to meet its target will mean that many people will die because they cannot get access to life saving medication.  The article is a missed opportunity to mainstream gender – the particular vulnerabilities of women to HIV infection and the barriers they experience in accessing treatment are not mentioned and the statistics that are provided are not disaggregated by gender.

 

1. What is missing from this article ?

2. What are some of the gender dimensions that could have been explored ?

3. Read a selection of the articles below and discuss the importnace of diverse sources.

 

Training Exercises:

1. Trainees should rewrite the story using more than one source – they should interview donor agencies, health care workers and, most importantly men and women living with HIV. It is important in such an article that the voices of those who are most affected by the failure of government to meet its target, are heard.  

2. Trainees should be asked to critique the response of government set out in the article – they should then rewrite the article, quoting sources that challenge the government position.

 

Links to Training Resources: Gender and HIV/AIDS: A Training Manual for Southern African Media and Communicators, Gender Links and the AIDS Law Project, Chapter 11, www.genderlinks.org.za/docs/training/hiv-training-manual/hiv-ch.11.pdf