2022
Millions of Nigerians are at risk as the government ignores other diseases
Country/area: Nigeria
Organisation: The Nation Newspaper
Organisation size: Small
Publication date: 21/10/2021
Credit: Justina Asishana, Ezra Barsil
Biography: Justina Asishana is an award-winning Data and Investigative Journalist who is passionate about data, human interest issues, transparency, and governance.
She is currently the Niger state correspondent for The Nation Newspaper. Justina has done a lot of investigative reporting for her media organization, The Nation Newspaper and other media organizations.
Justina was the 2021 Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF) Journalist of the Year, the IJNET Journalist of the Month in May 2021, she was the runner up of the Feature Writer of the Year and Business Journalist of the Year in the 2021 Nigeria Media Merit Awards (NMMA).
Project description:
The project is an analysis of the impact of the neglect of services for other diseases in the face of containing the spread of COVID-19. The report analysed diseases like malaria, cholera, tuberculosis and HIV. Data on the number of people at risk of getting the diseases if the diesels kept being neglected. The data collected were visualized for easy understanding of the audience.
Impact reached:
There was no much impact but after the report, there has been a considerable increase in the services for other services. For example, governments, especially state governments have begun malaria programmes and there have been reduction in the number of cholera cases registered in medical centers.
Techniques/technologies used:
Google search engine was used to search and mine for the data
Google sheets was used to clean the data for clarity
Flourish studio was used to design the visualization
What was the hardest part of this project?
It was not easy sourcing for recent data as Nigeria do not often have up to date data on several diseases written about. So I had to use data sourced from International health organisations and other national organizations that have such data available. The project was part of a Fellowship so it had to be factual before it was accepted to be published.
What can others learn from this project?
Other journalists can get statistics about the prevalence cases of other diseases and observations made by experts regarding the diseases. Statistics on immunization drive of malaria can be learnt from this project.
Project links:
drive.google.com/folderview?id=1Hk75FTR_I28W3UVtiwAHL4_4z_uJAvxV
