By Praise Chinecherem
Media practititioners have been charged to remain champions of truth, warriors against misinformation and health advocators to ensure no child was lost to preventable disease in Nigeria.
Executive Secretary, Enugu State Primary Health Care Development Agency (ES-PHCDA), Dr Ifeyinwa Ani-Osheku gave the advice on Thursday while delivering her keynote speech for South East Zonal Meeting on Media & Immunization Campaign titled “Media: Our Most Potent Tool in Protecting Lives and Ensuring a Healthy Future.
The participants of the one-training included partners from UNICEF, media professionals, officers from the advocacy and communication units of Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) drawn from five states of Anambra, Enugu, Cross River, Kogi and Benue.
Ani-Osheku regretted sobering statistics of children lost to vaccine-preventable disease ocassioned by myths and rumors, attribuying it to failure of collective system and effective communication.
She described the upcoming campaign against measles to cover 24 states as critical, just as she identified dispelling misinformation, promoting positive behavioral change and providing lifesaving information as key areas media must harness for successful campaign.
She also highlighted consistency building of trust, leveraging of influencers, story telling with data, targeted messaging and interactive platforms as strategies to ensure effective campaign.
She said, “We’re here to discuss an issue that sits at the heart of our collective mission—the health of our people, particularly our children.
“We are here not only as leaders and advocates but as the very bridge between life-saving health interventions and the communities we serve.
“The media is not merely a conveyor of news—it is a lifeline for millions of families seeking information, guidance, and assurance about their health.
“The power of media in Health
Media, in all its forms—television, radio, print, and the vast digital spaces—has the power to shape perceptions, influence behavior, and drive actions.
“In the fight against preventable diseases, especially through immunization, media is our most potent tool. It can dispel fear, replace rumor with fact, and encourage individuals to make decisions that could save their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
“Already, social media spaces are buzzing with misinformation and negative assertions, which, if left unchecked, could undermine years of progress in reducing child mortality from preventable diseases.”
According to Ani-Osheku, around 2.5 million children still die annually from vaccine-preventable diseases globally, while Sub-Saharan Africa, where health systems were often fragile and bears the heaviest burden, account for nearly half of global child deaths.
“In Nigeria, the under-5 mortality rate stands at 100 deaths per 1,000 live births, with preventable diseases like measles contributing significantly to this figure.
“Here in Enugu State, despite our progress, we continue to lose children to diseases that we know how to prevent and have the tools to combat.
“One statistic haunts me: for every child lost to a vaccine-preventable disease, it is not just a tragedy for one family—it is a failure of our collective system. It is a failure to communicate effectively, to reach those who need information the most, and to counter the dangerous myths that circulate in the public domain.
“As we prepare to launch the measles immunization campaign, let us remind ourselves of the measles resurgence seen across the world due to vaccine hesitancy.
“Between 2016 and 2019, global measles cases increased by 56 percent, largely fueled by misinformation about vaccines. This is a pattern we must fight to prevent here in Nigeria, and the media is our greatest ally in this fight,” she stated.
