By Doh James Sonkey
The result of a survey conducted by a health communications and policy research consultancy, Baird’s CMC on what will the health media focus in a post COVID-19 world has been released. The result was published last week after three of Baird’s CMC partners; Fundamento, Hyderus and SPAG along with Alfa Communications and Havas PR Milan conducted interviews with over 40 health journalists and editors in a bid to acquire an in-depth look into their opinions on COVID-19 dominance and the expected future trends.
According to the survey, interviewees from the West African region said “an increased level of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance will inevitably translate into a reduction in the number of infections. This in turn will reduce the focus on COVID and cause a shift in coverage.”
A good number of them stated that the expected timeline to see a change in the COVID-19 dominance is by June 2022.
The East African media on the other hand were less optimistic, especially due to the emerging COVID-19 variants, and predicted that the pandemic will maintain top priority in coverage over the next two to three years. After this period, they reckon that long term effective solutions such as better COVID-19 vaccines will have been developed and deployed in Africa, turning the epidemic from critical to manageable.
Explaining that their main focus on COVID-19 will be its variants, vaccines, accessibility, vaccination rates, as well as herd immunity, the respondents stressed that in spite of the COVID-19 dominance, other infectious diseases will take centre stage as a result of the lessons learned from the massive infection rate of COVID-19 and that healthcare systems will also increase their efforts towards universal health coverage.
The media professionals added that audiences have become more interested in health and more knowledgeable about it so they expect that -other health topics will continue making headlines. The future focus is likely to be on non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, respiratory diseases and climate change linked vector borne diseases. HIV/AIDS, malaria and ebola will also continue getting coverage.
Baird’s CMC decided to conduct the survey after noting that “over the last 2 years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, media houses across the world have been keen on highlighting the contagion and its new developments at the backdrop of the other still existing health issues in Africa.
The detailed report can be consulted on the link www.bairdscmc.com/media-trends-21/
About Baird’s and Hyderus
Baird’s CMC is a global communications, policy and market research consultancy. Their partners offer companies, foundations, multinational organisations, NGOs and governments a world-leading consulting team.
Hyderus is a global leader in providing international health advisory services and strategic communication advice to assist public and private entities in shaping policy, priorities and public attitudes.