Charity Mutinta Mboozi, a Zambian Reporter, is Named Winner of the Kaiser Family Foundation Award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Journalism in Africa
54 Applicants from 22 African Countries Vied for the Award
Menlo Park, CA – The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in collaboration with CNN International and MultiChoice announced on Saturday, July 21, that Charity Mutinta Mboozi was the recipient of the 2007 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Award for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Journalism in Africa. Penny Duckham, Executive Director of Kaiser’s Media Fellowships in Health presented the award, which recognizes exceptional reporting on HIV/AIDS in Africa at the prestigious 2007 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards in Cape Town, South Africa.
Charity Mutinta Mboozi’s award winning documentary, “Through My Eyes,” profiles Shalom Kaseketi, a 12-year old boy living with HIV. It’s a powerful story about the boy’s experience living with the virus, and issues such as stigma and discrimination which surround HIV. The documentary also explores how the epidemic impacts families and communities. As a reporter for Catholic Media Services television, Ms. Mboozi's documentary was aired on Zambian National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) on December 1, 2006 – World AIDS Day.
Kaiser, as part of the CNN MultiChoice Africa Journalist Award program, organized a four-day series of briefings and site visits for journalists and senior media representatives from the United States and Africa, including fifteen of the award finalists. The sessions featured such topics as issues in prevention, treatment and care of HIV/AIDS, challenges on reporting on HIV/AIDS, financing and donor funding to combat the epidemic, tools available to journalists to report on HIV/AIDS, and challenges of preventing pediatric and teen HIV infection; and were led by community leaders, academics, journalists, and government experts. Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS associate director, and Drew Altman, Kaiser President and CEO, led a panel discussion on media and AIDS in Africa with Elizabeth Mataka, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa; Dali Mpofu, group executive director, South African Broadcasting Corporation; Trevor Ncube, media proprietor and publisher; and Njabulo Ndebele, author and vice chancellor, University of Cape Town.
“At its best, HIV journalism can hold governments accountable, influence national and global agendas, give people vital information and even save lives,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Through this award and many other initiatives we hope to encourage excellence in journalism on critical health issues in Africa and around the world.”
“It is impressive to see how the Kaiser Foundation has integrated so fully into the CNN MultiChoice Awards in just its second year of involvement and we appreciate its commitment to recognizing excellence in reporting on these complex stories,” said Tony Maddox, CNN International Executive Vice President and Managing Director. “It is exciting to hear that the entries this year for the HIV/AIDS Journalism award range from Cairo to Cape Town, fully in keeping with the pan-African aspirations of the whole event.”
The Award winners and those short-listed were selected by an independent judging panel nominated by CNN International and MultiChoice chaired by Joel Kibazo, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat, and including Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch Nigeria Limited; Arlindo Lopes, Secretary General of SABA - Southern African Broadcasting Association; Lizeka Mda, Managing Editor, City Press of South Africa; Sophie Ly Sow, Regional Communications Officer for Oxfam/West Africa; and Anna Umbima, journalist and broadcaster. Filipe Correia de Sá, Senior Producer at BBC World Service, was brought in to help judge the Portuguese speaking category.
The CNN Awards were established in 1995 and recognize excellence in a variety of reporting topics. A winner from each of the categories will be selected, and an overall winner will be chosen from the 15 category winners. The competition is open to African journalists working on the continent for an African-owned media organization that broadcast or published their entry between January and December 2006. The Kaiser award is part of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s global effort to improve the breadth and substantiveness of HIV/AIDS reporting, and to increase access by journalists worldwide to the most current information on HIV/AIDS.
About the Kaiser Family Foundation
A leader in health policy and communications, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is a U.S.-based non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the U.S., with a growing role in global health. Over the past two decades, Kaiser has also maintained a major program in South Africa with the aim of helping South Africans establish a more equitable national health system and build a successful democracy.
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