MamaYe MNH 'Dictionary': a big step in the right direction!

Launch of Mamaye Dictionary: Definition of MNH TermsProf. Audrey GadzekpoInternational Press Centre, April 4, 2014I appreciate being a part of this event and thank the organisers for inviting me to share a few thoughts on.The Mamaye Project has already produced some useful information resources to journalists, including a website and fact sheet.  Why is a Mamaye Dictionary important then? The simple answer is that we need creative and innovative approaches in dealing with the ‘silent killer,’ for that is how maternal mortality is.  In fact the President puts it more poignantly, describing it as “The most cruel form of death in a woman's attempt to reproduce life.”Like many other areas that need urgent attention the media has been tasked, implicitly and explicitly, to blow the whistle on this silent killer and blow it so loud and continuously that even the deaf will hear the message. As journalists we are expected through the multiplicity of platforms we have at our disposal and our story telling skills to help influence change.  This is because like it or not, in a modern democratic society like ours the mass media remain the most efficient, cheap and effective way to inform and educate people about the problem of maternal health. The media are part of the early warning system. They can mount surveillance and alert us when things are going wrong, sometimes even ahead of those whose primary responsibility it is to save the lives of mothers and newborns. They are also arbiters of accountability; expected to play a watchdog role monitoring and pressurizing those whose job it is to ensure we achieve MDG 5 (politicians, policymakers, health professionals, service delivery officials, etc.) to do their jobs and account to citizens on whose behalf they are working.We hear every day that the media must be up and doing. But the question is how equipped are journalists to report on what is going on? How competently can journalists maneuver through tough and complex medicine when in all likeliness many of them may well have just scraped through passing science and vowed never to pick up a biology book again after SHS?It is true that through the years and as the options of specializations in journalism have grown many news organisations have now made health, science and medicine staples of coverage. However the reality is that the field is huge and not easy to report on for many reasons, including the need for journalists to keep abreast with new conditions, new cures, new research, and new or unfamiliar terminologies.The language of science and medicine is sometimes incomprehensible to the uninitiated. For journalists unfamiliar with medical research or specific illnesses, therefore, writing about specific medical problems can be daunting. Even for the most industrious and dedicated it requires scouring through journal articles; finding reliable sources to talk to; making sense of statistics and not least of all understanding technical medical language, terms and acronyms.  In the two decades I have been involved in the teaching of journalism in the formal setting in the classroom, as well as in training sessions with journalists and other media practitioners one of the problems that often crops up in our discussions, particularly when we do critiques of stories on health, science and medicine, is not only what to cover but how to cover it and tell stories that are interesting and compelling enough to grab the reader, viewer and listener’s attention. Another challenge is how to make the complex simple in a way that people understand the message and are moved to action – be it by changing their own behavior, getting involved to help others, or demanding accountability from duty bearers. How can we tell stories about issues such as maternal health without being sensational, and without distorting the message in the effort to keep it short and simple? More importantly, since the language of science and medicine is not Ewe or Ga or Twi, how can we translate accurately scientific news and information about maternal health?I don’t think the Mamaye dictionary provides a complete antidote to these conundrums I raise but I think it is a big step in the right direction. This easy-to-read list of terms used in discourses around maternal and newborn health issues allows journalists to look up unfamiliar terms quickly. Like all good dictionaries it aims to help us understand and define words that may be alien or new or confusing to us. So the Mamaye Dictionary clarifies terms which are often confused like maternal mortality versus maternal morbidity – and explains meanings such as ‘infant mortality rate’ as well as providing us with information that in Ghana the rate of infant mortality stands at 53 per live births.That is what I particularly like about the Mamaye Dictionary, the fact that in many places it elucidates the term it is seeking to explain by giving us statistics pertaining to Ghana and putting the severity of the problem in context. For us news people this is like being given a good news tip that can spur us on to look further.As I looked through the dictionary I felt I was building my understanding of and knowledge on the entries. So for example not only did I learn the exact meaning of the entry ‘Life-time Risk of maternal death,’ which has been defined as the probability that a woman will die eventually from a maternal cause. I also learnt that in Ghana, according to the WHO, that likelihood is 1 in 68 (2012).  How scary is that. Now, like a generalist journalist and not a specialist, I was not sure how alarming the statistics was so I went online to reports on the global picture and read that the lifetime risk of maternal death in the developing world in 2010 was 1 in 150, compared with industrialized regions with an estimated rate of 1 in 4,700 (2010).  That information put the issue into sharp relief for me. It not only frightened me more, but it convinced me that drastic action is needed because our sisters living in the US who want to become mothers have a risk factor of 1 in 4,700; while our sisters who live here in Ghana have a risk factor of 1 in 68.I am not suggesting that just by reading the dictionary journalists can become experts in maternal health issues. In fact I suspect that a few of the explanations you will find for the entries may well still mystify you if you are not initiated into the world of science and medicine. For example, the dictionary defines ‘Obstetrical or postpartum haemorrhage (PPH),’ which it notes is the most common cause of maternal death worldwide and the single largest direct cause of death for 24.3% of maternal deaths in 2007.  PPH is defined as ‘the loss of blood following a delivery causing the patient to become symptomatic due to the blood loss.”  But I found myself quarreling with the booklet for not explaining to me what it means to “cause a patient to become symptomatic.” Can you imagine translating that in Twi? I hope there will be a second edition to clarify such terms further and to add new entries, for example the difference between ‘symptomatic’ and ‘asymptomatic,’ and also ‘postpartum,’ a common term that was not defined specifically although it occurs in the dictionary.Despite some of these, I consider the Mamaye Dictionary a great achievement and I congratulate those who thought about putting it together. I can assure all journalists that this glossary of terms will clue you in to some of the key issues to think about when you report on maternal and newborn health (MNH); stimulant story ideas on the subject, and prompt you to ask the right questions that demand answers and solutions to why so many women are dying in the course of giving life. Thank You.