About MEPHI

Media Practitioners Health Initiative (MEPHI) is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) focused on promoting, highlighting and taking on issues that affect the health  conditions, healthy living and the health rights of Journalists as they discharge  their day to day profession.

The unique feature of MEPHI is that unlike other organizations mostly facilitated, promoted and/ or powered by the media, this Initiative benefits and is intentionally focused directly on media practitioners themselves.

Yes, often times journalists engage in media rights advocacy and other similar social actions for the rest of the society in the promotion of public good, and in doing these more or less, little or no attention is paid to the health conditions of the journalist herself or himself.

In Nigeria, for instance where many journalists do not get paid regularly, the non-living wage they get at the end of every month, coupled with a very poor welfare package, many journalist cannot afford the simple medical steps of knowing their basic health status that can aid healthy living while on their jobs. As a result, we have lost many productive and highly cerebral journalists to avoidable deaths.

Sometimes apart from issues of financial affordability, journalists are so immersed in their profession, promoting healthy media, chasing stories, news breaks, and unearthing corruption in society, that they forget their own health conditions and how to improve them.

Given the above reality, it makes eminent sense to have a responsible organization devoted to making case for, and tracking the health conditions of journalists while they track the news.

Thus MEPHI is aimed at bringing such facilities as routine basic medical tests like fasting blood sugar; hypertension; malaria; prostrate; breast and cervical cancer screenings; to the newsrooms across the country.

MEPHI is also aimed at providing relevant information on healthy living through seminars, conferences and scheduled walk/ physical exercises to promote the health of the journalist to function effectively as she/he serves the society.

It must be restated that many of the past initiatives around the media at best are often designed to improve the capacity of the Journalists to do their jobs but none really has focused directly on health rights of media practitioners by improving the medical well-being of the Journalists. MEPHI seeks to bridge that gap.

As we acknowledge, information is a public good and those providing that public good need to be in good health condition to deliver it.