Musa Radoli
4 April 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
The provinces and the districts were the very areas which were hardest hit with the violence that saw more than 1200 people killed and 150, 000 displaced from their homes into the Internally Displaced People's camps where many are still residing. Journalists/photographers based in these areas were the worst affected. Yet the most ignored by their media houses.
"The media owners and employers in the media industry should also recognise the importance of emotional psychological and physical effects that are caused by their professional hazards," says the permanent secretary.
He argues that besides the hazards the journalists/photographers experience in the field, many employers increase their stress levels because of the demands to meet targets within specific timeframes, whereas the staff were working under difficult circumstances and environments.
The situation was not made any better by virtue of the fact that many journalists found themselves in circumstances forcing them to offer help to critically injured victims of the violence at the risk of their own lives, yet they are not trained even in the rudimentaries of first aid.
A leading psychology doctor at University of Nairobi's faculty of medicine, Dr. Sobbie Mulindi says the post election violence trauma can cause a lot of medical complications for the journalists/photographers who were affected unless counselled and treated immediately.
Dr. Mulindi who is spearheading counselling sessions of the affected journalists says that many of the media practicing victims risked developing deadly health problems like hypertension, general heart ailments, kidney complications, nervous breakdowns among others.
"Many journalists who were affected tended to resort to alcohol and substance abuse, abnormal behaviours which can lead to disastrous consequences. Psychological trauma has to be dealt with urgently. Apart from putting at risk the lives of the affected persons, it is possible that it can also be transmitted from one generation to another," he said.
The doctor says that immediately the violence broke out with a team of other psychological trauma experts in Nairobi mobilised counsellors based in HIV/Aids VCT centres across the country for induction and deployed to IDP camps to counsel the victims of the post general election violence.
Musa Radoli writes for the Royal Media Group in Kenya is the Secretary General of the Kenya Correspondents Association.
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