Neway Tsegaye has been working as a journalist in various positions since 1998, and is currently working as acting editor of ADDIS LISAN news paper. He has been studying print journalism at the school of journalism and communication, Addis Ababa University, where he graduates in August 2008.

Tsegaye's main focus is on health and Environmental journalism, and he works part time  for an evangelical magazine, Hodous, a quarterly publication where he is editor in chef of the magazine.

 

He covered the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, and has attended various workshops on TB and think tank and African issues in Tanzania and Kenya. He is founder and chairman of Addis Ababa health journalists’ association and an executive member of Ethiopian environmental journalists association. Apart from editorial activities, Tsegaye organises world AIDS day and earth day celebration events.

Souley Boubacar holds an undergraduate degree in journalism, a Doctorate in international relations and a Master Degree in mass communications. He began his career in journalism in 1986 as reporter and news anchor at the national radio station of Niger (La Voix du Sahel). Then he became the Chief Editor of the station, from 1988 to 1990, before attending the International Relations Institute of Cameroon (University of Yaoundé II).

 

When he came back from Cameroon in 1995, he was appointed Director of “La Voix du Sahel.” In 1998, he was appointed Director of Télé Sahel (the national TV channel of Niger). In 1999, he was appointed Deputy-Manager of ORTN (Niger Radio and TV Corporation) that employed at that time more than 500 people. He resigned from this position after obtaining a Fulbright Scholarship to go to the United States where he studied mass communications. Currently, Boubacar is working in Niger as a freelance journalist and media specialist. He produces TV, radio documentaries and news articles for various NGOs and international organizations based in Niger. He helps them communicate on a variety of issues such as girl schooling, infant malnutrition, environment protection, avian influenza and HIV/AIDS.

Kanya Ndaki is deputy editor of IRIN’s HIV/AIDS news service IRIN PlusNews.

 

She has been a journalist for the past eight years, and has spent most of her career writing and reporting on health, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS. She studied journalism at Rhodes University and is currently doing her postgraduate studies part-time. As IRIN’s first specialist HIV/AIDS reporter, she had the privilege of being part of the very small team of two that launched PlusNews, IRIN’s dedicated HIV/AIDS news service. Almost eight years later, the service has now become the largest provider of HIV/AIDS news in Africa. She has also worked for Health-e, South Africa’s only specialist health news agency, providing South African media with features and analysis on public health and HIV/AIDS. 

Julliane Pereira has been working in print journalism for five years, having graduated with a specialisation in scientific journalism. Since then, she has been working towards specialisation in her main area of interest, health issues. Her career has involved working in a scientific magazine, writing about mechanical engineering, and in a press, where she used to test some new publications on the market. Following this, she spent one year in London and Europe in order to understand more about the old world so influential in brazilian past and present, and to improve her English.

Pereira currently works for the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, as reporter for Equilíbrio, a weekly supplement covering health, environmental and well-being issues.

After graduating in Biology from Benu State University, Nigeria, Onche Odeh began his journalism career as a Science Reporter for the Daily Independent, a major Nigerian national English-language daily newspaper based in Lagos. In 2002, Odeh became head of the foreign affairs desk at the paper, and later head of the News Monitoring Unit, whilst still working as science reporter.

Odeh's training and development has continued through workshops such as: ‘Science Meets Journalism’, organised by Aljazeera Networks, Qatar Foundation and the World Federation of Science Jorunalists (WFSJ) at Doha, Qatar; media training workshop by  African AIDS Vaccine Programme held in Entebbe, Uganda; Science Reporting training by the Public Affairs Section of the United States Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria (2005); Internews training Workshop for Business Reporters on HIV/AIDS reporting (2006); UNICEF/Lagos state training workshop on Mother-To-Child Transmission of HIV. Odeh is also a current trainee under the WFSJ mentoring programme for Science journalists in Africa and the Middle East.

Munza Mushtaq is the News Editor of The Nation newspaper, a leading English language weekend newspaper in Sri Lanka. With more than eight years experience as a journalist, Mushtaq, born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in November 1981 has both local and international exposure and covers a wide range of issues in the Sri Lankan political and development arena. Her pet subjects are energy and environment, and she writes extensively on local political developments, human rights dilemmas, energy, environment and health issues, corruption and mismanagement by bureaucrats.

 

She has traveled abroad on various programmes, sponsored by leading international organizations including the Asian Development Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. Mushtaq has contributed widely to prominent online media sources and her stories are regularly seen in foreign media websites.

 

She began her journalism career in 2000 at the Daily Mirror newspaper and then joined the Sunday Standard newspaper in 2005 where she served as a senior journalist for nearly one and a half years.

Pius Murefu has worked as a journalist since 2001 after graduating in journalism and media studies from the Uganda Institute of Business and Media Studies. He currently produces weekly radio features on health for Radio Sapientia, contributes health stories to Trans World Radio in Kenya and covers health stories on healthandmedia.org. He is a member of the East Africa Health Journalists and the African Network of Environmental Journalists (ANEJ), and has received training from BBC World Service Trust, Internews Network, Hospice Africa, Media For Peace and religious Tolarence, Inter Region Economic Network (IREN),International Criminal Court (ICC),WRENMEDIA, UNFP, IANSA and PRB.

M. Gautam is a Nepalese journalist primarily reporting on health and environmental issues. He has almost 9 years experience of working in mainstream daily newspapers and magazines writing on health issues related to war created disability, trauma and mental health problems. He has also covered environmental health in relation to climate change and other prominent health issues such as HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, Avian Influenza and other non communicable diseases.

 

Rupa Chinai's work as a public health writer has been based on extensive travel to study health situations in several Indian states. She has sought to highlight India’s failure to create a strong primary health base which provides comprehensive services on the basis of local needs. Chinai's reporting has focused on the key role played by locally-trained community health workers, and explained how good health can be obtained at low cost when solutions are based on local wisdom. A better approach than the imaginative and simplistic schemes conceived by policy-makers far removed from the realities of the poor in urban slums, rural or tribal India.

In addition to writing for leading newspapers where she worked full-time, her articles have also been published on websites like The Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, Real Health News, InfoChange News and Features, India Together and publications like The Hindu (magazine section), Frontline, Himal South Asia and in a network of regional papers across India.  

Patralekha Chatterjee is an award-winning writer and photographer who covers environment, health, human rights and contemporary development issues for a wide range of publications. Her articles and photographs have appeared in leading specialist and general publications in Asia, Europe and North America.

Her forte is investigating public health interventions in the developing world and her articles have appeared in The Lancet, The Lancet Journal of Infectious Diseases and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. She has also contributed articles for Liberation (Paris), Panos (UK), The New Internationalist (UK), The Guardian (UK), Chicago Tribune (USA), The Christian Science Monitor (USA), Khaleej Times (UAE), The Economic Times (India) to list a few. Patralekha was educated in Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Oxford and Paris. She speaks English, French, Hindi and Bengali (mother tongue).

Most recently, she did two book-length reports on neonatal survival and maternal deaths for UNICEF's Health Section in India. She also co-directed a 23-minute documentary film on migrants and HIV for Tele Quebec (2008). Patralekha contributed a chapter on environment and health for a book (forthcoming) to be brought out by SAGE publications, India. She currently lives in New Delhi.

Samuel Rodriguez has worked as a photojournalist since 1999, following a visit to Palestine, where he conceived of incorporating photojournalism into his “Theory of Education” course he was undergoing in Barcelona. Subsequent trips back to Palestine and then to Morocco and Lebanon further developed Rodriguez's “Educational Action” approach to his photojournalism.

In March 2007, Rodriguez travelled back to Lebanon and became involved with several Spanish NGOs working with children in South Lebanon after the July 2006 war. He returned to Lebanon again in October 2007, spending 9 months working with a Spanish NGO, Movimiento por la Paz (MPDL), and in collaboration with the Spanish Agency of Cooperation (AECID) he wrote and illustrated a book, “The view of the other: A pedagogic guide for the peace culture and conflict resolution” or “La mirada del otro: Guia pedagógica sobre cultura de paz y resolución de conflictos”. The book is scheduled for release in summer 2008.

During November and December 2007, Rodriguez also worked as Communications Officer for an EC Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) funded project for refugees who left their houses during the 2007 war at Naher el Bared Camp, and provided photographic coverage for the European Comission in Lebanon. This covered the living conditions for the palestinian refugees from Naher el Bared living in Beddawi Camp, and the reconstruction work at Naher el Bared.

Imelda Visaya-Abaño is a young, award-winning health and environmental investigative journalist based in the Philippines. Ms. Abaño is a freelance journalist who has extensive experience in health and environment issues in Asia, writing for: Science and Development Network, Inter Press Service, Women’s International Perspective News Service and Women’s Feature Service.

She has published stories on health issues such as HIV/AIDS and the effect of climate change on health and in 2002 was honored in Washington DC as Asian Winner of the Global REUTERS-IUCN Environmental Media Awards on Environmental Reporting. Her winning investigative piece was the deterioration of the century-old Rice Terraces considered as one of the Eight Wonders of the World, and the health and social impact on the indigenous mountain people.

Although from a poor country and always short of funds to pursue her commitment to serve her country through writing, Ms. Abaño hopes to continue developing interests and skills to support her journalistic ambitions to influence and make her society a “better place”. She believes in better journalism for better communities.

After graduation from high school in 1998, Akmal Dawi could not continue higher education due to civil war in Afghanistan and was forced to migrate to Pakistan.

Immediately after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, Dawi returned home and was admitted to the faculty of Law and Politics in Kabul University in March 2002. He began his journalistic career in April 2002 when he was recruited as a local correspondent for the BBC-World Service. In September 2005, Dawi was selected through a very competitive scholarship programme to take an International Relations Masters (MA) in the UK, which he studied at Lancaster University until September 2006.

In October 2006, Dawi joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a public information officer in Kabul, Afghanistan. Due to his intellectual and practical interests in journalism and reporting, he left the UNDP in February 2007 and joined Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) – a unique humanitarian news & analysis media outlet – as a humanitarian reporter.

His current job is professional, timely and accurate coverage of humanitarian issues in Afghanistan, which then appear at www.irinnews.org. He is based in Kabul but frequently travels across the country.

Ochieng Ogodo is a Nairobi environment and science journalist writing for local and international media, with articles published in the UK, USA and Africa. He ventured into journalism in 1996 at The East African Standard, one of the two leading media houses in Kenya, with a good following in East Africa as well.

 

At The Standard he worked on the News Desk which entailed rigorous reporting including news breaking based on assignments and personal initiatives. From September 1999 to October 2003 he moved to the Investigative Desk as one of the few writers to the then widely read investigative pullout, The Big Issue. He comprehensively and extensively wrote on human interest issues, personality profiles, entertainment, transport and maritime. Ogodo did commentaries and analysis on major topical issues as well as undertaking Special Projects.

From October 1, 2003 to November 1, 2006 he was  a staff writer with Biosafety News- a Nairobi based Science, Biotechnology, Health, Environment and Agriculture Magazine.

Currently he writes for Science and Development Network [Scidev] of UK, Egypt based Islamonline and The Standard (Kenya). He is a Senior Staff Writer at Doctor News East Africa [Kenya]. He has made contributions to The Guardian [UK], New Agriculturalist (UK), Transport International Magazine (UK) and WeNews (US).