The perception of maternal health messages in two urban television stations in Nigeria
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Countless numbers of women across the globe lose their lives virtually every day for reasons
associated with childbirth. Maternal mortality is a national dilemma that does not only affect
females in rural areas but those in urban areas as well. A recognized and unarguable fact about
the social responsibility of the media whether in a rural or urban setting, as Folarin (2005) avers,
is that of informing the public to engender its self-determined action; it, therefore, means that the
public engages in health actions based on the health message at its disposal from the media. This
study, using survey as the research design and with the aid of a questionnaire, was an attempt at
answering research questions on: the major source of maternal health information among urban
school children; how often the broadcast media are used by urban school children; the degree of
exposure to broadcast media health programmes among urban school children; and the extent to
which broadcast media health programmes address the issue of maternal health. The population
of the study constituted the entire SS3 students of three urban secondary schools. It was
discovered, among other things that, interpersonal sources rather than the mass media, served
as the major sources of maternal health information; the television was indicated as the
broadcast medium used by majority of the urban school children on a daily basis. The conclusion
of the study was that breaking the cycle of death among females resulting from childbirth is
achievable when maternal health dissemination becomes a central focus of media business and it
was recommended that a paradigm shift was required from a media routine of merely creating
awareness on maternal mortality to promoting the prevention of maternal mortality
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), RA Public aspects of medicine