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Day in the life of a Multimedia Manager: Held down by clients who do not follow rules
My name is Vincent Ooko Akumu. I’m the Multimedia Manager, Uganda Health Communication Alliance (UHCA). My day starts at 5am with a word of prayer and 30 minutes of meditation as I plan for the day. I later take a shower, wake up the rest of my family and get my two daughters ready for school. We have breakfast as they wait for the school vans to pick them. I leave home at around 6.45 am. It takes me about two hours to reach my place of work.
I reach office a few minutes to or after 9am due to the heavy traffic jam. The first thing I do is go through all the newspapers. My work involves working with health reporters, so I have to carefully go through all newspapers to see what has been reported and which reporter did what. If there was a health incident that occurred and was not reported, I call some reporters to inform them about it and if possible help them get news sources and fix appointments for them.
It is after that I go through the day’s schedule to find out the appointments or meetings to attend or if there is training for the health reporters. I then concentrate on searching for the latest health news and resources for our website which is a resource centre for both media and health communicators.
I’m also tasked to look for articles to publish in our monthly newsletter.
I usually catch up with my friends in the evening to compare notes, watch news and discuss the current issues as we have a cup of tea. This goes on till 9pm when I go home.
The biggest challenge I face is turning health journalism from a boring profession into a very exciting one that every journalist would want to practice. Before it was very hard to find a health story taking the first page of a newspaper but today, it is the most eye-catching piece of article people crave for, and every time I see that, I call it an achievement.
When health related CSOs call me requesting for journalists to get news, it is an achievement because the mistrust between the health workers, CSOs and the health reporters has tremendously reduced. This is because the health reporters have been extensively trained and can accurately report health issues.
