AFRO-NETS> POPLINE Support Centre for Nigerian Journalists

[Bunmi Iyere <mracnigeria@yahoo.com>]

POPLINE Support Centre for Nigerian Journalists
-----------------------------------------------


MRAC designated POPLINE Support Centre, provides service to Nigerian 
journalists

LAGOS NIGERIA - SEPTEMBER 2002: The Media Resource and Advocacy Cen-
tre (MRAC), Lagos Nigeria has joined the global network of POPLINE 
Support Centres, to ensure and promote accurate, comprehensive, sci-
entific and technical reporting of population, HIV/AIDS, reproductive 
health and sexual rights, and family planning issues by Nigerian 
journalists. 

POPLINE is a unique source of information on population, family plan-
ning, and related health issues -- the only comprehensive interna-
tional database in the field. The majority of items gathered from 
around the world, regardless of language, date from 1970 (but some 
sources date from as early as 1827). 

The database contains over 291,000 citations with detailed abstracts 
and in-depth indexing. The database covers all types of publications 
including journals, monographs, and technical reports (about 30% of 
these documents are limited distribution, unpublished reports). The 
database is maintained by the Population Information Program, Centre 
for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg 
School of Public Health and supported by the Office of Population, 
United States Agency for International Development. 

The Support Centre facility will complement an ongoing project 
APPROACHES TO MEDIA PARTNERSHIP IN REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS 
PROMOTION IN NIGERIA supported by The Ford Foundation - West Africa. 
The project forges sharing of ideas and materials that can further 
enhance public discourse on topical development issues especially 
those that are threats to public health. 

MRAC, a project of Development Communications Network now joins a 
global network of POPLINE Support Centres in Bangladesh, Ecuador, In-
dia, Kenya, Morocco, and Philippines among others. The Centre will 
provide free services primarily to journalists (and also NGOs, re-
searchers, students) in Nigeria with a focus on advancing understand-
ing of science and public health related issues. Besides providing 
POPLINE services to journalists and media organizations the Support 
Centre will acquire locally produced, unpublished/limited distribu-
tion documents for input to POPLINE. Already 26 individuals compris-
ing journalists and NGO activists have been trained in Kaduna, North-
ern Nigeria on how to use the POPLINE database. 

This capacity-building initiative enables MRAC to become the focal 
point for the collection and dissemination of research and program-
matic information to journalists and other media professionals in Ni-
geria. The Centre will provide electronic and online information on a 
range of topics relating to population: family planning technology, 
family planning programs, fertility, population law and policy. Oth-
ers include demography, maternal and child health, aids and other 
sexually transmitted diseases, related reproductive health programs, 
women in development, primary health care communication, population 
and environment. 

The Centre will provide POPLINE Search and full-text document deliv-
ery services, collect indigenous documents for incorporation into 
POPLINE, promote POPLINE Digital Services (PDS) information services 
& Products, provide POPLINE training & technical support services. 
MRAC has been a POPLINE CD-ROM site and would now aid media houses in 
Nigeria to become sites for use by journalists. POPLINE CD-ROM up-
dated twice a year is also available on the Internet at:
http://www.popline.org

Internet POPLINE is updated on the first and third Monday of every 
month.

Development Communications (Devcoms) Network, is a research based me-
dia advocacy NGO dedicated to public understanding and participation 
in science and development. The organization runs the Media Resource 
and Advocacy Centre, a health/science information center that forges 
media-NGO partnership and interaction between journalists and devel-
opment actors. With support from the Ford Foundation - West Africa 
MRAC now has facilities for online access to varieties of interna-
tional journals including POPLINE, MEDLINE, New England Journal of 
Medicine, Nature, Population Reports, among others. These varieties 
of scientific information sources are available free to Nigerian 
journalists and are currently being used by those who have partici-
pated in trainings, seminars and media roundtable (Media for Develop-
ment Forum) at MRAC.

For more information contact:

Bunmi Iyere
Coordinator
Media Resource and Advocacy Centre, Lagos Nigeria
mailto:mracnigeria@yahoo.com

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