MAG through the support of Family Planning Association Nepal (FPAN) organized a one day media interaction program with the health journalists & reporters and the concerning stakeholders on discussing the issues of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SHR) & HIV and the role of Media in minimizing the risks on 18th Februrary 2015.

Nepal has a very high vulnerability of SHR & HIV, major of the population has their family member in foreign employment, which has risked the lives of their families, specially the migrant workers in the neighbouring countries.  Similarly, SHR is still considered as a social stigma due to which people cannot talk openly about it.   Such ignorance has resulted in increased rate in SHR & HIV.

Media plays very vital role in bringing about these issues forward and alerting people about the consequences and prevention.  Babita Basnet, President, MAG & Subhash Shrestha, FPAN stated that media can play active and important role in bringing these issues in people’s concern and that SHR & HIV can happen to anyone and such patients should be treated with affection and respect.

During the interaction program there were few HIV patients participating who presented themselves confidently infront of the media and requested to bring factual and research based reporting.  They even requested the media to not treat them as sympathetic figures & rather try to bring their real struggle and stories, so that it can be lesson for other people.

MAG has also prepared a feature (collection of case stories) in Nepali under this project comprising the case stories of differnt districts and currently preparing for the second.  MAG’s first feature has received tremendous response and has been published in different local and national papers including online news portals.