Vanguard’s Chioma Obinna, wins Merck Media Award for West Africa

Vanguard Senior Health Correspondent, Chioma Obinna, has won the 1st ever “Merck More than a Mother” Africa Media Recognition Award 2020 for West African countries.

Obinna won the Print Category with her entry: “We refused to give up!” 

Other winners include three Nigerian journalists, Abubakar Sulaiman of Sawaba 104.9fm who won in the Radio category, Martins Ifijeh of ThisDay Newspapers and Chinedu Asaju of The Cable Newspaper who won the online category.

Also, winners from other countries include; Never Lomo of New Public Trust from Liberia.

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In an official message announcing the award weekend, the Chief Executive Officer, Merck Foundation, Senator Rasha Kelej, the stories of the winners were instrumental in raising awareness on infertility prevention and breaking its stigma in Nigeria and across Africa.

The award comes with a prize of $500 and one-year online MasterClass training.

Kelej said: “I am very happy to inform you that your work has been selected by our ‘Merck Foundation More Than A Mother’ Awards Committee to win the first award in the Print Category for West African countries for your exceptional coverage that helped to create awareness about infertility and breaking the stigma around it.

“We sincerely appreciate your influential media work that was instrumental in raising awareness on infertility prevention and breaking stigma in your country and rest of Africa, hence, I am pleased to additionally reward you to become ’Merck Foundation Alumni’, and provide you with one year access to an online educational training programme called MasterClass.”

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Kelej explained that the offer from Merck Foundation was aimed at motivating passionate journalists to continue writing and advocating for social, economic and health issues across their countries.

Chioma Obinna is a multiple award winner. She has won numerous local and international awards. Among them are the Nigeria Media Merit Award, NMMA; two times winner of the Diamond Award for Media Excellence, DAME, Award; the Nigeria Healthcare Media Excellence Award; two times winner, Best Health Correspondent, Nigerian Institute of Medical Research Award for Medical Research Reporting; USAID/FistulaCare award; World Heart Federation’s World Congress of Cardiology for Africa Correspondent competition; Population Reference Bureau Women Edition, among others.

Vanguard News Nigeria

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