The Borneo Post wins first prize for series on cancer awareness
KUCHING: The Borneo Post was awarded the First Prize in the English newspaper and news portal category at the 12th Health Media Awards 2018 for their work on a series of cancer awareness articles with The Malaysian Oncological Society.
Focussing on the top five cancers found in Sarawak, the series was published last year for the Sarawakian public to learn more about the causes, prevention, detection and treatment of cancer.
The Ministry of Health (MoH) held its 12th Annual Health Media Awards 2018 last night in Kuala Lumpur to thank the local media for their continued efforts in helping raise awareness of health issues to the general public.
The ministry expressed its gratitude to local media practitioners for their efforts in public health education with 19 major awards and three special Blue Ribbon awards for works pertaining to the dangers of smoking.
In total, the health awards saw the participation of 265 journalists, photographers and videographers in print, TV and radio this year.
Other main winners for the newspaper and news portal category were Berita Harian for their article entitled ‘Madu Diabetes’, China Press for ‘Mental Health Awareness’ and Makkal Osai for ‘Masalah Autism Anak’.
In the television category, the main winners were RTM for “Lembah Harapan (Kusta)’ and ‘Kesuburan Lelaki dan Rawatan’, and NTV7 for ‘ Bringing healthcare to the remote parts of Sabah’ and ‘Finding Angels 2017: Cancer’.
In the magazine category, iShat and Health Today both took home first place for ‘Awas Sindrom Rumah bertoksik’ and ‘Life, Love and Autism’ respectively.
Nasional FM was the main winner in radio for ‘Demi 2 Nyawa’, The Star in social media for their sex education campaign, and finally China Press for the blue ribbon awards with ‘Stop Smoking, Keep Your Lung Healthy’.
Speaking at the awards night, Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad once again thanked the local media for their contribution and expressed his hope to see more media practitioners across Malaysia taking part in future awards.
“The MoH’s main duty of care is to deliver efficient and effective promotion of prevention, treatment and care services for our citizens, while also promoting good health behaviours in the public.
“Obviously, in this context, aspects like communication are indispensable to our cause as it is needed to help spread information and awareness to the public to continue active disease prevention in our citizens.
“This is where the media is acting and proactively helping us and the result of their efforts that we hope that we hope to see is that Malaysians will become more concerned about their own health and wellbeing,” he said.