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Last week, Tarun Sehrawat, a 22-year-old Indian photographer
for Tehelka magazine, died from
cerebral malaria and its complications, according to several of his colleagues
and media
accounts. He had returned, ill, from a shooting assignment with Tehelka's reporter Tusha Mittal in May.
The team had been covering the ongoing Maoist revolt in Chhattisgarh in central
India and reported it in "Inside
Abujmarh The Mythic Citadel." Both Sehrawat and Mittal became very
ill, but Sehrawat succumbed. Mittal, we understand, is still recovering.
A former Tehelka staffer,
Salil Tripathi, posted a comprehensive report, "Young Photographer's
Death Has Some Worried" on the New York Times' blog India Ink today. The post addresses the
issue of how media houses help prepare their teams to protect themselves from
contracting diseases while covering stories. That's something CPJ covers in
section eight, "Health
Epidemics and Mass Hazards," in the latest edition of CPJ's
Journalist Security Guide. It does a fine job on the basics, and in the
aftermath of Japan's 2011 TÅhoku earthquake and tsunami, even covers radiation
threats.
(Tripathi's post also fills in background on the heavily
underreported Maoist uprising Sehrawat and Mittal were covering, and it has an appreciation
of Sehrawat
and his work. Sehrawat, by all accounts, was a driven photographer but also a
decent man who empathized with the subjects he was photographing. Tehelka has posted a retrospective
of some of his work.)
I have some experience with the issue of journalists
confronting disease threats. As a cameraman for Visnews (now Reuters TV) and later
NBC in the early days of my career, I know the risks those on the visual side
of journalism take. We tend to get closer to the action than print reporters and
the risks tend to run higher--though Tusha Mittal might make a different
argument.
After retiring from journalism, I worked for the World Health
Organization (WHO) doing risk communication and media relations during disease
outbreaks and natural disasters, mostly in Asia. The job gave me daily contact
with journalists in the field covering outbreaks like SARS or H1N1 or H5N1, or
the many public health threats in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami
that devastated parts of South and Southeast Asia. I would always take the time to remind journalists
that they were not immune to the disease that was killing the people they were
reporting on, and I would take particular time to caution camera crews and
field producers about getting too close to disease carriers like chickens or
swine just to get that telling close-up that they and their editors loved so
much. Even if they had had combat experience and felt they knew how to take
care of themselves in dangerous situations, they were facing something much
more insidious than a double car bomb or a firefight.
By the time of my WHO stint, around 2002 to 2006, some of
the crews from developed countries had a modicum of training and equipment to
deal with violent conflict, but none that I knew had been prepped for dealing
with microscopic viruses or other microbes. Some of the bigger news
organizations bought the same sort of protective gear WHO was using in the
field--those white coverall suits and face masks. But they hadn't been trained
in how to use them effectively, and we at WHO worried they were given a false
sense of security that courted even more danger. WHO staffers were given full
training in use of the gear, with frequent review courses in which we put the
stuff on and took it off in the correct manner-- and kept doing so until the
trainers were convinced we knew what we were doing. Camera crews were generally
handed the gear and more or less told, "Here, use this, it will protect you."
That's not good enough.
From the accounts I've read, Sehrawat and Mittal fell victim
to an endemic form of malaria, one that they should have been aware of, ideally
through their own preparation and through Tehelka's
assignment desk. It's not the sort of disease that calls for all-out protective
gear, but effective precautions can be taken. The impression I've formed is that
this lesson has been learned; the publicity surrounding Sehrawat's death has
raised the issue across newsrooms in India. That is a good thing.
And the bigger issue hasn't gone unnoticed, either. Tehelka's editor, Tarun Tejpal, has
written perhaps the most important story to come out of this: "The
Messenger, And The Message: A young Tehelka
journalist's death highlights the dismal state of rural healthcare." Why are hunger
and disease still out of focus? It's a short, moving, well-argued piece
that pays homage to the sort of work the 22-year old Tarun Sehrawat seemed on
the path to dedicating his life to.
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Hey Bob - I was about to say I was pleased to see this, but that sounds wrong. Malaria risks for traveling journos are a good and somewhat unusual thing to highlight, was what I meant to convey. I know this from hard-won personal experience, having contracted the often fatal and increasingly pharmaceutical-resistant West/Central African falciparum strain in Sierra Leone and having it erupt virulently a week later back in Brooklyn, where it mystified the US doctors who had some acquaintance with malaria from South Asia and South America but not with this, and who erroneously prescribed medication that was not only ineffective but literally almost killed me. Their main error, I subsequently learned, was to rely on the Atlanta CDC for guidance, which I also subsequently learned is often a year behind the WHO - as is the FDA, the root of the issue - in its recommendations about tropical-epidemic medications and the fast-evolving resistant strains of such diseases. The best thing I found to do is rely on WHO for the most up-to-date information. When the excellent CPJ reporting-risks guide is updated to include malaria I would recommend a link to the constantly updated WHO website on same: http://www.who.int/malaria/travellers/en/