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Argentina
Influenza A: newscasts devoted only 16% of space to the subject to recommendations
News programs built slots of the transmission of health information, but the recommendations to avoid infection and to identify the symptoms of influenza A collected only 16.8% of total messages in the sample. The analysis comes from a study by the Federal Broadcasting Committee.
Within the messages made reference to questions related to the virus, 23.4% realized habits adopted by the population, while 20.6% to the overall development of the disease. The recommendations produced by each program held just 16.8%, and messages alluding to the symptoms or treatment of the condition, 15.9%.
In addition, there was little information for risk groups, and that 72% of the messages are directed to the general population without considerations of age, gender, preexisting conditions or other situations.
According to the study, only 2.8% of the messages was aimed at pregnant and did not identify any immunological information to patients.
As for the sources used by the news, was detected on the same level of importance to the views of professionals in health from testimonies that were collected from people who had no specific training in the subject. The difference was 1.9%.
The report also highlighted frequent use of headlines accompanied by words such as "alert", "fear", "threat", "collapse", perceived intent to arouse the interest of the viewer from the drama of dealing with the health situation.
Coverage included random samples of the evening news of the two most popular channels on TV broadcasts cover 28 open from 27 April to 30 July. The survey conducted showed a total of 107 message units associated with influenza A H1N1.