Dawn.com, along with other news outlets, received top honours in the ‘Excellence in Health Reporting Awards’ presented by the Aga Khan University’s Department of Paediatrics and Child Health.

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The first prize for digital was a tie, shared between Areesha Rehan for her Dawn.com report ‘Between malnutrition and the right to business, where does Sindh’s breastfeeding law stand’ and Kehkashan Bukhari for her Geo.tv report ‘Mothers in the hot seat: Impact of climate change on pregnant women’.

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The second prize for digital was also a tie, going to Wara Irfan’s Dawn.com in-depth report ‘Malnourished mothers, starving babies: how hidden hunger is endangering Pakistan’s future generations’ and BBC Urdu’s Riaz Sohail for his report regarding the controversy over the human breast milk bank.

Rehan and Irfan’s reports were carried by Prism — Dawn.com’s long-form and analysis vertical.

Meanwhile, the first prize for the print category went to Wisal Yousafzai’s report ‘Why is KP’s maternal mortality rate so high?’ for The Express Tribune while the second prize went to Sadia Obaid Khan for her Daily Jang report on the impact of the catastrophic 2022 floods on the population of Sindh.

The first prize for TV was awarded to Abdur Razzak for his Pashto-language reporting on malnutrition in Pakistan for VoA Deewa. The second prize for TV went to Shafqat Aziz of Neo TV for malnutrition in Sindh’s children and mothers.

“I’m thrilled that at AKU Paediatrics and AKU Global, we’re contributing to fostering maternal and child health reporting in the media,” said Dr Fyezah Jehan, the department’s chairperson.

“Hopefully, this will lead to stronger and more comprehensive coverage of nearly 70 per cent of Pakistan’s population [who are women and children] —an often overlooked and underreported area in health journalism.”

Three judges assessed over 40 submissions that were made from across the country and multiple news outlets.

The stories were judged for scientific veracity, newsworthiness and an X factor that would set them apart from others. Submissions were welcomed in any language and from any news platform provided it primarily served a domestic audience with the goal to elevate and amplify the good work being done by health reporters and recognise excellence in health journalism.