A reporter in South Africa who has lived with HIV for more than a decade wanted to produce a health show for Soweto TV, the largest community station in Africa. She lacked the skills to pull it off until Knight Fellow Mia Malan showed up.

Mia Malan launched the first weekly health program at Soweto TV, the largest community TV station in Africa, with more than 1 million viewers. She trained a team to produce high-quality feature reports for the show with a special focus on HIV/AIDS. The half-hour show features topics such as the use and abuse of antiretroviral drugs, male circumcision, attention-deficit disorder and organ transplants.

In addition to the new half-hour weekly show, health stories on Soweto TV’s daily news reports have increased threefold as a result of Malan’s efforts. In the first half of her fellowship, she increased health stories fivefold at the influential Mail & Guardian, enabling the paper to attract a major advertiser for a weekly, four-page health section. The section continues to be successful long after Malan left for Soweto TV. Under her guidance, Mail & Guardian reporters produced more than 100 in-depth and investigative articles on issues such as national health insurance, maternal death, AIDS treatment and fetal-alcohol syndrome.