India (Bharat) continues to lose journalists in the Covid-19 pandemic even though the country has launched a massive vaccination program covering over 75 million Indians till date.
The global tally of casualties among media persons has already crossed 1000 mark. According to the Geneva based media watchdog and rights body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), at least 1027 journalists in 73 countries succumbed to Covid-19 complications till date.
The most affected countries include Brazil (170 dead), Peru (137), Mexico (93), India (60), Italy (51), USA (46), Bangladesh (46), Ecuador (45), Colombia (39), United Kingdom (28), Dominican Republic (27), Pakistan (25), Turkey (22), Panama (16), Russia (15), Spain (15), Bolivia (14), Ukraine (14), etc, stated the PEC.
Lately veteran journalist, author and academician Fatima Zakaria (85) succumbed to the corona aggravated ailments on 6 April at a private hospital in Aurangabad. She becomes the 60th victim among journalists in the country. Ms Zakaria used to work the Times of India group for many years and edited the Sunday Times and Bombay Times. Honoured with prestigious Padma Shri award in 2006, she also edited the Taj group’s magazine.
She was the wife of Maharashtra’s former minister (also an Islamic scholar) Dr Rafiq Zakaria and mother of global media personality Fareed R. Zakaria.
“Since the beginning of March 2020, the PEC started a corona-ticker to pay tributes to the journalists killed by the Covid-19 around the world. Media workers have an important role to play in the fight against the novel corona virus, they have to inform about the spread of Covid-19,” said Blaise Lempen, secretary-general of PEC.
He also added that the safety of media workers is particularly at risk in this crisis because they must continue to provide information on the ground. A number of them died for lack of adequate protective measures when doing their job. The PEC team, while condoling their demises as corona-warriors, request early vaccinations for journalists on the frontlines.
Prior to Ms Zakaria, another Mumbai based journalist Sabaji Mohan Palkar, who was associated with Asian News International died of Covid-19 on 4 April. The middle-aged journalist was a front-line worker and fell victim of the circumstances,” said PEC’s Bharat representative adding that Palkar was preceded by Pramod Srivastava, who died on 27 March after testing positive for the infection in Uttar Pradesh.
Bharat has been witnessing an upcharge of corona virus infection with daily infections to over 100,000 people and presently the country has over 8,43,470 active Covid-19 cases. The billion plus nation recorded over 13 million patients since its outbreak last year. States like Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, UP, Delhi etc are facing the heat, where India’s total death toll crosses 1,66,175.
