Guwahati: Bharat lost one more senior journalist to Covid-19 complication to increase the tally of media corona casualty up to 57 where the global count reaches 867 journalists.
Madhya Pradesh based scribe, Kamal Dixit, who also taught journalism in Makhanlal Chaturvedi University succumbed to novel coronavirus aggravated ailments on 10 March 2021 in a Bhopal hospital. “So far, at least 867 journalists died of Covid-19 in 69 countries, where Brazil with 109 media corona casualties has lately replaced Peru (108) to top the list of most affected countries,” said Blaise Lempen, secretary-general of Press Emblem Campaign (https://pressemblem.ch/), a Switzerland based nonprofit organization focusing on press freedom and safety.
Other nations with high media casualties include Mexico (88), Italy (48), Bangladesh (44), USA (44), Ecuador (42), Colombia (37), United Kingdom (28), Pakistan (23), Turkey (21), Panama (16), Bolivia, Russia, Ukraine (14 each), Spain (13), etc said a statement of PEC, which started counting the corona deaths since March 2020 as a tribute to journalists and condolences to families and colleagues of the deceased around the world.
“The safety of media workers is particularly at risk in the Covid-19 pandemic as they have to continue providing information on the ground. A number of them died for lack of adequate protective measures when doing their job. The PEC requests early vaccinations for journalists on the frontlines,” added Lempen, who himself a senior journalist based in Geneva. Prior to Dixit (70), the South Asian nation lost Jaipur based journalist Sanjay Bohra (50) on 2 March, popular news anchor Vikas Sharma (35) on 4 February, Nandkumar Sonar (50) on 24 January, etc to the pandemic. The PEC’s country representative urged the media fraternity to maintain precautionary measures as the health disaster continues taking its prays.
He also mentioned the speculation that more journalists might be dying of corona infection related ailments in the coming weeks as the projected corona death would probably reach at 3000 per day globally by the end of March.
