Press release

The Life Channel launches in South Africa

3 Jul 2008

The Life Channel is currently being piloted into hospitals and health clinics throughout South Africa's Gauteng Province, aimed at educating patients of all ages with significant health, social and wellbeing information.

The development of The Life Channel into Africa is part of a planned expansion based on the successful implementation of the service in Europe. Broadcasting to over 4m patients per month in over 2300 locations across the UK, The Life Channel is the largest health and wellbeing television network in GP practices in Europe.

TLC Africa is installing into pilot sites ranging from modern hospitals such as Pretoria Academic through to rural clinics in Levai Mbatha.

"When installed in these waiting areas, TLC Africa will help enormously as it will educate Gauteng residents about the potential and very avoidable issues they face," said Phil Austin, Managing Director of The Life Channel. "TLC Africa is not just about health, but community issues as well."

In the Gauteng Department of Health's most recent Budget Speech, MEC Brian Hlongwa noted that the introduction of The Life Channel into Gauteng will act as a medium to communicate health care messages to its citizens. 

Programming will focus on pertinent issues and needs of the region, including awareness of HIV/AIDS, TB and STI's, along with a far wider approach to health and wellbeing. There will be a particular focus on treatable "silent killers" such as TB which has high instances of death despite the excellent treatment available for TB across Gauteng.

Key areas such as eating a nutritious diet, keeping active, maintaining good hygiene and forming happy and healthy social and community relationships, will be covered by TLC Africa.

The channel also aims to address the many serious issues that can be easily dealt with that are tragically causing deaths in South Africa every day. One major issue is road safety.

After witnessing a teenager killed by a car at a road junction outside of Levai Mbatha, Austin said, "There was no fuss, no police car; just another kid killed on the road because effectively they had not been educated about the dangers of road traffic."

Road Traffic accidents are the fourth biggest killer of girls under the age of fourteen in Gauteng.

Content will be divided into seven recognisable Programme Strands which are designed to support individuals helping their own health. These include: Health Matters, Good Food, Get Active, Baby Talk, Our Life, Life Matters.

Entertainment content will be sourced from both local programme producers and a range of internationally well-known programme makers, such as the BBC and Aardman animation. Local news, initiatives, weather and information RSS feeds will also be incorporated into the channel.

Other than educating patients, TLC Africa aims to significantly reduce the time that patients wait to receive their prescription scripts, and serve the communication needs of dozens of government and community departments, whilst also developing a substantial platform for the sale of conventional consumer media.

After The Life Channel's initial run in Gauteng Province, the plan is for it to ultimately roll out across the whole of South Africa into other hospitals, clinics and even schools. There is little or no infrastructure to assist in educating students and children about the very issues that TLC Africa represents. The benefit of extending the reach of TLC Africa into learning establishments is enormous and the opportunity should be considered.