Health

On this day February 28, Germany and UNICEF have launched the second phase of the project named "S'attaquer à la malnutrition chez les enfants de moins de cinq ans dans les régions de l’Extrême-Nord, du Nord, de l’Adamaoua et de l’Est", in Yaoundé.

Germany which had provided €8 million (CFA5.24 billion) during the first phase which started in 2016 will disburse another  €15 million (CFA9.8 billion) this year to support the project till 2020.

“This contribution will help extend the activities to 68 health districts, 31 more than those covered during the first phase, to reach all the regions targeted by the project”, Germany explains.  

UNICEF explains that chronic malnutrition is a structural problem which has persisted for the last two decades in Cameroon. This form of malnutrition is often ignored because it is hardly noticeable. Among children aged 5, it is characterized by low height during growth.

According to the UNICEF, this problem is as a result of mothers been poorly nourished during  pregnancy coupled with  malnourishment during the development of the fœtus and during early childhood.

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Rita Akana

01.Mar.2018

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From the 22nd to the 27th of January 2018, Bafoussam was the venue of intensive training of the North West Rapid Response Team (RRT). The team was made up of about thirty (30) individuals from various backgrounds: Clinicians, veterinians, Epidemiologists, Lab Scientists, WASH experts, Communicators, expert in psychosocial assistance, Data managers, Logisticians.

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Rita Akana

29.Jan.2018

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Taking the common painkiller ibuprofen has been linked in a small study with a condition affecting male fertility problems.

Male fertility is dropping around the world and the researchers wanted to see if ibuprofen might be contributing to this.

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Rita Akana

15.Jan.2018

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Coffee may not only give you a morning boost; it also may have significant health benefits.

So says a review by British scientists of more than 200 studies on coffee consumption and health, published Wednesday in The BMJ, a British medical journal.

“Coffee drinking appears safe within usual patterns of consumption,” said the University of Southhampton's Robin Poole, who led the study.

According to the researchers, people who drink three to four cups of coffee a day are more likely to see health benefits than harm, experiencing lower rates of premature death, cardiovascular disease and liver disease.

Drinking more coffee is also associated with a decrease in several types of cancer — including prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, skin cancer, leukemia and liver cancer — according to the researchers' findings. There were also lower rates of type 2 diabetes, gallstones and dementia associated with coffee consumption.

Drinking three to four cups of coffee offers the most health benefits, except for pregnant women and people who are prone to bone fractures.

Since the review was an analysis of existing studies, it is impossible to account for many other factors that might have influenced the subjects' health. More studies would be needed to determine causation and not just correlation. In other words, it might be that healthier people also drink coffee, but the review's findings suggest that there are more positive effects than negative ones.

Although the review found that there was more benefit than harm from drinking coffee, the studies were not adjusted for important confounders, such as body mass index, smoking, age, alcohol use, income and education level.

ABC

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Rita Akana

24.Nov.2017

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KAMPALA — Uganda’s ministry of health confirmed Thursday that one person has died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a close relative of the Ebola virus. Surveillance teams have deployed to the affected district in the eastern part of the country to contain the outbreak.

Uganda’s Ministry of Health says one of the two suspected cases of Marburg virus disease has been confirmed via laboratory tests conducted by the Uganda Virus Research Institute.

“The confirmed case was a 50-year-old female from Chemuron village, Kween District in Eastern Uganda. She presented with signs and symptoms suggestive of a viral hemorrhagic fever," said Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, the minister for health. "Preliminary field investigations indicated that prior to her death, the deceased had nursed her 42-year-old brother, who had died on September 25, 2017 with similar signs and symptoms."

According to the World Health Organization, Marburg is transmitted via contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or the handling of infected animals. Local media report that the deceased woman’s brother was a hunter.

The Ministry of Health has dispatched a rapid response team to the Kween district. 

“As of this morning, because their surveillance obviously started from the hospitals where the confirmed case passed away, we have ten health workers who have been listed as contacts, and they have already been isolated in their homes for follow up,”Aceng said.

Uganda is no stranger to viral hemorrhagic fever. The country has battled several outbreaks of Ebola, including an outbreak in 2000 that killed over 200 people.

Marburg is named after the town in Germany where it was first identified in 1967, though that outbreak was traced back to infected monkeys brought from Uganda.

“We have the caves that have the bats that are capable of transferring infection to man in different parts of the country. You can never know when the next outbreak will be. It depends on when man interacts with an infected bat from one of these caves,” said Dr. Miriam Nanyunja , the disease prevention and control officer for the WHO in Uganda.

A person suffering from Marburg presents with sudden onset of high-level fever and headache. This can be accompanied by vomiting, joint and muscle pain, and unexplained bleeding.

There is no cure or vaccine available for Marburg. Patients are given supportive treatment to increase their chance of survival.

VOA

 

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Rita Akana

20.Oct.2017

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An emergency vaccination campaign is getting under way in northeastern Nigeria to prevent a deadly cholera outbreak from spreading to other countries.

The World Health Organization reports the potentially devastating cholera situation is emerging in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. During the past few months, it says 2,600 suspected cases of this fatal disease, including 48 deaths, have occurred in this former stronghold of Boko Haram. The militant group has been waging war to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

Dominique Legros is cholera coordinator for WHO’s department for pandemic and epidemic diseases. He says the outbreak, which is centered in camps for internally displaced people, is spreading to other areas of northeastern Nigeria, toward Chad and northern Cameroon.

He says 900,000 people in the state will receive the oral cholera vaccine to quickly contain the spread of the disease.

“Once it is out of the box, once it has spread, it is very, very difficult to contain and we have a huge number of cases and deaths," he said. "So, this outbreak in Nigeria, hopefully, will not reach Chad, because in Chad already, we have an alert in the eastern part of the country towards the border with Sudan, 344 cases, 49 deaths.”

Legros says this comes to a 14 percent case fatality. He notes this is very high for a cholera outbreak, which usually has a case fatality rate of less than one percent.

WHO estimates the global cholera disease burden at around 2.9 million suspected cases, including 95,000 deaths. It reports Yemen has the world's worst cholera epidemic, with nearly 690,000 suspected cases and more than 2,000 deaths.

The agency expresses concern about the situation in Africa, where it reports tens of thousands of suspected cases and thousands of deaths in, among others; Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.

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VOA

19.Sep.2017

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