Authorities in Cameroon say fewer than 300 of a targeted 300,000 state workers have agreed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks into a campaign. Some civil servants who spoke to VOA hold a mistaken belief that the virus is no longer a threat in Cameroon. But health officials say vaccinations in the Central African state must be stepped up amid concerns about another wave of infections.

Several dozen people enter and leave Cameroon’s Public Service and Administrative Reform Ministry Thursday morning. At the ministry’s courtyard is a new stand where civil servants can get COVID-19 vaccines free of charge.

Vaccination team member Roland Njalla said only 11 of the expected 400 ministry employees have volunteered to be vaccinated over the past 10 days.

“People are not well informed and edified as to what the vaccine is going to bring as an advantage, as a plus. People are afraid, they don’t know the side effects of the vaccine. I think that is the principal problem,” he said.

Cameroon officially launched a one-month campaign to vaccinate at least half of its 600,000 active and retired government workers against COVID-19 November 10. Vaccinations started five days before the official launch.

The Public Health Ministry says it has vaccinated just 300 of the 300,000 expected active and former state workers.

Public Service and Administrative Reform Minister Joseph Le said he is pleading with workers to accept the COVID-19 vaccine.

“This campaign is intended to ensure that the professional environment is not a place where the virus spreads, but a suitable environment for professional development for all of us. We will continue to emphasize that vaccination is the only way to protect ourselves from the devastating effects of this terrible pandemic,” he said.

Cameroon announced last month that the COVID-19 Delta variant was present in the country and infection rates were increasing.

The health ministry is encouraging people to be vaccinated and continue to wear face masks, wash their hands regularly and keep at least a meter from each other.

Health Minister Manaouda Malachie said people are reluctant to take the vaccine because of lack of awareness, rumors and exposure to misinformation spread mainly on social networks.

Manaouda said 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela, whom many Cameroonians consider their mentor, once called vaccinations the most powerful of all preventive health measures. He says the COVID-19 vaccine saves lives and reduces the risk of getting and spreading the virus.

The Cameroon Bar Association said last month that some government officials were blocking unvaccinated civilians from public offices.

Evaristus Morfaw Nkafu, president of the General Assembly of the Cameroon Bar Association, said no law compels public service users to provide vaccination cards.

“There are some authorities who have decided that those who are not inoculated will not enter into their premises. It means they are discriminating against Cameroonians. Rather than coercing, I think the government should educate the people. They should persuade the people and even give incentives,” said Nkafu.

Nkafu said a campaign to raise awareness on COVID-19 vaccination should be offered to those who are hesitant by reaching out and providing crucial information where they live.

The government denied that it is compelling people to be vaccinated.

It is definitely encouraging the jabs.Only one-half percent of the targeted 12 million people were fully vaccinated as of October 30.

Source: VOA

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Tuesday announced a deal to make its prospective antiviral Covid-19 pill available more cheaply in the world’s least-wealthy countries.

Pfizer will sub-licence production of its promising Paxlovid pill to generic drug manufacturers for supply in 95 low- and middle-income nations covering around 53 percent of the world’s population.

Under the deal struck with the global Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), Pfizer — which also produces one of the most widely-used Covid vaccines with German lab BioNTech — will not receive royalties from the generic manufacturers, making the treatment cheaper.

The agreement is subject to the oral antiviral medication passing ongoing trials and regulatory approval.

The Pfizer drug is to be taken with the HIV medicine ritonavir.

Interim data from ongoing trials demonstrated an 89 percent reduction in the risk of Covid-19-related hospitalisation or death compared to a placebo, in non-hospitalised high-risk adults with Covid-19 within three days of symptom onset, said Pfizer.

Similar results were seen within five days of symptom onset, it added.

The Geneva-based MPP is a United Nations-backed international organisation that works to facilitate the development of medicines for low- and middle-income nations.

If approved, the pill could be on the market in “a matter of months”, MPP policy chief Esteban Burrone told AFP.

Pfizer also said Tuesday  that it was seeking an emergency use authorisation, or EUA, in the US for the Covid pill.

HIV drug mix

Pfizer will forego royalties on sales in all countries covered by the agreement while Covid-19 remains classified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization.

Last month, the WHO maintained the highest level of alert over the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19.

Paxlovid, or PF-07321332, is an investigational antiviral therapy designed to block the activity of the SARS-CoV-2-3CL protease — an enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate.

Taking it together with a low dose of ritonavir helps slow the breakdown of PF-07321332. It therefore remains active in the body for a longer period at a high concentration, to help combat the virus.

The pill could potentially help patients avoid severe illness, which can lead to hospitalisation and death, Pfizer said.

“We believe oral antiviral treatments can play a vital role in reducing the severity of Covid-19 infections, decreasing the strain on our healthcare systems and saving lives,” said Pfizer chairman and chief executive Albert Bourla.

While a multitude of vaccines have been rolled out in the pandemic, the hunt for treatments for those who have already caught the disease has not been as fruitful.

Agreement follows Merck deal

The MPP was founded by Unitaid, which works on innovations to prevent, diagnose and treat major diseases in poorer countries.

“During a pandemic, saving time means saving lives. This agreement could help us to reach more people more quickly as soon as the medicine is approved,” said Unitaid executive director Philippe Duneton.

Potential sublicensees have until December 6 to register an expression of interest.

The announcement comes after the MPP signed a similar voluntary licensing deal with Pfizer’s US rivals Merck & Co last month for its investigational oral antiviral medicine molnupiravir.

Subject to regulatory approval, the deal will help create broad access to molnupiravir in 105 low- and middle-income countries.

Pills are easier to make than vaccines, do not require a cold chain for delivery and can be self-administered by the patient.

In terms of relieving health systems by preventing hospitalisations, “it’s a game changer”, said Burrone.

He said pricing for the Pfizer pill had not yet been set, but said that “in a competitive environment… the prices tend to come down” to a low level.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) meanwhile suggested it might cost around $700 per Pfizer treatment course, in line with molnupiravir.

The medical charity said it was disheartened by the deal, saying restrictive voluntary licences were no substitute for guaranteed global access to Covid tools to bring the pandemic under control.

Source: AFP

Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from leukemia in all parts of the world, and many ultimately lose their fight against the disease. While there is currently no cure for leukemia, it is possible to treat the cancer to prevent it from coming back.

A biochemistry researcher at the University of Yaounde Medical School in Cameroon’s capital said she developed a plant-based solution to fight leukemia.

“My solution is to make xenografts by administering an aqueous extract of plant bark powder to mice capable of developing tumors,” Francine Tankeu told Anadolu Agency (AA). “We make them leukemic beforehand and then we follow their evolution.”

The next step is to arrange the remedy in a final physical aspect of the drug as it will be used in a patient and according to its compatibility.

“This other step includes several aspects such as toxicological studies to ensure its safety before moving to the human stage (of trials),” said Tankeu.

She noted results on animals show a significant regression of tumor volume after 30 days.

“The survival rate is good, but the test has not yet been performed on a human patient. The steps to be taken before clinical testing, like human trials, are not complete and I don’t have enough funds,” she said.

The idea to use plants came from her daily life, where she noticed a majority of the population uses traditional plant-based medicine for diseases.

“The beneficial effects of Syzygium Guineense, the plant I use, are not negligible because its activity is anti-leukemic. Beyond being used as a spice for local dishes, it is also used for the treatment of certain cancers,” she said.

‘Improved traditional medicine’

She figured if she could establish a scientific basis for the traditional use and formulate an improved traditional medicine, it would be “very useful.”

The methodology is “in tune with African socio-cultural realities” she said.

Tankeu wants to formulate “an improved traditional medicine” and to study the effects of the leafy forest plant when it is administered in conjunction with anti-cancer drugs to see if there would be a synergistic effect or a reduction in side effects from chemotherapy.

She received the Young Talent Award In 2020 from the For Women in Science in Sub-Saharan Africa program at the L’Oreal Foundation and UNESCO.

This prize allowed her to realize her work is “an effective contribution to the problem of cancer,” she said.

But the fight remains “vast, long and far from being won in view of the growing number of patients in the world as well as the obstacles to scientific research,” said Tankeu.

It is “very complicated in my country” for several reasons she told the Turkish news agency.

Notably, the lack of financial avenues, absence of technical platforms and prejudice against female scientists.

She noted that teachers prefer to work with male researchers because of perceptions that family responsibilities of women present obstacles.

In addition, “many children die before they are even put on treatment because the standard of living of the inhabitants is lower than the cost of examinations for an accurate diagnosis,” she said.

The number of cancer cases is increasing annually in Cameroon and diagnosis times are long – more than 60% of patients arrive at an advanced stage and treatment is expensive – according to the Health Ministry.

Tankeu also lamented about erroneous beliefs and perceptions

“It is a real barrier,” she said.

Despite the situation, the young biochemist said she views the future of her solution with “a lot of optimism, especially given the previous results.”

Source: Daily Sabah

The rising number of cases of Covid-19 in Europe is of “grave concern” and the region could see another half a million deaths by early next year, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.

With 78 million cases in the WHO’s European region—which spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia—the cumulative toll now exceeded that of South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Western Pacific, and Africa combined, the organisation said.

“We are, once again, at the epicentre,” WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a press conference.

Kluge noted that the “current pace of transmission across the 53 countries of the European Region is of grave concern”.

According to “one reliable projection” the current trajectory would mean “another half a million Covid-19 deaths” by February, Kluge added.

The increases were observed “across all age groups”,  he said.

Kluge blamed the soaring caseload on “insufficient vaccination coverage” and “the relaxation of public health and social measures”.

Hospital admission rates were higher in countries with lower vaccination rates, he said.

Measures like testing, tracing, physical distancing and the use of face masks were still part of the “arsenal” in fighting the virus.

“We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of Covid-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place,” Kluge said.

The number of new cases per day has been rising for nearly six consecutive weeks in Europe and the number of new deaths per day has been rising for just over seven consecutive weeks, with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day, according to official country data compiled by AFP.

Over the past seven days, Russia has led the rise with 8,162 deaths, followed by Ukraine with 3,819 deaths and Romania with 3,100 deaths, according to the data.

Source: AFP

Cameroon will inoculate all personnel on state payroll against COVID-19 next month as part of its nationwide vaccination program, a government minister has said.

The civil servants will be vaccinated from Nov. 6 to 30, Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform Joseph Le said Thursday.

“The preservation of the health of personnel at the service of the state is both a major concern and a duty of public authorities,” he said. “We must ensure that the work environment is not a place where the virus spreads, but a framework for professional development and health promotion for all.”

Le said vaccination will not be compulsory but urged all civil servants to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their loved ones.

On Wednesday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Cameroon, quoting government statistics, said the central African nation reported 4,024 positive cases from Sept. 21 to 28, the highest weekly count since March, and raised an alert on the presence of the Delta variant.

Cameroon wants to vaccinate 60 percent of the target population by January 2023, but as of Sept. 22, only 0.9 percent had been vaccinated, according to figures from the Expanded Program on Immunization.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Cameroon Forum for Medical and Paramedical Sciences, Camfomedics founded on May 7, 1994 in Tübingen by Cameroonian students of medicine, pharmacy and dentistry in the Federal Republic of Germany have a new leader-she is Dr. Bernice Ndofor.

The iron lady who regularly invokes her story when explaining her commitment to better health for all, received the iMed Award 2019 for her professional handling of Camformedics Academy in Cameroon that was tasked to support health care facilities in rural and urban areas.

Dr. Bernice Ndofor has also received praise for her commitment to improving maternal and child health care, both during the tenures of Dr Ivo Azeh and Dr. Fonye Ki Nyui.  

As many observers noted after she was elected on Saturday October 2, 2021, Dr Bernice Ndofor was able to secure the leadership position at Camformedics mainly thanks to the support of the all its members. On social media, people from all over Germany expressed their joy that a woman had become head of Camformedics for the first time.

Biography: Bernice N. NDOFOR – M. D, Specialist in Internist /Emergentologist

A graduate from Charité- Berlin, the renowned physician did her specialization in Carl-Thiem-Klinikum Cottbus, where she worked for eight years. She made a name for herself as the first black woman to head the Central Emergency (A.E) in Cottbus.

In 2016, she moved to Nordrhein-Westfalen and established her own private practice. Dr. Bernice Ndofor is an Ex Student of Queen of the Rosary High school Okoyong- Mamfe and CCAST- Bambili.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Essen, Germany

Nurses in Cameroon are marking this year’s World Hospice and Palliative Care Day (October 9) with visits to terminally ill patients in the country’s restive North-West and South-West regions. The regions’ ongoing separatist conflict has left hundreds of patients unable to receive regular in-home hospice care. Cameroon’s nurses are calling for that to change.

Mundih Noelar Njohjam a doctor treating patients with terminal diseases at Cameroon Baptist Conventions Health Services in Bamenda, capital of the English-speaking North-West region, says the separatist crisis is depriving many patients of palliative care.

“The high level of insecurity caused by the ongoing crisis has negatively affected access to palliative care for many patients, especially those living with cancers. Patients with terminal diseases are unable to get to health facilities where they can receive adequate palliative care. Consequently, they have to settle for suboptimal palliative care,” Njohjam said.

The Cameroon Association of Terminally Ill Patients reports that more than 900 patients are denied access to palliative care in the English-speaking western regions.

The association says hundreds of patients in need of help to relieve them of pain and suffering are dying in towns and villages. They say several hundred caregivers have fled hospitals in Cameroon’s troubled English-speaking regions since the separatist crisis escalated in 2017.

Hundreds of patients who have the means relocate to safer French-speaking towns to receive medical care for their terminal illnesses. The patients say they prefer to relocate to Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, and Douala, a coastal city where many of their family members have rushed to for safety.

Among others, the nurses visited the Yaounde residence of Christophe Esselebo, a 67-year-old retired teacher who has been living with HIV and liver disease for three years. He says he faces a great deal of stigma from family members and friends.

He says to prevent developing a mental health crisis, he avoids feelings of emotional attachments with family members who have abandoned him because of his condition. He says he avoids mental trauma during his remaining days by being positive about life and making friends on social media with people who think positively.

Esselebo says he regularly follows up treatment recommended by his doctor.

The visit to homes of people living with terminal diseases this year was organized by the Cameroon Association of Terminally Ill Patients and Santo Domingo Cameroon, a center that cares for people with terminal diseases.

Fulbert Kenfack Jiofack, coordinator of Santo Domingo Cameroon, says poverty pushes 70% of sick Cameroonians to seek assistance from African traditional healers. He says because of either illiteracy or lack of financial means, families abandon their members diagnosed with terminal diseases at home until they die.

Jiofack said fighters in the English-speaking western regions and government troops should avoid inflicting more pain on patients who are already suffering from diseases that cannot be cured. He said medical staff members should be allowed to give health care to people in need.

The nurses ask civilians to stop prejudging the terminally ill in Cameroon.

Cameron’s health ministry says the greatest prejudice is shown toward those suffering from infectious terminal diseases such as HIV.

The health ministry says stigma is driven by the thought that those receiving palliative care will die soon and that terminal illnesses are divine punishment for wrongdoing. Some families prohibit palliative caregivers from visiting their sick patients at home, the government reports.

Nurses said the role of palliative caregivers is to ease patients’ physical pain with medicines and provide psychological, emotional and spiritual counseling to people who have life-threatening and terminal illnesses.

Source: VOA

Dr. John Nkengasong, a U.S. citizen born in Cameroon, would be the first person of African descent to hold the position to coordinate the U.S. response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide. But the US Senate must approve his eventual nomination.

Dr. John Nkengasong also served as the director for the African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Coronavirus, which for almost two years has been a virus of the cities and big towns, has begun spreading to smaller towns and is very likely to reach villages that, know nothing about the virus and how it can be prevented.

The virus, which is suspected of having killed many people in Cameroon’s major cities, has now found a new place in Mamfe where some ten people have been diagnosed with COVID-19-related health complications, with two actually dying.

For the past eighteen months, the people of Mamfe have been going about their business as if they are beyond the virus’ reach, but this indifference has simply varnished following the announcement of the virus’ presence in a town  where people love shaking hands and do live a social life that many consider as dangerous.

The country’s military is highly suspected of bringing this virus to the shores of Mamfe as most of the soldiers posted to Mamfe are from Yaoundé and Douala where the virus has been decimating the  population segment that  is either too vulnerable due to age or co-morbidities.

The Cameroon Concord News Group’s correspondent in Mamfe has been talking to many people on the streets of Mamfe and most of them are really scared, with the majority assuming that the military is to blame for the importation of this virus into a town that has been COVID-19-free.

“We have not been wearing mask here and I doubt if many people will be adopting a new lifestyle which includes wearing masks and avoiding people. If this virus really decides to take up residence here, then we have a huge crisis on our hands,” the desperate Mamfe resident said.

He added that “with the socio-political chaos playing out here in most of Manyu Division, we do not know where we can go to stay out of this virus’ path. Many people are scared. Who will help us? Neither Amba fighters nor the government can help us in this regard. The government is ill-equipped to deal with this ugly situation and Amba fighters cannot use their guns to kill this insidious virus. We just have to continue praying, but I know that prayers alone will not roll back the virus from our Division,” the Mamfe resident said.

Meanwhile, many residents of the city informed the Cameroon Concord News Group’s correspondent in Mamfe that Doctors Without Borders have been in Mamfe for close to one gear where they set up an isolation center which closed sometime in August and once the health organization shut down this facility and left because there were no COVID-19 cases, the virus showed up, coming in through the back door.

However, residents of the town have confirmed that Doctors Without Borders are back and their presence in the town is reassuring.

By Julius Agbor Bate in Mamfe

Africa wants to buy Covid-19 vaccines, rather than keep waiting for donor-funded doses to arrive, the African Union said Tuesday, imploring producers to give the continent a fair shot at market access.

The AU also urged manufacturing nations to lift export bans so the continent can begin to address for itself the glaring inequity in access to coronavirus jabs, as wealthy nations hog available doses.

“Vaccine sharing is good. But we shouldn’t have to be relying on vaccine sharing,” Strive Masiyiwa, the AU’s Covid-19 special envoy, told a press conference at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

“We want to buy from those same manufacturers.”

The major Covid-19 vaccine producers have a moral responsibility to ensure equitable access to end the pandemic, he said, but “those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access”.

Just nine vaccine doses have been administered per 100 people in Africa, according to an AFP calculation.

That figure stands at 118 doses per 100 people in the United States and Canada; 104 in Europe; 85 in Asia; 84 in Latin America and the Caribbean; 69 in Oceania and 54 in the Middle East.

African nations “have been left behind by the rest of the world”, said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The UN health agency chief spelled out the danger of leaving Africa so poorly covered by vaccines.

“This doesn’t only hurt the people of Africa, it hurts all of us,” he said.

“The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue, and the higher the chances that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective.”

– ‘Miracle’ –

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told the press conference that just under 3.5 percent of the eligible African population has been fully vaccinated.

The WHO wants 40 percent fully immunised in every country by the end of the year and 70 percent of the world’s population by mid-2022.

It has called for countries to hold off administering extra booster shots until the end of December to allow more people to get a first dose instead.

The AU has set up the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, or AVAT, to purchase jabs for member states in a scheme to run alongside the donor-funded global Covax facility.

Masiyiwa said Africa was also setting up its own manufacturing capabilities and called for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on the vaccines, as a common good.

He said: “It was a great miracle to have these vaccines. Now let this miracle be available to all mankind.”

Source: AFP