More children have died in Cameroon after consuming a fake cough syrup, health authorities have revealed.

The deadly fake medicine is branded “Naturcold”, purportedly made by a company named “Fraken Group”, the regional delegate for public health in Northwest Province, Dr Kingsley Che Soh said.

The drug caused fatal kidney failure in six children in the Northwest region, all were under the age of five.

In March, health officials in Southwest Cameroon said three children died from consuming the same fake medicine.

The Directorate of Pharmacy, Drugs and Laboratories at the Ministry of Public Health, Dr Eko Eko warned the drug contained two dangerous ingredients that caused the death of the children.

Their families are said to have bought the drugs along the roadside from unauthorised dealers. These unlicensed dealers often move around selling the medication door-to-door, or out of boxes in markets.

Street dealers

Dr Kingsley Che Soh has warned the population to avoid consuming the product and stay away from drugs sold along the roadside as it may be dangerous to health.

At markets, and other public places, many unlicensed medicine stores operate under the watchful eyes of the government, yet they lack basic documents authorising them to do so.

Drugs displayed  in Cameroon’s national capital Yaoundé

Alex Efiti, who lives in Douala, says it is easy for him to buy drugs along the roadside because it is cheap and accessible.

“Drugs are very expensive in pharmacies. It is not my level. I prefer buying from the guys who move around with it because I trust them and they are cheap”, he said.

Asked about the dangers of consuming these fake drugs, Alex said he has been consuming street medication for years and it has not affected him negatively.

Many believe in these medicine dealers, despite the news of the children’s deaths.

“My aunt got so mad at me for buying her drug at the pharmacy. She wanted me to get it from her usual drug dealer,” said another customer called Samira. “When I tried to tell her it was dangerous, she kept asking me why has it not killed her.”

Deaths

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warns that fake medical products kill almost half a million sub-Saharan Africans every year.

Its new threat assessment report says as many as 267,000 deaths per year are recorded in Sub-Saharan Africa, all linked to falsified and substandard antimalarial medicines.

“In addition, up to 169,271 are linked to falsified and substandard antibiotics used to treat severe pneumonia in children”, it added.

The government of Cameroon has made some strides in stopping the circulation of fake drugs, yet the population is still exposed to them.

Sources say the majority of fake drugs  are smuggled into the country from neighbouring countries through porous border control. Cameroon made a series of arrests last year related to illicit drug circulation.

Punished

Running an unlicensed pharmacy in Cameroon is illegal.

The same law prohibits the display and distribution of drugs on the public road, in fairs or markets. It further forbids even those with a degree in pharmacy to sell drugs by the roadside.

Anyone  selling fake or expired drugs, or intends to sell a fake drug, altered or harmful to human health, can be punished with a jail sentence of up to three years and a fine of up to 3,000,000 CFA francs.

Despite all these laws, the fake drug stores continue to operate in complicity with health agents, forces of law and order and the population. People even sometimes refuse to point out these dealers when health operators carry out controls.

Government Health Minister Manaouda Malachie announced last year his ministry was working on the creation of a national agency for medicines, that will regulate the drug market and strengthen the fight against street drugs.

Source: Humangle

Two more people in Equatorial Guinea have died of Marburg haemorrhagic fever, a cousin of the Ebola virus, bringing the toll of fatalities to 11, the authorities say.

“Two days ago, the monitoring system recorded eight notifications, including the deaths of two people with symptoms of the disease,” Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Work is underway “to strengthen assessment of the spread of the epidemic,” said the statement, read on national television.

“Forty-eight contact cases have been documented, four of whom have developed symptoms, and three who have been quarantined in hospital,” it added.

The Marburg virus is a rare but highly dangerous pathogen that causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.

It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes the Ebola virus, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.

The central African state announced on February 13 that nine people had died from Marburg between January 7 and February 7.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency session the following day.

The national authorities have declared a health alert in the remote northeastern province of Kie-Ntem province and in the neighbouring district of Mongomo, which are located on the border with Cameroon and Gabon.

Measures include a lockdown plan implemented in collaboration with the WHO.

In their statement of February 13, the authorities had reported only three cases of infection in addition to the fatalities — individuals who were being isolated with “mild symptoms” in hospital.

The natural host of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the virus but does not fall sick from it.

But the animals can pass the virus to primates in close proximity, including humans, and human-to-human transmission then occurs through contact with blood or other bodily fluids.

Fatality rates in confirmed cases have ranged from 24 percent to 88 percent in previous outbreaks, depending on the virus strain and case management, according to the WHO.

There are currently no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments.

Potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines are being evaluated, the WHO says.

Source: AFP

You never know what you have until you lose it and this aptly applies to the people of Mamfe, indeed, the entire Manyu Division following the burning of the Division’s lone hospital.

It is almost one year since some God-forsaken arsonists set the Mamfe District Hospital on fire and for one year, the population of Manyu Division has been dealing with a challenging situation as the people are passing through tough health challenges.

Although the government promptly relocated the services which were provided by the Mamfe District Hospital to the preventive health facility in Mamfe, the services at the hospital’s new location leave much to be desired, as health staffs are now bound to treat through guesswork instead by running tests because there are no pieces of medical equipment.

The equipment at the Mamfe District Hospital was damaged alongside the infrastructure when the arsonists set the hospital ablaze.

Many people are dropping dead like flies in Mamfe due to the lack of equipment to properly diagnose their diseases with a view to providing much-needed treatment.

This was the case of a nurse who worked at the Mamfe District Hospital before the heartless arsonists sent an entire people into a state of medical uncertainty.

Mbi Semoh, a native of  Ndekwai, a village some four miles from the Mamfe District Hospital, spent a good part of her life helping the sick at that hospital before the hospital was burned down to ashes. Nobody ever thought that the very first victims of this unfortunate situation would be health workers who had spent their entire lives helping others.

Ms. Mbi last week lost her battle against an unknown illness which had attacked her just a few days earlier.

The absence of state-of- the-art equipment implied Ms. Mbi would take medication without knowing exactly what was ailing her.

The time of voodoo medicine has long gone, but Manyu Division, one of the Divisions in the country with many intellectuals, has been rolled back into the dark ages when demon-possessed arsonists set a modern health facility on fire one year ago.

Ms. Mbi’s case is not isolated. Children, women and the old are dropping dead in Mamfe and it seems nothing can be done to stem this tide of death which is sending many sons and daughters of Manyu to an early grave.

The Mamfe District Hospital is a government health facility and government matters are usually painfully slow.

Nobody knows if there is a budget for the reconstruction of the Mamfe District Hospital which has stood the people of Manyu in good stead for decades.

While things appear to be gloomy, there is however a silver lining on the dark ominous clouds which have been hanging over Manyu for a year.

Manyu sons and daughters around the world are concerned about the family members they have left behind.

No true son or daughter of Manyu forgets his people, even when he or she has been away from home for decades.  Putting smiles on the faces of his or her relatives is the hallmark of the Manyu man and woman, and this explains why there were spontaneous reactions when news that the lone hospital in Manyu Division had been burned down.

In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, women associations, especially MOHWA, immediately sprang into action to mobilize resources for the equipment of the hospital once the government completes the reconstruction. There are CFAF millions sitting in Banks in the West waiting for the right moment for them to migrate to Cameroon.

MECA Toronto in Canada also has a running fundraiser and many people have already sent in their modest contributions though there will still be a massive fundraiser for the hospital in the summer of 2023.

Back home, the Division’s political authorities led by the Minister in Charge of Special Duties at the Presidency, Victor Mengot Arrey, have also raised money for the Mamfe District Hospital and they too are frustrated with the long wait as they are aware that death is hanging over their people like the Sword of Damocles.

A source close to the government has revealed that Manyu Members of Parliament have been in touch with the Minister of Public Health about this hospital.

The source added that a Manyu MP even asked questions during a parliamentary plenary session in November 2022 to the Minister of Public Health about the burned down hospital.

The source also added that Minister Mengot had been active, stressing that he had contacted the Reconstruction Program when Minister Tassong was the Coordinator and something concerning the Mamfe District Hospital is in the pipeline.

Despite these efforts, the people of Manyu Division will have to continue to wait, though death is threatening to claim more lives. The desperation in Manyu has driven many people into the waiting hands of false prophets who are doing their best to offer false consolation in a situation which clearly needs vivid medical solutions.

Due to the uncertainty, many Manyu sons and daughters around the world are calling on those responsible for fundraisers abroad to purchase equipment and send home with whatever is available.

They are calling on MOHWA and Ekpe to step up to the plate and provide much-needed leadership during these trying moments. EKPE USA, in particular, is expected to come up with a clear plan on how more money can be raised for state-of-the- art equipment to be purchased and sent home.

By Dr. Joachim Arrey

New cases of a deadly hemorrhagic fever have been detected in Cameroon, after a deadly outbreak was declared in neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.

Cameroonian authorities detected two suspected cases of Marburg disease in Olamze, a border commune, the public health delegate for the region, Robert Mathurin Bidjang, said on Tuesday.

Equatorial Guinea officially declared its first outbreak of Marburg, an illness similar to Ebola, on Monday. It quarantined more than 200 people and restricted movement last week in its Kie-Ntem province, where the fever was first detected.

The Marburg virus causes a highly infectious disease that can have a fatality rate of up to 88 per cent, according to the WHO. There are no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments to treat it.

The small Central African country has so far reported nine deaths as well as 16 suspected cases of the disease which causes fever, fatigue and blood-stained vomit and diarrhoea, according to the WHO.

The World Health Organisation said earlier it was increasing its epidemiological surveillance in Equatorial Guinea and re-deploying COVID-19 teams to the area.

“Surveillance in the field has been intensified,” said George Ameh, WHO’s country representative in Equatorial Guinea.

“Contact tracing, as you know, is a cornerstone of the response. We have […] redeployed the COVID-19 teams that were there for contact tracing and quickly retrofitted them to really help us out.”

“We’re working on a 30-day response plan where we should be able to quantify what are the exact measures and quantify what are the exact needs,” Ameh said.

Neighbouring Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion.

“On the 13 of February, we had two suspected cases. These are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who have no previous travel history to the affected areas in Equatorial Guinea,” Bidjang said at a meeting in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.

Forty-two people who came into contact with the two children have been identified and contact tracing was ongoing, he added.

Source: Reuters

It is almost one year since the Manyu District hospital was burned down to ashes. The Mamfe District Hospital was the best in the Division and it did, indeed, stand the population in good stead for more than four decades.

No one could have suspected that such a health facility could be razed, but the war which has pitted Cameroon’s English-speaking minority against the country’s government has brought out the worst in human beings.

The devil seem to have found work for many idle hands in the two English-speaking regions of the country and the anger and frustration triggered by years of marginalization and lack of opportunities have made destruction and wickedness fashionable in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions.

The burning of the Mamfe District Hospital in 2022 is one of those tragedies of war which many will never be forgotten. Since the burning of the hospital, it has not been easy for the population of Mamfe town, indeed, the entire Division which depended on the hospital for its health-care needs.

The population is desperate and though the government had moved critical services to the preventive health facility in Mamfe town, the population is still suffering and holds that the services offered leave much to be desired.

The staffs of the health facility, for their part, are finding it challenging to meet up with the public’s health demands. Due to this unfortunate situation, the death rate in the town has gone up by at least 30% with women and children being the hardest hit.

The Mamfe preventive health-care facility was never designed to deal with intensive care and delivery cases. It has never been endowed with the capacity to deal with heart problems, asthma, kidney failure and other critical illnesses but following the burning of the district hospital, this poorly equipped preventive health facility is now charged with the duty of handling very challenging situations though it is bereft of the proper equipment.

According to a medical officer at the health facility who elected anonymity, preventive medicine and curative medicine are different and tasking the preventive health-care facility with such a challenging task without the proper tools and equipment is one tough job which may result in many deaths.

The health official further explained that with the recent influx of IDPs from neighbouring Akwaya Sub-division where multiple inter-ethnic wars are playing out, the health situation in the Manyu Divisional headquarters has gotten worse.

The IDPs are not only flooding the town, they are also flooding the lone preventive health facility in the town as many of them come with diseases like miseales, scabbies, smallpox, typhoid and other diseases which are hard to handle by the medical staff.

The increasing population is also a source of stress for staff   who are required to work without equipment. Their unfriendly working conditions have been compounded by an acute shortage of well-trained government paid staff and a lack of much-needed medications.

Speaking to the only medical doctor at the health facility, our correspondent in Mamfe   learned that the challenges waiting to be addressed include a lack of proper medical infrastructure, the absence of a modern intensive care unit, the non-existence of a neo-natal unit and a Tuberclosis (TB) unit. A shortage of wards and maternity beds is robbing the health workers at the facility of a good night’s sleep.

 The medical expert also advised that the makeshift health facility was in a dire need of delivery beds, stethoscopes, emergency vans, ambulances, laboratory equipment, x-ray machines, electrocardiograms and essential medications like anagelsics and antibiotics.

The government had promised to take appropriate measures to ensure residents of Mamfe got the care they needed but it is yet to match actions with words.

Manyu citizens in the USA, UK and Canada have been raising funds and they are looking forward to the government creating the appropriate environment for the money raised to be wired to the appropriate quarters for the rebuilding of the destroyed hospital.

It is in this context that Manyu Toronto, Canada, will be organizing a massive fundraiser in the summer to acquire modern equipment for the hospital. Manyu Toronto will be pleased to receive assistance from well-wishers across the globe.

By Dr Joachim Arrey with correspondent reports from Mamfe

Cameroon has restricted movement along its border with Equatorial Guinea following “several unexplained deaths” from an unknown illness that causes hemorrhagic fever, Minister of Public Health Malachie Manaouda said on Friday.

The restrictions were imposed in view of “the high risk of importation of this disease and in order to detect and respond to any cases at an early stage”, he said in a statement.

Investigations are under way and epidemiological surveillance has been strengthened with the support of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“At the current stage … there is no reason to be worried,” Malachie said.

Equatorial Guinea said in a statement on Wednesday that it had registered an “unusual epidemiological situation” over the past weeks in its Nsok Nsomo district, Kie-Ntem province, that caused nine deaths in two adjacent communities over a short space of time.

A crisis commission set up by the health ministry reported a tenth death on Thursday.

The symptoms observed were fever, weakness, vomiting blood and diarrhoea. A team was sent to isolate contact cases and take samples that were sent to a regional WHO lab for testing. A woman and her two children were taken to hospital, where they recovered after receiving mild treatment, the statement added.

A WHO spokesperson said the agency was supporting the testing of samples to identify what has caused the deaths and should get results within the coming days.

Cameroon said approximately 20 deaths had been recorded on Wednesday in villages in Equatorial Guinea’s Kie-Ntem province, which borders Cameroon’s Olamze district.

The symptoms of the “non-identified illness” were nose bleeds, fever, joint pain and other ailments that caused death within a few hours, the head of health for the district, Ngu Fankam Roland, said in a statement.

Source:  Al Jazeera

The use of hard drugs is gradually becoming a trend in Buea and many youths find it pleasing to get involved, but the older folks are against the spread of this dangerous weapon of mass destruction.

Recently, some residents in Bomaka, a neighborhood in Buea, took to the streets to protest against hard drugs which created many addicts in the area.

To demonstrate their seriousness, the angry protesters went into the various homes and hideouts of the addicts and brought them to the street where they were administered some public thrashing which has left many addicts thinking.

Since the area is not very populated, it was easy for them to be identified and following the public flogging, many addicts have relocated and the drug dealers are also leaving town, aware that the population might be cooking up something against them.

Talking to one of the protesters, he said that after consuming these substances, the addicts get involved in crimes and make the place unsafe for others, especially young people who are vulnerable and still struggling with identity issues.

According to sources in Bomaka, when these addicts are arrested by the security forces, they are released immediately upon bail and it has become a form of business between the two parties, a reason why the angry population took it upon itself to deal with the issue.

By Cecilia Manjang

Cameroonian health workers and people with HIV marched for World AIDS Day on December 1, calling for access to treatment for patients in conflict areas.

About half a million Cameroonians have HIV, and at least 1,000 live in troubled western regions and the border with Nigeria. The protesters urged Cameroon’s military, separatists, and militants to allow all HIV patients access to needed treatment.

Marie Chantal Awoulbe, who belongs to the Cameroon Network of Adolescents and Positive Youths, which encourages those with AIDS to get regular treatment, took part in the protest and World AIDS Day activities at Chantal Biya International Research Centre in Yaounde. The center carries out research on AIDS, and supports programs to treat and support vulnerable people with HIV.

Awoulbe said her network is asking both armed groups and government troops to stop deaths among people with AIDS where there are armed conflicts by allowing the patients access to regular treatment.

Cameroon’s public health ministry says similar protests and activities to encourage free screening took place in 70 hospitals, with at least 30 hospital workers and people with AIDS taking part at each of the hospitals.

The Cameroon government accuses separatists in the country’s west of attacking hospitals and abducting health care workers. Activists also accuse government troops of attacking and arresting hospital staff suspected of treating civilians the military believes are either fighters or sympathize with separatists.

In April, medical aid group Doctors Without Borders suspended work in Cameroon’s troubled Southwest region to protest the rearrest of four of its staff members. Authorities accused the staffers of cooperating with regional separatists, but the organization denied it.

Medical staff members say intimidation and abduction of health workers, and ceaseless battles between government troops and separatist fighters make it impossible for medical supplies to reach the troubled English-speaking regions.

Twenty-eight-year-old Betrand Lemfon said he and several dozen people with AIDS moved from Jakiri, an English-speaking northwestern town, to Bafoussam, a French-speaking commercial city. He said he and others with the disease were afraid of dying in Jakiri because they did not have access to regular treatment.

“There are a lot of persons out there who are in need of medications, so if we could have the opportunity and chance for medications to always reach every interior part of the North-West region, South-West region who are hit by the crisis, it will help the adolescents, young persons and children living with HIV to take their ARVs [antiretroviral medicines] and stay healthy,” he said.

Lemfon spoke via the messaging app WhatsApp from Bafoussam.

Cameroon’s military says it will protect all health workers and civilians in the troubled regions.

The government says the number of people with the disease in Cameroon has decreased from about 970,000 in 2010 to 500,000 in 2021.

Health officials say the decline is due to increasing awareness of the disease and its consequences. The government says sexual behavior is changing, with the number of people using condoms or abstaining from sex increasing.

Honorine Tatah, a government official in charge of AIDS control in Cameroon, said unlike in 2020 when there was resistance due to lack of awareness, many more civilians now accept systematic screening for HIV.

“During antenatal care, a woman is screened for a number of diseases including hepatitis B, HIV and if you are tested positive, you are eligible for treatment and that treatment will reduce the chances of a child getting infected with HIV. The treatment is free of charge,” Tatah said.

World AIDS Day was the first international day for global health, starting in 1988. It allows people all over the world to join in the battle against HIV, to support those with HIV, and to remember those who have died from an AIDS-related illness.

Source: VOA

A Cameroon-born GP is set to quit his practice in Varese after patients refused to be treated by him telling him to “go home and tend to your goats”, Italian media reported Tuesday.

Enock Rodrigue Emvolo, 48, moved to Italy from Cameroon almost 30 years ago and graduated in medicine from Rome’s Sapienza University.

He told the Italian press that he was fed up with insults from his clients, who call him “the Senegalese man”.

Source:  ANSA