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

The WHO regional Director of Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti recently held a press conference where he highlighted the state of affairs regarding the Monkeypox virus status in seven countries of Africa, including Cameroon.

He said that since the beginning of 2022, there have been recorded instances of Monkeypox in Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, the Democratic republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“WHO and allies are combining forces to immediately determine the scale and source of the worldwide pandemic. So yet, recorded cases have no confirmed travel linkages to endemic locations. Based on the available information, they have mostly, but not entirely, been detected amongst gay men having sex with men (MSM) requesting care in general care and sexual health clinics.”

“What is critically crucial today is to prevent any risk for a repetition of the inequitable availability of COVID-19 vaccinations encountered by African countries earlier in the epidemic. We must have one integrated worldwide response to the monkeypox virus to prevent it becoming prevalent in other nations. This requires equal access to the appropriate knowledge and tools, and information sharing to enhance understanding of the severity of the situation.”

“African nations may probably have accumulated some immunity against monkeypox. But fair access to effective vaccinations is crucial to safeguard the continent’s especially vulnerable groups, including health professionals and the contacts of patients.”

“As WHO in the African Region, we are working together with African governments, technical as well as financial partners and regional institutions to enhance laboratory diagnosis, disease surveillance, preparedness, and response operations to stem future spread of the virus.”

Source: The Paradise

Cameroon Minister of Public Health, Manaouda Malachie on Thursday said Cholera has spread to eight of Cameroon’s 10 regions including the Center region, killing 272 people since October 2021.

Manaouda told a press briefing in the capital city of Yaounde that as of Oct. 20, 12,952 people were known to have been infected.

Efforts were underway to stop the disease from spreading but people needed to observe basic hygienic rules and go for treatment immediately if they noticed symptoms, the minister stressed.

On Wednesday, health officials in Southwest where the highest number of deaths and cases had been recorded, began vaccinating children in schools against cholera as part of nationwide measures to curb the disease.

Officials blamed poor sanitation and hygiene conditions for the spread of the epidemic.

Cholera is a highly virulent disease characterised in its most severe form by a sudden onset of acute watery diarrhoea that can lead to death by severe dehydration.

Source: Xinhuanet

Officials in Cameroon say the number of mental health patients in the country has more than doubled in the past year, as the country deals with a separatist crisis in its western regions and Boko Haram clashes in the north.

Fonbe Hedwick is the director of the Vine Mental Health Center, in Bameda, capital of Cameroon’s volatile Northwest region.

He says his center was chosen for World Mental Health Day activities in Bamenda because the number of psychiatric patients at the center increased from less than 20 in 2021 to over 100 in October 2022.

“We are receiving those who have gone through traumas, and they are sad, many who complain of sleeplessness, some who cannot be able to control themselves, they are so restless, so agitated. Some with severe anger issues. They present emotional and behavioral tendencies which are uncontrollable,” said Fonbe.

Fonbe said many families lack the resources to care for psychiatric patients at home and either abandon the patients at the center or put them on the streets.

Rebecca Nkwate is the highest government official in charge of mental patients in the Northwest region. She says the number of psychiatric patients seeking help in the region has increased from less than 2,500 to over 6,000 within the past year.

“Some of them come here already abused, so we listen to their story to increase their morale and in the course of looking for solutions, it may require that we go for home visits,” said Nkwate. “We help them at the level of the police and we work with those that go to the hospital when it comes to trauma management. We make sure that they enjoy the same human rights like other people.”

Overall, Cameroon says the number of mental patients in the central African state has more than doubled from about 10,000 to 23,000 in the past 12 months.

The government says with the separatist crisis in western regions and Boko Haram terrorism on the northern border decreasing, humanitarian workers are better able to find and assist patients abandoned in villages where fighting was intensive.

Laure Mengueme is the director of mental health at Cameroon’s Ministry of Health. She says many people lost family members in the conflicts or experienced acts of abuse, violence and trauma, triggering mental health crises.

She urges civilians to seek medical help instead of taking psychiatric patients to traditional healers or pastors who claim they have miracle solutions to mental health problems.

She says a majority of the mental patients government workers are assisting to recover their health are nervous, aggressive, irritated and violent. She simply says doctors and therapists should exercise more patience with psychiatric patients when the patients become violent. She says the country counts very much on doctors and therapists to reduce the growing number of mental patients.

The World Health Organization reports that growing social and economic inequalities, protracted conflicts, violence and public health emergencies continue to take a toll on mental health, in Cameroon and worldwide.

The U.N. says a staggering 84 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced in 2021 leading to an increase in the number of people in need of mental health care.

The 2022 World Mental Health Day theme is “Make mental health and well-being for all a global priority.”

Source: VOA

Separatists in Cameroon have abducted five hospital staffers in the western town of Kumbo. The rebels say they were retaliating after Cameroon’s military entered the hospital and arrested or killed some of their fighters. Hospital workers tell VOA both military troops and rebels abused them.

Cameroon’s Bui Unity Warriors separatists say they abducted five health workers from Banso Baptist Hospital, BBH, Sunday. Bui is an administrative unit in Cameroon’s English speaking Northwest region.

In videos circulating on social media, including WhatsApp and Facebook, the separatists say hospital workers were abducted in retaliation after the military entered the hospital, killing one fighter and arresting three other fighters.

The fighters were hospital patients who had been wounded in battles with the military last week.

In another video circulating online, fighters claiming to be members of the Bui Unity Warriors present a man they say collaborated with government troops, who attacked fighters inside BBH.

The Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon identifies the man as Shiyntum Sergius, a priest at the parish in Vekovi, an English-speaking village in Bui, who had also been abducted.

The Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon, The Cameroon Baptist Convention that owns BBH, and the Presbyterian Church all confirm that troops attacked BBH, killed a fighter and arrested three other fighters. The churches say in retaliation, armed separatists abducted five medical staff members from the hospital and the priest, who is accused of collaborating with the rebels.

Joseph Sahfe is a patient who says other patients are scared that the hospital may stop rendering services to the sick. He spoke via the messaging app WhatsApp from the town of Kumbo, where BBH is located.

“What will become of the patients who depend on this lone institution for survival? To the best of my knowledge, a hospital treats patients without inquiring who you are,” said Sahfe. “It is a neutral ground in the midst of a crisis like the one we are experiencing. Where will the patients go if she [Baptist Hospital] has to close her doors as Doctors Without Borders did?”

In a release Monday, the hospital dismissed rumors that disgruntled staff are planning to stop working. The hospital management said it will continue saving lives despite the challenges.

The military says its troops organized raids on separatist camps in Bui last week and killed at least 7 fighters, including two self-proclaimed generals. The military said troops were searching for wounded fighters hiding in the community but did not comment on if government troops invaded the hospital.

Nick Ngwanyam is a member of the Cameroon medical council, an association of Cameroon medical doctors. Ngwanyam says it is unfortunate that both government troops and rebels are invading hospitals, which are out to save lives and reduce suffering.

“We are pushing those institutions to shut down because hospital staff [workers] feel unsafe working under those conditions and therefore, we are putting the lives of the communities in danger and peril, and we are doing ourselves a lot of harm,” said Ngwanyam. “It doesn’t matter what the reasons are, be it by the military or the boys who are fighting, we are hurting ourselves, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and the government needs to take its responsibility and stop this war [crisis].”

The Banso Baptist Hospital says it receives several hundred patients each day. Most are victims of the separatist crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking western regions.

Cameroonian authorities have always accused aid groups of helping separatists in the country’s English-speaking western regions, a charge the hospital has strongly denied, saying its mission is only to save lives.

In August 2021, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, announced that it had withdrawn emergency health care services amid the separatist crisis. The military accused MSF of, among other charges, aiding separatist fighters in the medical aid group’s hospitals.

MSF denied the accusation and said its only goal is to save lives irrespective of whose life it is.

Source: VOA