Cameroon Health News: Cameroon Warned Of Malarial Outbreaks
Yaounde, Cameroon Africa(Cameroon News) – The Health Department Of Cameroon is ensuring that they do everything within their means to ensure that the deadly disease malaria which has robber innumerable lives in Africa is kjept under control in the country.

Malaria has since time immemorial been associated with Africa since the killer disease has been behind the loss of innumerable lives in the continent. Trying to keep the disease under control has always been a challenge for the various governments in the continent and most countries have messed it up what with having applied the remedial measure wrongly or with having adopted the wrong control measures.

Cameroon has probably been one country that has been relatively successful in the continent in keeping the disease under control. The government and Health departments of their part have deployed various measures to manage the treatment of the disease like providing treatment of malaria for children under five years free of cost an order issued by the Head of State and the distribution of treated mosquito bed nets regularly also free of cost. This is one initiative that is being planned again.

Public Health Minister, Andre Mama Fouda, on June 15, 2011 met up with all ten Regional Governors in Yaounde to educate them on the relevance of the campaign to provide around 8.7million treated mosquito bed nets to Cameroonians. The nets are supposed to be sustainable and are expected to have the strength to support the common man to battle the disease which has been one of the major reasons behind the staggered development of the countries in Africa. If numbers are taken, with a population of about 19 million inhabitants, if 8.7 million mosquito nets are distributed, with a ratio of about two people per bed net, all Cameroonians should be ideally proofed from the disease by being under a mosquito net.

But the initiative to be totally effective should go much beyond just sensitizing the stakeholders. In the past there have been innumerable occasions where the free gifts that were intended to be distributed among the general public just ended up either cluttering the markets or filling up the pockets of these so called stakeholders. People are either unaware of such a campaign or are scared of the repercussions of questioning the authorities which is why most of such schemes do not reach the target audience.

There have been a lot of instances where public funds have been allocated for a particular project in a certain region but where a project has never taken off in spits of the fact that the government had provided the funds to the concerned authorities in those regions at the beginning of the financial year. Most of the domestic population are finding it immensely difficult to manipulate the large number of development projects that require to be undertaken in each region and the locals can hardly make out what funds have been allocated for each project and tp which extent those funds have been used.

Under such circumstances it is crucial that the government should not just stop with sensitizing people at the center on the project but on the other hand it is equally important that the locals are made aware that the treated nets are being given free and that no monetary transactions are required. Otherwise just like a lot of other schemes even this one may just turn out to be nothing more than a fairy tale and in the deal the country would lose out on a golden chance to shoo away malaria.

Hence the idea of the Ministry of Public Health and the Regional Governors, who are the primary stakeholders in the free distribution of treated nets to put in place a system for regular follow up of the nets and to guarantee that they are provided to at least three quarters of the population is not a bad one at all.