Yaounde, Cameroon Africa. (Cameroon News) – The United States of America (USA) has offered a financial and technical assistance of FCFA 11.3 billion to support the ongoing fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon.
The assistance is within the framework of the US President’s Emergency Assistance Plan against AIDS.
“We estimate that 7,300 babies born in Cameroon in 2010 were sero-positive. The country is among the 22 nations that count 90 percent mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus”, the Chargé d’Affaire in the US Embassy in Cameroon, Lisa Peterson said in Cameroon’s capital city, Yaounde on Thursday, July 21, 2011.
Mama andre fouda omgba Cameroon Minister of public health
He was at the Yaounde Central Hospital where besides announcing the global US assistance to the fight against HIV/AIDS in Cameroon for 2011, also handed medical equipment to the hospital worth FCFA 28.2 million.
“There are about one million cases of pregnancies in Cameroon per year and over 900,000 of the newly born babies survive”, Cameroon’s Health Minister, André Mama Fouda disclosed during the occasion at the Yaounde Central Hospital.
The Minister further said only between 39 to 40 percent of pregnant women attend antenatal clinic.
Since 2005, the government of Cameroon is implementing an integrated anti-HIV/AIDS programme which a key priority action to reduce the rate of mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
The 2011 US government assistance to fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon that stands at FCFA 11.3 billion, registers a substantial increase from that of 2010 that was FCFA 6.6 billion.
Pin It