Kini Nsom
25 October 2007
The United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, and the Ministry of Public Health have pledged their commitment to accelerate the campaign for a disease-free reproductive health in Cameroon.
The two parties made the pledge as the UNFPA led by its Resident Representative to Cameroon, Dr. Faustin Yao, donated medical equipment worth FCFA 45 million to the Ministry of Public Health in Yaounde on October 19.
The equipment, according to the UNFPA boss, is expected to be used to stem the tides of obstetric fistula, HIV/AIDS and other diseases that constitute a jinx to reproductive health in the country.
Obstetric fistula refers to a condition of sustained pressure [usually during prolonged labour] of the baby's head on the mother's vagina and the rectum, damaging soft tissues and resulting in a hole; vesico-vaginal and recto-vaginal fistula respectively.
According to experts, the resultant effect of such a disease is the unconscious passing out of urine and faeces by the victim that will lead to trauma, stigmatisation and abandonment.
Going by UNFPA statistics, 162 cases of obstetric fistula were recently identified in the Adamawa, North and Far North Provinces. It is stated that 58.1 percent of the victims are young girls aged between 15 to 19.
Health authorities say thousands of victims in the above-mentioned areas finally die at home because they lack money to go to hospitals.Early marriages and pregnancies, prolonged labour, insufficient emergency obstetric fistula and neo-natal care and services coupled with the lack of referral and evacuation of potential victims to competent health facilities, have been identified as the main causes of the disease.
It was in a bid to reverse this devastating health situation that the UNFPA boss handed over to the Minister of Public Health three scialytiques and 12 frontal lamps that will be distributed to the three provincial hospitals of Maroua, Garoua and Ngaoundere.
Dr. Yao equally gave the Minister four caesarean kits, two mini laparotomy kits that will be dispatched to the district hospitals of Abong Mbang in the East Province and Ebolowa in the South Province.
Fifty delivery and episiotomy kits, 30 complete BIRD extractors and 45 aspirator manuals will be distributed to 50 health centres in the Centre, South, and East Provinces respectively. UNFPA also donated 300,000 female condoms to the Ministry of Public Health to enhance government efforts for HIV/AIDS prevention.
While presenting the medical equipment at the conference hall of the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Yao said the gesture constituted UNFPA's support to government efforts at ameliorating the living conditions of the population by enhancing reproductive health by way of eradicating maternal and neonatal mortality.
He said it is incumbent to enhance the fight against maternal mortality because every three hours in Cameroon, a woman dies while giving birth. The Cameroon government and the UN Population Fund are responding to the drumbeat of one of the Millennium Goals that calls for the reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality by 50 percent before 2010 and by 75 percent before 2015.
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