Robert Tumasang
4 August 2008
Some children in Bamvelle, an urban slum in the outskirts of Bertoua, were recently administered Vitamin A.
The Vitamin A food supplement was administered to children between 12 and 59 months as part of activities to mark the 2nd Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Week launched on Tuesday, July 29.
Although no statistics are yet available as to the number of sick and malnourished children in the East Province, a walk through the squalid Bamvelle quarters leaves no one indifferent to the pain and anguish felt by the hungry children.
"We need to keep these children alive and healthy," Health Minister, Andre Mama Fouda, said as he dropped the watery food supplement into the mouths of the children.On the national plane, only 19.1 percent of children between 12 and 59 months have been administered the supplement, while only 48.61 percent of women in the neo-natal state have received same.
Mama Fouda said the 2nd Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Action Week "targets children between 0 to 5 years, pregnant women and women in neo-natal state."
Besides Vitamin A, these categories of people will also benefit from free vaccination and the preventive treatment of malaria.
"We have to vaccinate all children between 0 and 59 months against poliomyelitis, all women of child-bearing age between 15 years to 49 years against tetanus, administer preventive malaria treatment to women who are at least three months pregnant and deworm children between 12 and 59 months...Our ambition is to eradicate these ailments," he stressed.
The overall objective of the campaign is to reduce infant mortality by two-thirds and maternal deaths by three-quarters by 2015 in order to meet up with the exigencies of the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs.
Vaccination coverage in the East Province is still quite low. According to the East Provincial Delegate for Public Health, only six of the fourteen health districts in the province have been covered for anti-tetanus vaccine.
While launching the 2nd Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition Week in Bertoua, Mama Fouda called on the population, especially parents to collaborate with the various health teams that were sent out to the field from July 29 to August 5 to vaccinate children, pregnant and neo-natal women, administer Vitamin A to children and administer anti-malaria treatment to pregnant women.
The Health Minister also visited the Bertoua Provincial Hospital, which has neither a surgeon nor an eye specialist and filled with obsolete and dilapidated equipment manned aging personnel.
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