Malaria
Malaria is the most widespread parasitic infection in the world. It constitutes a major risk for over 2 billion lives. Even though Africa south of the Sahara has just over 10% of the world's population, it has 85 - 90% of malaria cases. Children aged below 5 years are the most affected by malaria.
In Cameroon, malaria remains the first cause of morbidity and mortality among the most vulnerable groups made up of pregnant women and children aged below 5 years. It is endemic all year round in almost the entire country and the transmission period varies from 7 - 12 months. However in areas around the north and also on the hills in the western part of the country, transmission is pretty low lasting only 1- 3 months.
Health System statistics show that it is responsible for 35 - 40% deaths in health facilities: 50% morbidity among children below 5 years of age, 40 - 45% medical consultations and 30% hospitalisations. Malaria is also the cause of 26% loss of man working days and constitutes 40% of family health expenses. To compound the situation there has been progressive increase in the resistance of the plasmodium parasite to cheap anti-malarials giving rise to a change in policy in Cameroon where the combination therapy of artesunate and amodiaquin and also co-artem was adopted since 2004.
During the last DHS in 2004 it was found that only 1 household out of 5 (20%) own and use an ITN. The same survey found that even though up to 11% of children aged below 5 years had slept under a bed net the previous night, only 1% slept under an insecticide treated net. The situation must have improved by now since the NMCP in recent months distributed ITNs free of charge to target populations during vaccination campaigns.
47% of pregnant women were administered IPT during their last pregnancy and only 40% of U-5 children received anti-malarials 24 hours within onset of malaria/fever.
