The inquest of a Cameroonian woman who died in a Cork hospital after the stillbirth of her daughter will open in October, according to the Cork City Coroner.

Geraldine Yankeu died on August 8 last year at Cork University Maternity Hospital, some days after the stillbirth of her daughter Mary. A crowdfunding campaign was put in place by the Cameroonian community in Cork to have the bodies of the mum and baby repatriated to Cameroon.

Last Thursday, the Irish Examiner was told by the Cork City Coroner’s office that the deaths of both Ms Yankeu and her daughter Mary “were treated as natural and no inquest was required”.

However, on Monday, a statement from the office said: “Baby Mary Yankeu’s death was treated as a “Natural Death”. Ms Geraldine Yankeu’s death is due for hearing and will be listed for hearing as soon as a suitable date becomes available.”

Since the introduction of the 2019 Coroners Act, inquests into maternal deaths — during and after giving birth — are mandatory. In a statement to the Irish Examiner, the Cork City Coroner, Philip Comyn, said that the death of Ms Yankeu is scheduled for a full inquest hearing.

He added: “It is my intention to have a preliminary hearing in October.”

Referring to a call by the National Women’s Council for an inquest into the death as “soon as possible” in Friday’s Irish Examiner, Mr Comyn said the NWC “have never contacted me regarding this lady”.

He also said he had inquests taking place on Thursday, resulting in him not being in a position to respond to a query from the Irish Examiner on Wednesday about the length of time an inquest takes to be heard following on from the date of death.

Mr Comyn said that his office has to contend with “major staff shortages”, pointing out that it has just two staff. In comparison, Dublin City Coroner’s office has 24 staff. Dublin and Cork coronial districts are the only two full-time ones in the country.

The issue of staffing at the Cork City Coroner’s Office has been raised on a number of occasions in the past year in the Dáil amid concerns about delays in inquests.

Reform of the coronial system is under investigation at present by the Oireachtas Justice Committee, which held public hearings into the current system across the country in May. During the hearings, concern was also raised about the level of staffing in Cork.

Source: Irish examiner

Cameroon on Wednesday launched a campaign dubbed AIDS-Free Holiday to create awareness of the epidemic among students on holiday.

Cameroon was resolute to combat sexually transmitted infections especially HIV/AIDS among young people, the country’s Minister of Youth affairs and Civic education, Mounouna Foutsou said while officially launching the campaign in the capital Yaounde.

“Holiday is a period of strong mobilization of young people. We want to keep them safe during this period,” Foutsou said.

As part of the campaign which will run till August 31, over 600 young peer educators will be dispatched to 10 regions of the country to sensitize holidaymakers on the dangers of irresponsible sexual behavior.

Officials said, youths between 14-24 years are the key target of the campaign which will be guided by the theme “HIV or COVID-19, you can protect yourself, stay safe”.

According to the Ministry of Public Health, six out of 10 infections in the Central African nation are among young people with girls being the most vulnerable.

AIDS-Free Holidays has sensitized over 11 million young people, screened over 300,000, and distributed close to three million male and female condoms since it was launched in 2003, according to statistics provided by Synergies Africaines, a non-governmental organization run by Chantal Biya that organizes the sensitization annually.

About 2.9 percent of Cameroonians aged 15-49 are infected with HIV and only 39.1 percent of young Cameroonians aged 15-24 know about HIV prevention, according to a 2021 annual report published by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS.

Source: Xinhuanet

Militants of the Boko Haram group have killed a health worker in Cameroon’s Far North region, according to local and security sources.

The militants attacked a small medical store of the nurse overnight into Saturday in Tchika locality of the region, killing him and making away with some medical products, an army official in the region familiar with the attack told Xinhua.

The militants, who had targeted health workers for abduction in the region in the past, probably failed to kidnap him and decided to kill him, the officer who asked not to be named said.

Locals said, the deceased provided basic vital medical assistance to the community.

Cameroon army is stepping up offensives against the group following repeated attacks on civilians by the militants.

On Thursday, the army killed six militants in a repelled attack in Nguetchewe locality of the region, according to security reports.

Source: Xinhuanet

A resurgence of cholera has killed 200 people since October 2021 in Cameroon, where more than 10,300 cases of the disease have been reported, the health minister said on Thursday (August 4).

Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated, periodically appears in Cameroon, a central African country with a population of more than 25 million.

Since the start of the cholera epidemic in late October 2021, 200 people have died out of a total of 10,322 cases, Cameroon’s health minister, Manaouda Malachie, announced in a tweet.

Five of Cameroon’s ten regions, including the Littoral, which includes the economic capital Douala, and the Centre region, which includes the capital Yaoundé, are affected by the epidemic, according to the health minister.

“Beware!!! Let us observe hygiene measures,” Malachie urged.

The previous outbreak of cholera killed 66 people in Cameroon between January and August 2020.

In early 2021, the WHO estimated that there were 1.3 to 4 million cases of cholera and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from the disease worldwide each year.

Source: AFP

Charity group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Monday announced its withdrawal from two towns in Cameroon’s English-speaking South-West region.

It said the decision follows the arrest of four members of its local team and the suspension of its activities by the government.

The charity said a small team and adequate resources will still be maintained in Kumba and Mamfe towns.

MSF said it would also continue to work for the release of its staff and engage with the authorities for a safe and secure environment for its operations.

The demand for medical care is high in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon, which have been plagued by a separatist conflict since 2017.

Several hospitals have been burned there – depriving locals of proper healthcare.

In December 2021, the spokesperson of the defence ministry, Colonel Cyrille Atonfack accused MSF of supporting the separatists after they helped a wounded rebel leader.

MSF denied the accusation, saying it treats people regardless of their ethnic, political or religious background.

Source: BBC

After suspending activities in March 2022 to focus on securing the release of four detained staff members, MSF will close projects in Kumba and Mamfe on August 1.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has made the difficult decision to close our projects—which were suspended in March— in Kumba and Mamfe, in the South-West region of Cameroon.

This closure will take effect on August 1, 2022, and will result in the termination of contracts of the majority of MSF’s staff. The closure follows the suspension of MSF activities in the region three months ago.

MSF has been working to secure the release of four colleagues who were unjustly detained in December 2021 and January 2022 while carrying out medical humanitarian activities in in the South-West region. While two of our four colleagues were conditionally released in May, two remain in prison, and all are set to face trial.

A small team will remain in the South-West region to support the release and resolution of the cases, as well as to continue dialogue with the authorities as MSF seeks to re-establish conditions that will enable our teams to carry out medical activities in a safe environment. MSF made this decision as are unable to indefinitely maintain our teams with no clear vision of when we may be able to restart our activities, or when our staff will be able to work without being prosecuted for providing medical assistance to those in need.

MSF will consider reviewing this decision following the trial and based on our exchanges with Cameroon’s government. We continue to seek to improve the humanitarian notification system, so that staff can hopefully return to their jobs in confidence that their lifesaving work will not put them at risk of legal prosecution. MSF remains hopeful that we will be able to find an understanding with the authorities that could enable MSF to support the local health system and deliver medical assistance to local people.

As an international medical humanitarian organization, MSF provides impartial medical support to every patient in need, in line with medical ethics and international humanitarian law.

For almost five years, South-West Cameroon has been impacted by violence between separatist armed groups and state armed forces. MSF provided free health care to people in the region until March 29, 2022, when we made the difficult decision to focus on obtaining the safe release of our colleagues. MSF has specified that, as a neutral and impartial medical organization, it has supported wounded patients from both sides of the conflict in South-West Cameroon, including those from the state armed forces. MSF always provides free medical to those who need it most, based solely on need.

Culled from MSF

A World Health Organization committee of experts will meet on Thursday to discuss the monkeypox outbreak for the first time and decide whether it constitutes a global health emergency.

The one-day meeting, being held in private, was due to start at 1000 GMT, with a statement on the outcome likely to be issued on Friday.

A surge of monkeypox cases has been detected since May outside of the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic. Most of the new cases have been in Western Europe.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has convened an emergency committee to assess whether the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

A PHEIC is the highest alarm that the WHO can sound, under the International Health Regulations — the legally-binding framework agreed by 196 countries on handling public health events that could cross borders.

Besides providing a PHEIC assessment, the committee members are set to give the WHO and its member states advice on how to better prevent the spread of the disease and manage their response.

“The emergency committee will provide a recommendation to the director-general based on scientific principles, and an assessment of the risk to human health, the risk of international spread and the risk of interference with international traffic,” the WHO said.

Tedros then makes the final determination on whether a PHEIC should be declared, based on their advice.

There have been six PHEIC declarations since 2009, the last being for Covid-19 in 2020 — though the sluggish global response to the alarm bell still rankles at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

Emergency committee meetings on the new coronavirus outbreak were held on January 22 and 23, 2020 but the panel could not agree at that time that the PHEIC threshold had been reached.

A PHEIC was declared after a third meeting on January 30. But it was only after March 11, when Tedros described the rapidly-worsening situation as a pandemic, that many countries seemed to wake up to the danger.

More than 2,000 cases

This year, as of June 15, some 2,103 laboratory-confirmed cases and one probable case of monkeypox, including one death, have been reported to the WHO from 42 countries.

But the WHO’s Europe office and the EU health agency ECDC said that 2,746 cases had been recorded in Europe alone as of Tuesday.

“The outbreak of monkeypox continues to primarily affect men who have sex with men who have reported recent sex with new or multiple partners,” the WHO said.

Some 84 percent of the cases have been found in Europe, with the most cases being reported from Britain, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Canada and France.

The WHO says there may have been undetected transmission for some time before its unexpected appearance in multiple countries.

The UN health agency currently assesses the global risk level as moderate, considering the low mortality rate.

Tedros announced on June 14 that he would convene an emergency committee, describing the outbreak as “unusual and concerning”.

Source: AFP

Videos of Manyu women crying in Yaoundé following the burning down of the Mamfe General hospital by unknown arsonists have been trending online and many people have been asking very serious questions about the rationale behind such an action when many in the Division need more than tears. 

 Crying is not always a bad thing. It is an expression of a feeling which could be positive or negative. That is why a famous philosopher said that “crying is the noble language of the eye.” The Manyu women in Yaoundé were, for sure, demonstrating their frustration and anger with whoever undertook the ignoble action of robbing more than 100,000 people of quality healthcare in a region which is already in the grip of multiple issues. 

Mamfe has no lights. Its water system clearly belongs to the distant past. It is still a miracle that water-related illnesses have not yet popped up in the town, especially cholera which has wreaked havoc in Limbe and Buea, two towns whose water supply systems are by far better than what passes for a water system in Mamfe. 

There is no doubt that Manyu women in Yaoundé and indeed across the world love their native Manyu whose capital is Mamfe but converging on a small town hall in Yaoundé to shed tears because of a massive disaster that needs more financial resources than tears is indeed mind-boggling. 

The crowd in Yaoundé a few days ago was impressive. Many of the women showed up with some of the finest worsted fabric the world could boast of. The heels of their shoes were so long and beautiful that you could think they were designed for a purpose and by the goddess of beauty. Their expensive eyewear spoke volumes of their love for earthly things. There was no symptom of poverty on any of the women. The occasion seemed to have been an opportunity for some of them to display their wealth and their love for material things. Indeed, that was not the right attire for mourning women. 

A lot of tears were shed, but what is baffling to many minds is the real objective of those tears. But since no human being is a god, these women can be given the benefit of the doubt. The world can cut them some slack, especially if they transform those tears into real concrete actions. The walls of the cultural center on which they converged had been transformed into wailing walls and many of the women wept and cursed those responsible for the heinous crime.

Their coming together clearly demonstrated that there was power in numbers and these women can use their numbers to breathe faith and hope into the desperate people of Mamfe. The Mamfe population needs help and tears alone will not solve their mounting health issues that are staring them in the face.

Manyu women across the globe can use their numbers to mobilize resources which could be used to alleviate the pain of their fellow women in Manyu Division. The damaged hospital was where many women were delivered of their babies. With this facility up in smoke, the future looks very bleak for young women who look forward to having their own families in Mamfe.

While rebuilding the damaged hospital may not be the responsibility of the people of Manyu Division, it must be remembered that the primary beneficiaries of the quality healthcare that was provided by the General Hospital was the local Manyu population. It certainly will take a lot of time for the burned hospital to be rebuilt, but the women of Manyu can come up with the finances that will help local women have access to healthcare – not by wearing expensive clothes and crying, but by make huge sacrifices.

They could mobilize resources to enhance the capacity of the Preventive hospital which has now been transformed into a full-fledged hospital without proper equipment. Arrangements could be made with the two local clinics in the town for pregnant women and nursing mothers to receive the care they need at affordable prices in those two clinics. This is not an impossibility, and it will not cost anybody an arm and a leg.

Manyu women organizations such as MOHWA, which have brought together thousands of women, could depart from their original goal of promoting the culture of the region to raising funds for a cause that will put smiles on many faces. It is always a pleasure to see women leaving the United Kingdom to the United States to attend a MOHWA occasion, but it is also disheartening to know that ever since the Mamfe General Hospital went up in smoke, MOHWA has not issued a statement, nor has it even tried to raise funds for other women whose future is in danger because of the disaster brought onto the population by some lawless and devilish persons.

MOHWA should not only be a place to show off. It should be a medium through which women can help other women, especially those who need medical attention in Manyu Division.  In this unfortunate situation, every bit will go a long way in alleviating the pain of the residents of Mamfe. The Manyu women in Yaoundé just like their sisters in the Diaspora should be leading key resource mobilization efforts to reduce the pain brought about by the burning of the Mamfe General Hospital.

This is the time for Manyu women to demonstrate their sense of purpose. They can at least skip some of the parties organized by their groups just to help those who are at home. They can also forget about the long heels they want to buy and the expensive clothes and hairpieces just to bring joy to other people. They can cry if they so wish, but the ultimate way of demonstrating love and concern in this context will be to participate in fundraising efforts which will reduce the pain of those whose lives hang in the balance due to the massive fire which gutted the Mamfe General Hospital. Manyu women have to act now, if not, theirs will be the kingdom of tears for many years. 

By Joachim Arrey, PhD