Four children are reported dead after consuming a poisonous chemical used for spraying grass (Monkam) in Tombel, Southwest, Cameroon. From the Video below, the mother of the children, Susan Mentaindam, narrated that the children had mistakenly used the white monkap as table salt to eat their plantains with oil.

This incident comes barely a year after a whole family died in their sleep in Moliwe, Limbe, after consuming a sumptuous porridge cooked with fertilizer mistaken for table salt. 

As Cameroon embraces 2nd generation agriculture where more chemicals will be used to enhance productivity, it it high time, sensitisation is done on chemical use so incidents like this will be prevented.

Culled from Yannick Fonki Ndalay

Cameroonian born Dr. Richard Munang has won the 2016 Africa Environmental Hero Award after a series of faithful services rendered as United Nations Environment’s Climate Change Coordinator for Africa since 2013.

Dr Richard Munang was conferred the title on 1st September 2016 by the International Environmental Round table for Africa in Abuja-Nigeria.

The award was handed by Nigeria’s Honorable Minister of State for Environment Ibrahim Usman Jibril. Dr. Richard dedicated the award to the entire people of the continent and most especially his parents.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may not be mentally fit to serve as the president of the United States, suggests Mika Brzezinski, an American author, journalist and television host.

Brzezinski said on Monday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC that “it’s time to hear from somebody in the mental health community, to look at this person who has been on television for months and give us a sense of what we have going on here.” “Let’s stop pretending we’re dealing with someone who we can completely understand,” she said. “When you see someone who you think has problems, you know it. And there’s not anybody at this table who doesn’t think he has some sort of problem. Let’s ask the questions.”

The guests on the show included Eddie Glaude Jr., a professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University, and former Ted Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler. Brzezinski said that she and Joe Scarborough, the co-host of the program, have been asked multiple times about Trump’s mental health by people.   Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for former US President Jimmy Carter.

Scarborough argued that psychiatrists cannot appear on the show on and diagnose Trump, but Brzezinski pointed out they could look at character traits that “we are seeing repetitively here.” On Sunday, Trump called on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, to release “detailed medical records,” adding he would have “no problem” issuing his own medical report. But his only public medical record — a letter written by his physician that was released in December — has recently been under scrutiny.

The New York billionaire’s doctor, Harold Bornstein, wrote in December that Trump’s medical examination “showed only positive results.” “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote in the letter dated December 4. Doesn’t a positive result mean a negative outcome in medical examinations? Trump’s opponents have asked.

Presstv

A fire has consumed the Maroua Red Cross ware house. All the medical stocks of the international Red Cross society in a warehouse situated in the Kosseyel beiy neighborhood in Maroua have been reduced to ashes by fire.

The rest of the humanitarian support items estimated at tens of thousands of tons would have also gone on flames were it not for the intervention of the Maroua rescue and firefighting brigade.

CRTV

Drugs for the treatment of different types of Hepatitis are now available in some hospitals in Yaounde and Douala. The information was made public by authorities of the Ministry of Public Health and has been confirmed by the President of the Association of Persons living with Hepatitis in Cameroon.

The availability of the drugs will soon be moved to other towns where distribution centres will be created. Patients with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis will receive treatment for free and those who have only the Hepatitis Virus will receive treatment at a reduced and affordable cost.  Approximately four million Cameroonians are living with Hepatitis.

CRTV

An HIV-positive Malawian man, who says he is paid to have sex with children as part of initiation rites, has been arrested on the president’s orders. Eric Aniva, a sex worker known in Malawi as a “hyena”, was the subject of a BBC feature last week.

He told the BBC that he did not mention his HIV status to those who hire him. President Peter Mutharika said the police should investigate and charge him over the cases of defilement he had seemingly confessed to.

The BBC’s Ed Butler, who covered the story about Malawi’s sexual “cleansing practices”, says in some remote southern regions of the country it is traditional for girls to be made to have sex with a man after their first menstruation. Some of the girls are as young as 12 years old, he reported.

What is known as a “hyena” in Malawi culture is usually a man who has sex with widows or married women who cannot fall pregnant.

“While we must promote positive cultural values and positive socialisation of our children, the president says harmful cultural and traditional practices cannot be accepted in this country,” presidential spokesman Mgeme Kalilani said in a statement

Mr Aniva would “further be investigated for exposing the young girls to contracting HIV and further be charged accordingly”, he said. The president had also ordered all men and parents involved to be investigated, Mr Kalilani said.

“All people involved in this malpractice should be held accountable for subjecting their children and women to this despicable evil,” the statement said. “These horrific practices although done by a few also tarnish the image of the whole nation of Malawi internationally and bring shame to us all.”

Last year Malawi banned child marriage, raising the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18 – something activists hoped would put an end to early sexual initiations. Mr Aniva told the BBC that he planned to stop taking part in sexual cleansing practices.

BBC

The two storey edifice was inaugurated on Friday 1^st of July 2016 by the Minister of Public Health Andre Mama Fouda in the company of the French Secretary of State in charge of Development Andre Vallini; the French Ambassador to Cameroon Christine Robichon and the Director of the Cameroon Medical Research Centre Guy Vernet.

The laboratory which is situated at the Cameroon Medical Research Centre in Yaounde has been created in order to step up the fight against Malaria. It is equipped with modern scientific tools such as high resolution microscope. The National Reference Laboratory for Malaria Research Project was constructed with funding from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy Planning and Regional Development, and the French Corporation.

CRTV

The Minister of Public Health, Andre Mama Fouda on the 29^th of June 2016, launched a European Union project aimed at improving on the management of epidemics. The three-year project launched in Yaounde will be operational in 11 countries along the Atlantic Coast of Africa.  Apart from improving the management of crisis, the project will also reinforce surveillance and the alert systems.

Dubbed “Project 48”,the representative of the management team of the project, Marie Françoise Saron said the regional team to handle the project was being constituted by national experts. The experts will exchange notes during training sessions so as to be better equipped for the job.

Besong Esther Agbor with files from CRTV 

The decision by the Minister for Public Health to systemize the screening of all patients who turn up for consultations in all public hospitals for their HIV status has raised quite some dust  within the national healthcare community. Even if the Minister did not say it directly, it will virtually be compulsory to obtain the status of each patient reporting for any health problem. This move is revolutionary by the fact that all the secrecy about the handling and treatment of patients with HIV infections will henceforth be removed, making it easier to know who carries the virus and those who do not and in so doing better manage the situation because of a better knowledge of the situation and the availability of statistics.

One must sincerely observe that strategies to fight HIV/AIDS have not been very successful seen from the little impact various initiatives have had in the final result. The desire to keep patient’s condition private by preventing them from stigmatization has not helped matters at the end of the day. Policy makers cannot do effective planning because they do not have the necessary statistics on which to build a robust strategy. This is because for too long many citizens have been left to go about without even knowing their condition while carriers of the virus, unknown to them continue to spread it simply because they were not aware.

As long as the HIV/AIDS management chain was not opened up and continued to be run in near secrecy, results, especially the mass positive results expected, could never be attained That is why even with very efficient systems and information campaigns, the scourge has continued to develop in disturbing proportions. Moreover, an early discovery of one’s serology status will help manage the condition and obviously prevent the virus from developing into more disastrous condition of AIDS with its multifarious accompanying afflictions.

Early detection can also help minimize costs, especially for the dispossessed segments of the population from within which many cases of infection are registered. Many Human Rights groups will obviously jump into the scene to condemn violation of privacy. But the gravity of the situation posed by the growing spread of HIV/AIDS and, above all, the need to preserve the health of Cameroonians from the scourge of this killer disease justify the government decision. The population must, in its own interest, adhere to this salutary initiative which will certainly have an immediate impact on the management of the disease.

Cameroon Tribune