Life

29, May 2020

Coronavirus: More Cameroonians are dying at home ⁰

There is increasing evidence that more Cameroonians are dying at home from COVID-19 as the health system gets overwhelmed. Reports from Douala say many people are dropping dead in their houses and are buried by family members using traditional protocols which do not comply with globally recognized health protocols.

Many people are scared of being quarantined and are simply avoiding government health facilities that are noted for declaring many patients COVID-19 positive even when they are suffering from other ailments. There are reports that people suffering from erectile dysfunction, diabetes and hypertension have been declared COVID-19 positive without tests by health officials in Cameroon and left to die in COVID-19 wards.

According to the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Chairman, Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai, the drama playing out in Cameroon’s hospitals needs to be investigated and ‘we have our reporters on the ground who will give us first hand information’. More will be yours.

By Chi Prudence Asong

27, May 2020

Exit of a Sasse Old Boys Association icon: Mola Njoh Litumbe’s spirit of the age ⁰

The names of my classmates in the photograph, from left to right, are: John Nsoyenika Obanus Vega, who later became a Surveyor; Thomas Mbua Ndoko, who later became a Civil Administrator; Stephen Mokosso Ndeley, who later became Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly; Daniel Agbor Tiku, who later became an Agriculturist; My humble self, who later became a Chartered Accountant, but now a Politician; Godfrey Layu, who later became a Barrister-at-Law; Jacob Achidi Kisob who later became Cameroon’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom; Michael Njamfa, who later became an Agriculturist; Stephen Nyenti, who later became Chief Nyenti, a Traditional Ruler and Politician.

I must inform you that my classmates have all ascended into Heaven, and I am the only slow survivor, repeating a class because of unfinished homework which, when completed, I too will get promoted to Paradise! Oma nanu Mola

27, May 2020

Agbor Balla’s dismissal over exam question raises concerns ⁰

The dismissal of a university law lecturer and human rights defender who set an examination question considered by the Cameroon government to be ‘seditious’ has been widely criticised by a number of the country’s academics.

Dr Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, formerly a lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Buea, an English-speaking university in a predominantly French-speaking region, was suspended by his university following a complaint by the Minister of Higher Education Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo to the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Ngomo Horace Manga, about a question he set in a law paper.

The examination question causing the offence was: “The Anglophone Crisis since 2016 was caused by the lawyers’ and teachers’ strike. Assess the validity of this statement.”

Agbor Balla, who is also head of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, was given 24 hours to appear before a university panel on 5 May to explain why disciplinary action should not be taken against him for including such a question in the paper and breaching the university’s code of ethics.

Agbor Balla told the university he was ready to appear before the panel despite the short notice on condition he first appeared before a preliminary sub-committee – in accordance with the laws of the university. However, that request was rejected and he was summarily dismissed the following day for ‘insubordination’.

According to Human Rights Watch, Agbor Balla was arrested in January 2017 for leading peaceful protests in Buea along with other Anglophone activists. Charged by a military court under the anti-terrorism law, he was released in August 2017 and the charges were dropped.

Double standards?

In an exclusive interview with University World News, Agbor Balla said he was determined to make use of legal options to obtain redress for what he called the illegal termination of his appointment.

University World News can report that a question similar to that posed by Agbor Balla was set by a professor of law at the University of Yaoundé II – a Francophone university – in an examination conducted by the faculty of laws and political science in January. A copy of the paper has been seen by University World News. The question was: “The Anglophone problem in its new development since 2016: Is it nationalism or ethnicity? Discuss.”

Despite the similarity of the questions, no action was taken against the Yaoundé II lecturer, leading many university teachers and observers of university affairs to claim a case of double standards on the part of the minister of higher education who was himself once a lecturer in a Cameroonian university.

According to commentator John Menkefor, based in Bamenda, the incident has “all the hallmarks of the Anglophone-Francophone divide in Cameroon”.

In an interview on Zenger, Menkefor said the minister’s failure to take action in similar cases suggests that “the two parts are held to two different standards, defined by unspecified political considerations. These considerations can be partly conceived and used as instruments of political control of Anglophones.”

According to a Human Rights Watch report, a Ministry of Higher Education representative told Radio France Internationale that Agbor Balla had “turned a classroom into a political space”.

Interviewed by Zenger, Registrar of the University of Buea Professor Ernest Lytia Molua is reported to have said that Agbor Balla’s “invitation” to a disciplinary panel “was a privilege Buea University accorded him on humanitarian grounds, since he had run out of contract”.

“The University of Buea extended to him a verbal gentlemanly collaboration, which he has finally abused by intoxicating 17- and 18-year-old students on his political showmanship,” Molua is reported to have said.

Marginalisation

In an exclusive interview with University World News, Willy Nze Ngwa, a professor in the Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Yaoundé I, said the incident exposed the “hidden hand of political intimidation, another manifestation of Anglophone marginalisation in Cameroon”.

He said there was nothing offensive in the set question. “The topic set by Agbor Balla is topical and should be encouraged to open debates aimed at rolling back the conflict. If the question is offensive, then all those other lecturers should be sanctioned,” he said.

On the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current conflict in Anglophone Cameroon, he said: “Peace is an empty slogan if not weaved around social justice. Peace is the consequence of concrete actions aimed at rolling back conflict. The Anglophone Crisis could be resolved by publicly acknowledging the existence of marginalisation and by tackling the root causes of the crisis, engaging in frank dialogue, free from emotions and obsessions… [It requires the country] to genuinely correct future marginalisation through legislative dispositions and, of course, conduct a referendum to determine what the people really want.”

The dismissal of Agbor Balla has drawn widespread criticism. By 15 May, 65 national, regional and international civil society organisations had reportedly added their names to a petition to have him reinstated.

Criticisms

And even Francophone intellectuals have come out to openly condemn the actions of the minister and the university.

In a widely circulated open letter titled “Affaire Agbor Balla”, addressed to the minister, Professor Ambroise Kom, internationally renowned post-independence literary critic and former teacher of African literature at the University of Yaoundé I, accused the minister, once a university colleague, of not doing enough to protect the country’s university system from external interference in the domestic affairs of tertiary institutions.

Kom, also a co-founder of a private Francophone university, Universite des Montagnes, reminded the minister of what he described as his unjustified harassment by security agencies when his examination questions were sent by university authorities for scrutiny to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He recalled that Dr Issidor Noumba, a member of the economics department at the University of Yaoundé I, had also been dismissed from the university because one of the examination questions he set was interpreted as a question which could threaten the peace and security of Cameroon.

“Thus the dismissal of Dr Agbor Balla is an integral part of a tradition of academic repression undertaken by the government via university authorities,” he wrote.

In another open letter to the minister, Dr Ludovic Lado, a former senior lecturer in the faculty of social sciences and management at the Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaoundé, criticised the method used to terminate the appointment of Agbor Balla.

“You did not allow due process to follow its full course before forcing the hands of the vice-chancellor to get rid of him,” he wrote.

Ludovic Lado took issue with the reasons given by the vice-chancellor in an interview with a local tabloid, The Sun, in which he accused Agbor Balla of setting an examination question which was biased and partisan in nature.

Reminding the minister and the vice-chancellor to allow for the full implementation of academic freedom, Ludovic Lado urged the university authorities to reinstate Agbor Balla to his post.

Culled from University World News

27, May 2020

Coronavirus Outbreak: Unions oppose Biya regime’s plan to reopen schools ⁰

A group of trade unions in Cameroon’s education sector has opposed the government’s plan to reopen schools on June 1 for students of examination classes.

The unions said opening schools exposes students and teachers to the Covid-19 coronavirus.

According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Central African country had recorded 4,890 positive cases, 165 deaths and 1,865 recoveries by Monday.

The country reported its first case of the coronavirus on March 6.

In a petition to the Prime Minister and head of government, Mr Joseph Dion Ngute, some 19 trade unions, including the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union (CATTU) and Teachers’ Association of Cameroon (TAC), urged the government to suspend the opening of schools and only evaluate students on work already covered.

Should the government want to still reopen schools, it should provide protective equipment for stakeholders for their safety.

“The distribution of [free] face masks and alcohol-based hand sanitisers is the only means to ensure equal protection of all actors in the face of the coronavirus pandemic,” the petition written in French reads.

The petitioners said students unable to acquire face masks might not be accepted on school campuses because of the directive to wear face masks, hence the government should provide them.

They added that the government should then limit the number of students to 24 per class.

Cameroon closed schools and suspended international passenger flights in mid-March as part of the measures to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Authorities also ordered the compulsory wearing of face masks in public, prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people, and closed bars, restaurants and leisure spots from 6pm. The government also placed restrictions on urban and inter-urban travel and regulated the flow of consumers in markets and shopping centres.

However, last month, the government relaxed the restrictive measures.

Prime Minister Ngute said the restrictions had helped mitigate the spread of the virus, but had also created economic and social hardship.

He said President Paul Biya had also decided to reopen schools, universities, vocational training centres and professional schools from June 1.

Source: The East African

22, May 2020

COVID-19: Africa’s cases pass 100,000; deaths at 3,098 Cameroon is the leader in Central Africa ⁰

Confirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa passed the 100,000 mark barely 24-hours after the deaths hit 3,000. This is according to tallies from the John Hopkins University tracker.

The figures as of May 22 14:30 GMT stood at 100,399 with 39,481 recoveries and 3,098 deaths. The number of active cases stood at 57,82.

The five most impacted nations were as follows:

South Africa: 19,137 confirmed cases
Egypt: 15,003
Algeria: 7,728
Morocco: 7,300
Nigeria: 7,016

South Africa is the most impact across the continent and in the southern African region. Egypt tops across North Africa and Nigeria in West Africa. Cameroon is the leader in Central Africa with 4,288 cases whiles Sudan tops in the East / Horn of Africa region with 3,138 cases.

Source: Africa News

22, May 2020

Humanitarian partners continue Covid-19 response in Cameroon ⁰

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said its partners have provided health, water and sanitation, and hygiene support, including mobile clinics, disease screening and Covid-19 sensitisation, to more than 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon.

The agency said government and humanitarian partners were also providing distance learning to more than half of the children affected by school closures in both regions through radio, TV and printed material.

More than 6,370 schools and 4,200 community learning centres in the regions have been closed since March to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Authorities have announced the potential reopening of schools in June.

Food distribution to displaced people was also expected to increase following the development of revised guidelines and risk mitigation measures by the food security cluster and supporting partners. In April, Covid-19-related restrictions meant that food assistance reached only 10% of beneficiaries, leaving more than 150,000 people without support, OCHA said.

“More than 1.4 million people in the north-west and south-west regions are food insecure, with numbers gradually increasing every month,” the statement read.

The humanitarian co-ordinator in Cameroon has also met the secretary-general of the south-west region governor’s office, to improve collaboration and co-ordination with the government’s humanitarian co-ordination centres.

The agency said this is also aimed at strengthening transparency among humanitarian partners, including support for the Covid-19 response.

Besides the IDPs in the north-west and the south-west, Cameroon also has 200,000 IDPs in other parts of the country. Some 58,000 Cameroonians are refugees in Nigeria.

So far, Cameroon has recorded 3,529 Covid-19 cases and 140 deaths.

Source: African News Agency

21, May 2020

Cameroon COVID-19 survivor battles stigma via social media ⁰

In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, surviving COVID-19 also means fighting stigma. A number of countries from Ghana to Kenya and Nigeria have recorded incidents of survivors being stigmatized.

Over in Cameroon, one such survivor is on a mission to lead the fight against stigma. Ekane Anicet has decided to share his experience to spread awareness about the illness.

“People are scared; people didn’t think COVID-19 could touch them. In fact, what frightens people is the images from the West where they line up corpses, figures like ’8,000 dead’, it’s television that has created this panic among Africans,” he stressed.

Ekane is using social media to try and de-dramatize the pandemic and is at the head of an association for COVID-19 survivors.

A clinical psychologist also explains that the way COVID-19 victims are dramatically handled in the public adds to the stigma.

Dr Erero Njiengwé explained: “The way in which the teams arrive in the homes is a way that adds to the personal drama that people are experiencing, and creates – by attracting the attention of those around them – a further dramatisation of the problem.

“And it confirms or reinforces in the thoughts and minds of those around them the dangerousness of the coronavirus – which before was far away and almost theoretical.”

Source: Africa News

19, May 2020

Cameroon Doctors Ask for Protection as Attacks by COVID Carriers Increase ⁰

Medical staff in Cameroon are asking for additional security at hospitals following a series of attacks by people upset that they or their loved ones were diagnosed with the coronavirus. Cameroon so far has 3,300 confirmed cases of the virus with 147 deaths.

Gervais Gabriel Atedjoe, secretary general of Cameroon’s National Medical Council, said attacks on hospitals, especially health care workers, are increasing by the day.

Speaking by phone from the coastal city of Douala, Atedjoe said health workers are being attacked by people who either contest tests showing them positive for COVID-19, or reject medical reports that their relatives died of coronavirus.

He said the National Medical Council of Cameroon is scandalized and wants to state categorically that it is totally inadmissable to attack medical staff members who are simply carrying out their duties of saving lives. He said they are asking the government to increase protection at hospitals and to educate civilians to desist from attacking health workers because within the past three weeks, medical doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians have been attacked on a daily basis.

The Medical Council reports attacks in seven hospitals since Thursday. Six workers sustained injuries and are being treated, and eight others sustained minor injuries.

In the most extreme attacks, doctors said that last week, angry crowds exhumed at least four corpses of people buried after they died of COVID-19 in the cities of Douala and Bafoussam to stop the spread of the killer virus.

The exhumers said they wanted to give the bodies a proper burial.

Some people wear masks as they walk by the entrance to the Yaounde General Hospital in Yaounde on March 6, 2020 as Cameroon has…

Awah Fonka, governor of Cameroon’s Western Region where Bafoussam is found, said health workers who tried to stop the crowds were attacked and beaten.

Fonka, speaking via a messaging app from Bafoussam, said the lives of the health workers were saved only when the police arrived and dispersed the mobs. Police and health care workers then reclaimed and reburied the bodies.

“It is unbelievable, unacceptable that a medical doctor or medical personnel should be putting up a fight over a corpse with a family. They [the crowds] should understand that these people [the health care workers] are coming to help so that they should not be infected,” said the governor.

Cameroon’s Health Minister Manaouda Malachie has condemned the attacks and said he is calling on all Cameroonians to accept the reality that COVID-19 exists and is killing people.

Speaking on Cameroon state radio CRTV, he said measures have been taken to increase security at hospitals.

He said President Paul Biya has asked him to encourage and tell all health workers that he is aware of the challenges they face and has given instructions to the government to take necessary measures to protect them. Manaouda says Biya and his government are very much appreciative and will never abandon Cameroon medical staff members in their efforts to conquer COVID-19.

On May 1st, Cameroon eased restrictions put in place to curb COVID-19. The government is still asking people to protect themselves by washing their hands regularly and keeping a distance of a least a meter and a half from people.

It has also warned people against believing that COVID-19 has been conquered, or even worse, doesn’t exist.

Source: VOA

18, May 2020

WHO chief Tedros in the eye of the storm ⁰

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first African to head the World Health Organization, faces the towering challenge of coordinating a global pandemic response increasingly complicated by US-China tensions.

The former Ethiopian minister of health and foreign affairs finds himself at the heart of global efforts to rein in the novel coronavirus, which has now killed more than 300,000 people and infected close to five million.

On Monday, Tedros opens the UN health agency’s main annual event, the World Health Assembly, which due to the pandemic will be held virtually and has been trimmed from the usual three weeks to just two days.

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Tedros said the event would be “one of the most important (WHAs) since we were founded in 1948”.

Countries hope to adopt by consensus a resolution urging a joint response to the crisis, but the efforts have been clouded by steadily deteriorating relations between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump last week threatened to cut ties with China, where the outbreak began late last year, over its role in the spread of COVID-19, and has repeatedly made unproven allegations that the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

– Biggest challenge –

The US president has also ramped up criticism of Tedros and WHO, accusing them of being too close to China and mismanaging the pandemic response.

And last month, Trump announced that Washington, the biggest contributor to the UN health agency, would suspend its funding.

The pandemic, combined with the threat of lost US funding, clearly constitutes the biggest challenge to date in the WHO director-general’s three-year tenure.

But Tedros, 55, a malaria specialist with degrees from Britain in public health and immunology, and the first person ever elected to the helm of the WHO, should have the legitimacy and strong support to weather the storm.

Tedros is renowned for his warmth and a tendency to call everyone from colleagues to world leaders “brother” or “sister”, setting him apart from the famously cool persona of his appointed predecessor, Margaret Chan of China.

And his handling of the crisis has drawn widespread praise.

“Tedros is the best director general that I have worked with, perhaps since Gro Brundtland,” renowned US epidemiologist Larry Brilliant told AFP, referring to the former Norwegian prime minister who served as WHO chief from 1998 to 2003.

“He is an incredibly smart, open, honest, science-based man.”

– ‘Politicising’ the pandemic –

While he always seems to have a smile lurking under his trimmed moustache, Tedros has also revealed a fiery side.

After a hefty barrage of criticism from Trump last month, Tedros warned that “if you don’t want many more body-bags then you refrain from politicising” the pandemic.

During that virtual briefing on April 8, Tedros also revealed that for months he had faced a virulent campaign of abuse against him, including racist comments and death threats.

“I don’t give a damn… I am proud of being black or proud of being negro,” he said.

Tedros has also come under increasing pressure over Taiwan, which at the behest of China has been excluded from the WHO and other international bodies, amid growing calls for it to be granted access to the WHA.

Taiwan has, like Trump, harshly criticised the UN agency and its chief for being too willing to believe Beijing and praise its handling of the outbreak.

On social media meanwhile, a battle is raging between the pro- and anti-Tedros camps. The WHO chief himself has joined the virtual fight, retweeting messages of support from a range of African leaders, other political actors and scientists.

– ‘Firm, courageous’ –

“I’ve known Dr Tedros for 27 years… He is a man of great principle, and his calm but firm, courageous leadership of WHO during this terrible COVID-19 pandemic is exactly what the world needs right now,” tweeted Laura Hammond, a University of London professor.

He also has a knack for diplomacy.

During the 2017 election, he highlighted his drive as health minister to expand basic healthcare by building thousands of clinics and boosting community-based health services, and vowed to give the WHO a similar overhaul, with an emphasis on global health coverage.

When he took over, the organisation was undergoing far-reaching reforms after mismanaging the initial response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, which killed more than 11,300 people between 2013 and 2016.

But just a few months into his tenure, he created a scandal by appointing Zimbabwe’s then-president Robert Mugabe as a WHO goodwill ambassador. He was forced to backtrack.

That gaffe however has largely been forgotten, as the WHO under Tedros has scaled up emergency response capabilities and astutely responded to two new Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Source: AFP

18, May 2020

Biya regime to open schools in “orderly fashion” amid epidemic prevention ⁰

Cameroon’s Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on Friday issued technical guidelines for schools nationwide to reopen in an orderly manner, depending on the situation of the coronavirus pandemic in the Central African country.

Only examination classes in primary and secondary schools will resume classes on June 1, Ngute said in a statement, adding the students will be “properly distributed” among classrooms to observe social distancing rules.

Sanitary kits with hand sanitizers, thermoflashes, and hand-washing basins will be available at the entrance of the schools, according to the guidelines.

It is compulsory for students and teachers to wear protective masks, Ngute said, stressing “prevention is and remains the main weapon available to each and every one of us.”

Cameroon closed schools on March 18 after detecting its first COVID-19 case on March 6. More than 3,000 cases have been reported in the country since then.

Source: Xinhuanet