16, January 2020
French Cameroun: Student Chops off classmate’s finger in GBHS Obala 0
Mbappe Arnold Alexandre, Student of Government Bilingual High School, GBHS, Obala in the outskirts of Yaounde, is currently receiving emergency medical attention at the Obala District Hospital after his finger was chopped off by his classmate with the aid of a machete.
The incident happened Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at the campus of “Lycée Bilingue d’Obala” (GBHS Obala) in the Lekie Division of Cameroon’s Centre Region after an altercation during a football match.
Mbappe Arnold Alexandre is seen on a hospital bed with blood oozing out of his left hand as a medic attends to him. His left thumb is shown lying in a plate close to him. He says he had a disagreement with his classmate on a football pitch and the classmate decided to engage him in a fight. The said classmate was later given a machete by other students with which he committed the chilling act.
From his hospital bed, the victim explains: “We were cleaning up the campus given that the Delegate (apparently the Divisional Delegate of Secondary Education for Lekie Division) was supposed to visit. We were playing football in the school field when I engaged my classmate in a ‘rough tackle’ in an attempt to get the ball. I quickly explained to him that it was not intentional. But he hit me and that is how a fight started. Other students then came in. I don’t know when he got hold of a machete. I only saw when he raised the machete against me. I raised my hand to block the machete. That is how the machete cut off my left thumb. He then escaped.”
We get from the said video that Mbappe Arnold Alexandre was rushed to the Obala District Hospital by other students and medics immediately attended to him without any preconditions.
Wednesday’s incident comes few hours after a student of GHS Nkolbisson brutally murdered his Mathematics teacher. On Tuesday, January 14, 2020, Njomi Tchakounte Boris Kevin, a Mathematics teacher at Government High School Nkolbisson was stabbed to death by a Form 3 student, a release from the cabinet of the Minister of Secondary Education said.
The 15-year-old male student is now under police custody. Preliminary investigations and eyewitness accounts suggest that after days of premeditating the murder, the drama unfolded Tuesday as students watched on.
The student is said to have had a disagreement with the teacher, promising to knife the teacher Tuesday, according to testimonies from some students in the presence of the Minister. In an attempt to call the student to order at the start of his lesson, the teacher unfortunately went physical with the unyielding student who pulled out a knife hidden under his uniform and stabbed the 26-year-old teacher who later died at the Yaoundé University Teaching Hospital (CHU). The student is said not to be a first time offender, reportedly dismissed from previous schools.
The Minister of Secondary Education, Prof. Nalova Lyonga had following Tuesday’s incident said the problem of indiscipline stands out as one of the challenges to stakeholders in her ministry. It is not known what measures government will take to stem such dangerous tides.
Source: Cameroon Info.Net
18, January 2020
Hepatitis D coinfection found in ‘household clusters’ in Cameroon 0
Investigation into the epidemiology of hepatitis D in Cameroon revealed intrahousehold infection and large differences in prevalence between regions, with cases concentrated in forested areas close to the equator, which has been seen in other tropical areas.
“Central Africa has the unfortunate peculiarity of being highly endemic for infection with HIV, hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis delta virus (HDV) so that concomitant infections with more than one of these pathogens occur frequently,” Arnaud Fontanet, MD, DrPH, from the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, and colleagues wrote. “While much attention has been paid to the first three, relatively little is known about the epidemiology of HDV and its interactions with the other blood-borne viruses. Here, we extend [previous work in HCV] to HBV and HDV, and investigate the distribution and risk factors of HDV infection in Cameroon.”
Of the 14,510 participants in the study, 1,621 (11.9%) were positive for HBV surface antigen and 224 of those with HBV were seropositive for HDV. These data led to an estimate of 1,160,799 HBsAG-positive individuals and 122,910 HDV-seropositive individuals in the 15 years to 49 years age group in 2011.
While HDV antibody prevalence did not vary by sex or age, the researchers found variations between regions and ethnic groups. The HDV prevalence was 50% in Sud and 54% in Est, whereas the prevalence ranged between 1% and 19% in the remaining 10 regions (P < .0001). By similar variance, HDV prevalence was 49% among Eastern Bantus and 25% in Southern Bantus, whereas the prevalence ranged between 3% and 8% in the remaining ethnic groups. (P < .0001).
Additionally, the researchers observed a “pronounced South to North gradient” in HDV prevalence, from 28.3% under 4°N down to 4.2% above 9.6° N.
Among the 239 households with at least two individuals with HBV, if HDV seropositivity was randomly distributed across individuals of these households, the expected number of households with at least one case of HDV seropositivity would be 48 (95% CI, 44-50).
However, the observed number was 31, which Fontanet and colleagues noted was significantly lower than expected and suggested an intra-household clustering of cases. Similarly, the observed number of houses with two or more cases of HCV seropositivity was significantly higher than expected by chance, indicating clustering of infected individuals within a household.
“It is noteworthy that in the family with four chronically infected with HBV, all four were co-infected with HDV,” they wrote. “Likewise, of the three families with all three chronically infected with HBV, all three were coinfected with HDV in two families, and two out of three were co-infected with HDV in the remaining.”
Source: Healo.com