Cameroon has shown only a moderate decline in new HIV infections, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

By Dorine Ekwe
YAOUNDÉ, Oct 29 2013 (IPS)

With a wide smile Beatrice M.* says that she lives by the motto “life is short and beautiful — live it to the full.” The 20-year-old, HIV-positive mother refuses to be defeated by her new circumstances.

Beatrice, a second year anthropology student at the University of Yaounde I, found out she was pregnant and HIV-positive when she was 18.

“When the doctor broke the news, I thought my life was over. But my gynaecologist put me on Zidolan [an anti-retroviral treatment] to prevent mother-to-child infection and told me things would be fine,” she tells IPS. Her doctor was right and her now two-year-old daughter is HIV-negative.

Looking into the distance, with her hands crossed on her lap, she recalls: “The pregnancy was not wanted. My boyfriend asked me to have an abortion, but I refused. When I told him about my HIV status, he said he had gone for testing and was HIV-negative. Then he left me.” She was five months pregnant at the time.

Beatrice believes that her 25-year-old boyfriend — a fellow student at the same university — infected her. She says that she was a virgin when they met.

According to Flavien Ndonko, an anthropologist at the German International Cooperation Agency or GIZ, an alarming 20 to 30 percent of Cameroonian girls aged 15 to 24 years have unwanted pregnancies.

The 2013 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report on the global AIDS epidemic states that around 600,000 people or 4.2 percent of Cameroon’s population of 19 million are HIV-positive. Women and youth are the worst affected groups. This West African nation is among UNAIDS’ 20 priority countries on the continent, and has shown only a moderate decline in new infections.

Beatrice learned about these statistics after finding out her status. “During our relationship, we never thought of contraception or AIDS. I had heard of them, but I didn’t feel they had anything to do with me.” During high school, she had not been interested in attending the Education for Life and Love (ELL) programmes, a life skills course given in high schools across the country.

Social worker Arlette Ngon says that the country needs a new approach to raising awareness. “Apart from science courses, the ELL programme is the only time when sexually transmitted infections and AIDS are discussed in depth at school. The message doesn’t seem to getting through to the youth.”

Yvonne Oku, from the National Network of Aunties’ Associations (RENATA), believes that much more should be done to bring down the rate of new infections. RENATA, a non-governmental organisation, educates youth on how to prevent teenage pregnancy and HIV through “aunties,” who are young mothers trained in health matters.

Aubin Ondoa, an anthropologist, explains to IPS that the major risk factor for young girls is early sexual activity combined with a glaring lack of information. According to the U.N. Population Fund, the average age of the first sexual encounter in Cameroon is 15.8 years, while one out of three girls aged 20 to 24 years is a mother before the age of 18.

“Furthermore, young girls are prime targets for older men who give them money,” Ondoa adds.

For many ill-informed young women with little or no income, the consequences of unprotected sex are pregnancy and HIV.

Beatrice now uses condoms with her partner. She is in a relationship with a high school teacher who is HIV-negative, knows her status and wants to marry her. But she has refused, fearing that she may infect him. She worries that if they get married they will no longer use condoms.

Positive Generation — an anti-AIDS organisation created in 1998, which has 60 members who are mostly students — has been a source of support for Beatrice. The group has helped her to come to terms with living with HIV.

The young woman has decided to keep her status a secret. “My parents are not ready; I prefer to leave them in the dark. I am afraid of the stigma,” she says.

Because she lives with her two sisters, she has to be very secretive so they do not discover her status. “I am very discreet. It would be difficult if someone found out that I take medicine at specific times,” she confides.

She even brings her child, who lives with her parents in a village in the west of the country, all the way to the capital Yaoundé for medical check ups. In the village, she says, “there is no such thing as medical confidentiality.”

In Cameroon, antiretroviral medication is free; she only has to pay for the bi-annual blood count and CD4 tests, which cost about 34 dollars. “It would be difficult if I had to pay for everything,” she says. Patients in remote areas are not as lucky. They often have to travel 44 km on foot, through a forest, to get to a healthcare centre.

Beatrice is proud of her little girl and would like to have more children, but she wishes that healthcare staff had a more professional attitude.

“I tore during childbirth, but the midwife refused to suture me. She also refused to take my child for routine tests,” says with tears in her eyes.

For her, this behaviour is nothing more than a form of stigmatisation and is one thing she does not need in her quest to live her life to the full.

*Not her real name.

A nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Malnutrition has become a growing concern in northern Cameroon. Credit:Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Dorine Ekwe
YAOUNDE, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

At the Garoua Regional Hospital’s Paediatric Feeding Centre in northern Cameroon, Aicha Ahidjo* is relieved to hear that her one-year-old son will survive. The child was suffering from chronic malnutrition, and other children have died of it.

It has cost Ahidjo a lot to get her son Ahmadou here. Ahmadou showed symptoms of swollen feet and dry and thinning hair. The 30-year-old mother was forced to defy her husband and bring their son to hospital. The child had developed Kwashiorkor as a result of severe protein deficiency.

“Some months after the birth of the child, I fell pregnant again,” Ahidjo, who is six months pregnant, tells IPS.“Infant malnutrition is also due to the fact that very few infants are breastfed exclusively for the first six months after birth,." -- Director of Health Promotion in the Ministry of Health Dr. Sa’a

“I had to wean him, but his father didn’t want me to give him infant formula. He discouraged me from continuing to breastfeed the child and told me to feed him maize porridge and rock salt.” She was powerless to refuse her husband.

“I gave in, but after some time I noticed that the child was tired and his skin was thinning. I spoke to my mother who told me that these were signs of malnutrition,” she explains.

“Against my husband’s advice, I brought the child to hospital. The doctors here told me that I arrived just in time. Thank God.”

Ahmadou is not the only child at the hospital suffering from malnutrition.

In June, the centre’s medical staff registered 31 malnourished children. Six died, one recovered and 21 were transferred to other hospitals. The remaining three children, including Ahmadou, stayed at the hospital for treatment.

Six-year-old Haouwa Aboui* was the last child to die at this centre in June. Her 60-year-old grandmother, Maimouna Aboui*, sits in front of their home, fatigued and despondent.

“There are 16 of us living in this hut and there is not enough food. The little one could not bear the starvation,” Aboui tells IPS. “I was advised to give her water with sugar to give her energy. Her mother and I did that for two weeks. She died the day after we arrived at the hospital.”

According to the most recent study by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS), published in October 2011, 33 percent of under-fives in Cameroon suffer from chronic malnutrition and 14 percent of them are severely malnourished.

The community health division in the Ministry of Public Health believes that malnutrition is closely linked to Cameroon’s complex climate. In parts of the Adamawa, North and Far North Regions – a dry and semi-arid zone – nutritional deterioration is present among a large proportion of Cameroonian children and refugees, according to the ministry.

In addition, the massive displacement of Chadian and Central African Republic refugees has added to the growing number of people unable to access food.

The Far North and North Regions have the highest rate of infant malnutrition in the country because of a lack of food during the lean season, which lasts from mid-June to the end of August. Another contributing factor is the poor variety of foods consumed by the population, such as millet and sorghum.

However, malnutrition is prevalent throughout the country, says Ines Lezama, a nutrition specialist at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Cameroon.

Celine Essengue, a member of local NGO Enfants Cameroun, gave IPS her assessment of the situation: “Cameroon is known to be a food-sufficient country. This means that the country doesn’t need to import food as it produces enough to feed its population. Poverty is preventing the Cameroonian people from having access to a varied and balanced diet.”

According to NIS, 44 percent of children suffering from chronic malnutrition in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community live in Cameroon.

UNICEF estimates that 57,616 children under the age of five are at risk of severe acute malnutrition in the North and Far North regions of the country, and that 145,000 children under the age of five will have stunted growth.

Director of health promotion in the Ministry of Health, known only as Dr. Sa’a, told journalists at a recent briefing that “obesity is also a sign of malnutrition. Infant malnutrition is also due to the fact that very few infants are breastfed exclusively for the first six months after birth.”

UNICEF, in conjunction with the government, works in 19 feeding centres in order to prevent complications.

Dr. Joel Ekobena, a paediatrician at the Garoua district hospital, explains to IPS that they are increasingly working on prevention.

“We educate mothers to recognise the first signs of malnutrition and to take their children as soon as possible for a check-up.”

But access to healthcare also poses a problem: 23 out of 43 health districts in the North and Far North of the country are short of qualified personnel. According to NIS, the two regions have 92 doctors for an overall population of 5.5 million inhabitants.

*Names changed to protect their identity.

Ndomi Magareth, sows bean seeds on her small piece of land in Njombe. The lives of Cameroon's women could change for the better now that 20 women were elected to the country's upper house of parliament. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Dorine Ekwe
YAOUNDE, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

Marlyse Aboui, a 40-year-old nurse, has still not gotten over the astonishment she felt when she heard that Cameroon’s President Paul Biya had nominated her to the senate.

“I feel like I am in a dream that I will wake up from at any minute. When I first learnt that I had been appointed to the senate, I told myself that it couldn’t be true. I asked myself what I could possibly have done to receive this high appointment from the president,” she told IPS.

As the local party chair of the National Alliance for Democracy and Progress, an opposition party in eastern Cameroon, Aboui is one of only 20 women in the 100-member Cameroonian senate. Seventy senators, 17 of whom are women, were elected on Apr. 14 in the country’s first-ever senatorial elections. Biya was required to nominate the remaining 30 senators, and included in his nominations were three women.

“It is a great honour that I truly appreciate,” Aboui said.“Women can contribute much to politics. We have often seen that some conflicts are narrowly avoided thanks to their powers of persuasion." -- Justine Diffo

Nicole Okala Bilai, a senator from the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), shared Aboui’s excitement. The female politician, who was elected in Mbagassina in central Cameroon, hopes to use her presence in the senate to radically reform this Central African nation’s schools.

Women’s rights organisations and politicians say that the appointment of women to the upper house of parliament was timely.

Yvonne Muma Bih, a national executive committee member of the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, is one politician who welcomed the appointments.

“The rise of women to this office offers some encouragement to those still suffering under the yoke of male domination, who believe that women cannot pursue political careers. We have done better than certain European democracies and this is something to be celebrated,” she told IPS.

The secretary general of CPDM, Jean Nkuete, told IPS “female candidates were strongly encouraged throughout the course of this election, not just to meet gender quotas, but mainly to highlight the place our party gives to women and to their vision.”

However, Justine Diffo, national co-ordinator of the NGO More Women in Politics Network, a support network for women’s political participation, told IPS “20 percent is inadequate.”

“Women can contribute much to politics. We have often seen that some conflicts are narrowly avoided thanks to their powers of persuasion. Why then deny them the 30 percent (women’s representation demanded by women’s groups)?”

According to Diffo, the only way to fully address women’s marginalisation “would have been for the president to nominate 15 women out of the 30 senators that he is mandated to appoint.”

However, the Association to Combat Violence Against Women believes there is reason to applaud the progress made.

In fact, Cameroon’s Electoral Code of Apr. 19, 2012 provides a way to reduce the existing gender gap in electoral contests, through various forms of affirmative action during the electoral processes. Articles 151, 164, 181, and 218 of the Electoral Code aim to increase women’s participation in politics.

A study by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), published on International Women’s Day, Mar. 8, pointed to a slight overall increase in the number of women in Cameroon’s national assembly.

According to the INS, between 1992 and 2002, the number of women in the national assembly dropped from 23 to 10 out of 180 members of parliament. However, between 2002 and 2012, the number of female members of parliament increased from 10 to 25.

At the local level, between 2007 and 2012 out of 360 mayors only 24 were women. Furthermore, Cameroon has six female ministers of state out of 30. There are also four female director generals in state-owned entities.

Claude Abe, a sociology lecturer at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaounde, the capital city of this country of 20 million people, explained the causes of poor female representation in decision-making positions.

“Structurally, Cameroonian society sits between tradition and modernity. As a result, there are many persistent and long-standing elements from tradition that continue to play a part in our society,” he told IPS.

“There is one category of women who remain stumbling blocks for other women – they are not prepared to vote for a woman simply because she is a woman,” he said.

He added that many men still believed that a woman’s place was in the home, while a number of women still believed that they could not play a role in politics.

In addition, he said, “Politics also requires a lot of money. Invariably, the majority of women are financially dependent on men and this limits their ability to get involved in politics.”