Public Health Minister, André Mama Fouda has invited the vulnerable to shun fear and get themselves massively vaccinated against the AH1N1 influenza. Mr Mama Fouda was speaking yesterday at the Biyem-Assi District Hospital as he officially launched the five-day free vaccination campaign against the flu.
The campaign, he emphasised in his launching speech, targets health staff, children between the ages of five to 15, the old, pregnant women as from their second semester of pregnancy and people suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes, sickle cell anaemia. Government, he said, wants to prevent an eventual outbreak of the AH1N1 flu.
Though the campaign is coming at a time when the pandemic is no longer making news in the world, Africa and Cameroon in particular, health experts said the influenza pathology which presents with general body fatigue and makes one less productive needs to be averted. It is in a bit to avert it that the World Health Organisation, WHO, offered 1.3 million vaccines to Cameroon. “Our goal is not to reach to every one but to finish the available stock on the vaccine,” Prof Mbu Robinson, the Director of Health and the Family in the Ministry of Public Health said. He added that the free tamiflu vaccine helps to enforce the immune system thereby avoiding eventual flu complications. “We know it is difficult to vaccinate all the target population, we are aspiring to vaccinate as many as possible. We have dispatched many medical staff to all health centres in Cameroon for the exercise,” Prof Mbu added. According to Jules Ekweme Eyike, Laboratory Technician at the Biyem-Assi District Hospital, the flu virus comes with respiratory difficulties and can easily be contaminated through saliva. However, not all respiratory problems can be said to be the AH1N1 flu, he added.
Apart from the dance groups, sketches and speeches that marked the launch of the campaign in Yaounde, long queues of pregnant women, children, the old and those suffering from chronic illnesses responded massively to the free vaccination campaign. By press time, the hospital officials said over 400 exposed in the hospital were targeted for the day, and their turn out for the exercise, impressive. Others, who were not legible to be vaccinated against the flu could be seen pleading and struggling to get vaccinated.
First detected in April 2009 and declared a pandemic by WHO in June same year, 75 cases were recorded in the Centre Pasteur in Yaounde and the Buea University though no death was confirmed.
