Dr Mbamboue Grace Alake, Sub-Director of Immunisation, Directorate of Family Health, Ministry of Public Health, talks on ongoing efforts to curb childhood diseases and deaths in Cameroon.

How successful was the just-ended SASNIM and SAV vaccination campaign?

It was a successful campaign because all the regions in Cameroon were reached. It was carried out in a synchronised manner in all the ten regions with all health regional delegates fully involved in carrying out regional launching at all district levels and health facilities. Technical supervisors and communicators where send to all the regions of the country and the campaign was done at once in all the nooks and crannies of the country. 

Did you reach your targeted group?

Normally, our targeted group is met. But in the weeks ahead, we are going to have a combined result on what was attained.  So far, reports and figures collected from different regions indicate that the campaign was successful and targeted group met. It was a package of several activities and if somebody was tired of being involved in one of them, with the provision of several others like vitamin A, drugs for de-worming, intermittent treatment of malaria screening of malnutrition, was an opportunity for the population to be fully involved and people massively participated. vaccination took place in fixed health centres, door-to-door campaigns during the first two days as well as visiting churches and mosques in a bid to reach out to all those who would have missed out.

Why the involvement of polio vaccine in the entire package when it is said Cameroon no longer exports the virus?

On May 5, 2014, World Health Organisation head, declared Cameroon a country that exports the polio virus to other countries. Measures were put in place to ensure that the spread of polio from Cameroon to other countries was controlled. One of such measures was to vaccinate all those travelling out of the country and those coming into the country to stay for at least four weeks. These measures were being implemented at borders and airports. On February 27, 2015, Cameroon was declared as a country that is still infected but no more exporting the polio virus to other countries.

Through a correspondence from the Prime Minister’s Office, it was recommended that all efforts put in place to ensure that Cameroon no longer exports polio to other countries should continue without relaxation so that Cameroon should completely be eradicated from polio. The public and health personnel should know that all immunisation against polio at frontier health posts will continue until there is another letter which calls on them to stop all polio immunisation activities. People should know that polio is not yet eradicated from Cameroon although Cameroon is no more exporting polio to other countries. There is need to control the virus.

What is the way forward after this campaign?

There is nothing that can go without difficulties. But so far no major difficulty was recorded. Maybe as we compile reports from the regions, something may come up. However, we are going to sit and evaluate how activities went on in all the 10 regions, check out regions that are still lagging behind and why. We are also going to discuss the reasons why objectives and target groups are not attained in certain regions, propose solutions which could solve any major challenge that could come up during the next campaign come December this year.