Health Ministry pressured to reduce maternal, infant mortality

Pressure is being brought to bear on the Minister of Public Health and all stakeholders in this sector to redouble their efforts in the fight against maternal mortality, infant mortality, HIV/AIDS.

The Health Ministry and stakeholders are being pressured to reduce the occurrence of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension diabetes, heart failures, cancers, and many more that have been the cause of rampant deaths in Cameroon.

This pressure coming from technical partners working with the Ministry of Public Health under the auspices of the Northwest Regional Fund for Health Promotion (WRFHP), was brought to bear during the Fund’s 3rd General Assembly that took place on December 10, 2015, in Bamenda.

During the meeting, participants pleaded with the Cameroon government and the NWRFHP, together with the Fund’s technical partners to facilitate the smooth and “speedy recovery of the fund’s money from the liquidated company that was hired to recover money owed the fund and the transfer of the reserves from Portigon AG in Germany into Cameroon to enable the fund inject them into drug budget for 2016.”

The President of the NWRFHP General Assembly, Northwest Governor represented by the Inspector General Ivo Charles Makoge, expressed gratitude to GIZ and other technical partners for their immeasurable support to health units and hospitals in Cameroon where the Fund supplies quality drugs.

The Inspector General urged local committees working under NWRFHP to convince the population to make use of the health units and stop the sale of parallel drugs in hospitals.

“I am particularly happy with the availability of essential medicines and equally grateful to GIZ for always supporting and re-dynamising dialogue structures in the Northwest and Cameroon as a whole,” said Makoge.

For his part, the Administrator of the Regional Fund for Health Northwest, Dr. Richard Mbarika Fondoh, said there are 204 functional pro-pharmacies in the Northwest with high-quality essential medicines.

Dr. Fondoh said this year, they selected four health units in Esu, Wum, Misaje in Donga Mantung, Balikumbat and Atuakom for best performance in sale of drugs and quality health care delivery to the population.

These health units received refrigerators and generators to enable them work better.

Fondoh announced the imminent setting up of 10 functional blood banks before the end of 2016 in most remote areas where there are no such facilities to handle blood transfusion.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Northwest Regional Fund, Sylvester FrancisNdaki, expressed optimism that the Fund will beat the records of the year under review and would continue to remain on top in Cameroon as one of the best functional funds for health.

While wishing that the fund should continue to invest more in saving the lives of Cameroonians, the Bamenda City Council, through the Secretary-General, Jude Nsom Waindim, lauded the efforts of GIZ and its technical partners for improving healthcare delivery in Cameroon in the domain of distributing quality drugs.

At the end of the General Assembly, the Regional Fund for Health resolved on several issues amongst which was the adoption of the 2016 budget which stands at FCFA 1,471, 986.783 in income and expenditure and FCFA 1,632, 691,754 for performance-based financing programme.

Adopting the Audit Report of December 2014, the Fund urged management to redouble efforts in the full implementation of its strategic goals for 2016.

The Northwest Regional Delegate of Public Health was tasked to create a commission to fight the sale of illicit drugs.