Survival of babies rises in poor communities benefiting from free mosquito nets and medicines but the challenge remain in Doubla Yalla’s household where most of her precious possessions hang on four nails in the ceiling of a grass-roofed hut.
It drapes around an unmade bed, conspicuous among her other possessions: dishes, clothes, cups, boxes all jumbled in one continuous heap across the floor.
“Without the net, we will all fall sick,” she says through an interpreter, her son.
The net draping from the ceiling of the windowless-room was perhaps the main reason her 18-month-old baby Adrienne was still alive.
In Yalla’s part of the country, this rugged terrain tucked in the valleys of the Mambara Mountains, mosquito-borne malaria kills babies and very often their mothers die in their numbers during yearly seasonal Malaria outbreaks.
Nets are used to bring down the numbers.
The initiative to give pregnant and nursing mothers free mosquito nets is led by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and financially backed by Japan.
In addition to mosquito nets, women get free anti-malarial medication and quality care if they attend antenatal clinic at the local health centre.
Many communities throughout the Far North, one of the places in Cameroon with the highest rates of infant and maternal deaths, are benefitting from the project.
Community volunteers also visit patients at home to ensure that they are using the nets they get and taking their medicines as prescribed.
After only a few years, results are already visible in Mouda, a farmer and grazer community of about 5000 people.
“Mosquitos nets have already reduced malaria cases,” says Robert Djokvousia, the head of the local health centre.
In June 2014, health workers at Mouda health center consulted 123 malaria patients. The number was down to 80 the following month.
Every month in 2013, eight or nine women, about 20 percent of all who came to the health centre, died during childbirth. This year, says Djokvousia, there has been a “slight” improvement.
Women like Yalla, are examples that with little interventions, lives can be saved in some of the most impoverished parts of the country.
Yalla delivered five of her seven children at home but went to the health centre to have the last two.
Free nets, medication and care, she says, encouraged her and other women in her community to start attending antenatal clinics and giving birth under the watch of trained health workers.
Births attended by trained health workers in Mouda rose nearly 20% over the past few years, says Djokvousia.
“Giving birth at the health centre is a good thing;” says Yalla, “at home, you lose a lot of blood. You have pains and fall sick.”
In spite of the progress, gaps remain.
Many women are still giving birth at home, endangering their lives and those of their children, say locals and health workers.
Malaria cases spiral during peak periods, when rains come and provide breeding ground for mosquitoes, says Djokvousia.
And even though health workers do their best, it is often not enough. As a nurse-aid, Djokvousia is the most qualified health worker in Mouda.
“We cannot do everything,” he says.
