Rare opportunities to exploit

There are certainly countless Cameroonian parents who simply do not know what to do with a strange medical condition known as hydrocephalus.

Medical dictionaries are too complicated about their definition; but simply put, and for the sake of easy comprehension, this condition concerns the numerous children or even adults we see with abnormally-large heads and who are usually seated and are unable to move around freely.

The best known cases in Cameroon have hardly ever gone beyond the helpless cries of parents who, in their inability to find any form of cure or care, leave the condition to prosper and ending up usually in death. There is no gainsaying that it is a disease for the rich; because very many cases have found a solution because parents of such patients were able to send them overseas for the necessary surgery which, for now, is the only solution.

But it takes a lot of money; sometimes up to 25 000 Euros for an operation. In local currency, that is about FCFA 15 Million, a whopping sum indeed for many Cameroonian parents to afford. But the case is not as lost as costs may likely indicate. A team of surgeons from France is currently in the country and has set up shop at the Yaounde central hospital with the task of carrying out operations in a veritable life-saving initiative. But it is even going further to train locals in the art of operating and managing this awkward medical condition.

We are happy to learn that they brought along cutting-edge medical equipment and are also working in close concert with the Neuro-surgical Society of Cameroon; a veritable guarantee that the necessary expertise will be left behind when the team leaves Cameroon in a few days time. This effort is greatly “democratizing” costs of handling the condition, especially as it used to take a labyrinthine administrative process and a lot of money to get patients get to the treatment centres in the developed world.

It is up to our local experts to exploit the new possibilities offered by this doorstep presence to kick-start a veritable process of domesticating the condition in Cameroon. The advantage of having all the necessary technical expertise and equipment is a wonderful window of opportunity our country can use to the utmost and spare numerous families from a scourge which can henceforth be avoided.

By Nkendem Forbinake