By Camlink SUFI CSO
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
A regional advocacy meeting was organised in Douala by the Malaria Consortium – Cameroon Coalition Against Malaria (CM-CCAM) to highlight progress made in the Littoral region of Cameroon and the world as a whole. Key speakers at the meeting were Dr. Esther Tallah, the director of MC-CCAM, the SUFI Zonal Coordinator for Littoral, Tony Kouemou, the Littoral Coordinator of Malaria Control Unit, Dr. Gertrude Bita, and Akere Maimo Jospeh, in charge of advocacy, monitoring and evaluation within the coalition.
The meeting was presided over by the representative of Littoral governor in the presence of the representatives of Douala City Council, Douala 5 City Council,and the regional delegate for public health, Dr, Bita Fouda. The focus of discussions were on the action plan of malaria control around the world, the situation in the different regions of the world and Cameroon in particular,
Dr. Esther Tallah made an exhaustive analysis of the project “Scaling up malaria control for impact (SUFI) in Cameroon insisting on the gaps of the project that need to be given consideration during the current implementation phase.
A discussion on the advocacy experiences in the health districts and how the activities are monitored and evaluated surfaced during the exchanges of experiences on the field. It was made known that malaria kills a person in the world every 30 seconds and it is responsible of over 500 million hospital cases every year.
Malaria kills children in particular and it is endemic in 109 countries of the world aggravating the state of poverty. It should be considered a permanent enemy within our communities and that is why all target groups of the society must be involved in the fight against the malaria germ.
GMAP, the World Plan against Malaria, is a strategy launched in September 2008 as Roll Back Malaria. This plan gives a detailed frame work for the fight against malaria, and recommends strategies for protecting the whole population at risk of contracting malaria.
GMAP aims at the eradication of malaria in the world. Contributions came from 30 endemic countries of the world, 65 international institutions and 250 experts in diverse fields of research on the malaria control issue.
The principal actors of GMAP are the governments, international multi-lateral organisations, decision makers, civil society organisations, Funding Agencies, lawyers, communities and researchers. GMAP is divided in three phase with short, medium and long term objectives.
Within the short term, 80% of patients should be diagnosed and treated with efficient malaria drugs, while 100% of expectant mothers should receive preventive treatment in health facilities. 50% of malaria cases were expected to have been handled by the year 2010 and 80% of the persons at risk would have adopted appropriate methods of receiving treatment with approved drugs to fight against resistance. Dr. Tallah explained the roles to be played at all levels, like the municipal councils reactivating hygiene and sanitation programmes in their different jurisdictions, civil society organisation informing, educating and training community based organisations on SUFI ownership and the organisation of educative talks within communities during the hand up phase supported by Plan International, the second principal recipient of the Global Fund subvention. More on this story can be accessed on the following links
•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys4zElKyZp0&list=UU4k_kfKKu_dDkTrc8Llaupw&index=1&feature=plcp
•http://www.spreaker.com/page#!/show/the_camlink_douala_show
