DAKAR

Each year in Cameroon at least 45,000 children die due to malnutrition, according to the UN Children's Fund.







UNICEF says it has been difficult giving voice to Cameroon's "silent emergency", unfolding as it is in a relatively stable country in sub-Saharan Africa, overshadowed by conflicts and refugee crises elsewhere in the region.







“It is a silent emergency because we have children in the north, extreme north and east who are severely malnourished,” Ora Musu Clemens, UNICEF representative in Cameroon, told IRIN from the capital Yaoundé.







In northern Cameroon global acute malnutrition (GAM) – weight deficit for height – stands at 12.6 percent, striking 115,000 children under five, according to UNICEF. Nearly 40 percent of children – some 350,000 – suffer chronic malnutrition. The World Health Organization classifies a GAM between 10 percent and 14.9 percent as "serious", warranting supplementary feeding; 15 percent and above constitutes an emergency.







UNICEF says new nutritional and health surveys in Cameroon are planned for later this year.







“Often when it comes to malnutrition in the region we think only of the ‘purely’ Sahel countries,” UNICEF-Cameroon nutrition specialist Denis Garnier told IRIN. “But Cameroon has high levels of malnutrition in its northern part equal to those in the Sahel; unfortunately this does not get the same attention.”







The population of the north and extreme north regions is about 4.9 million – more than the entire population of Liberia or Mauritania.







The causes of malnutrition in Cameroon are many and varied, and similar to those in many Sahel countries, according to Garnier: lack of basic healthcare, food insecurity, poor access to essential child-survival services and poor infant feeding practices. Isolation of these zones is also a contributing factor. Exacerbating difficult living conditions in eastern and northern Cameroon are influxes of refugees from Central African Republic and Chad .







“To its great credit Cameroon has opened its borders to refugees from Chad and Central African Republic,” UNICEF’s Clemens told IRIN. “But refugees are putting a great deal of pressure on already scarce resources. The host communities are not rich, yet are sharing what little is there.”







Nutrition and health







Nutritionist Garnier said the government is taking encouraging steps to integrate nutrition and malnutrition treatment into health services, but much remains to be done by all concerned, and resources are lacking.







Augustin Ndongmo Nanfack, head of nutritional monitoring and evaluation with Cameroon’s Health Promotion Department, told IRIN that for the first time the government is placing nutrition coordinators around the country. “We have had a deficit of nutritionists in the field,” he told IRIN. “Cameroon has not been seen as a country that has a problem of under-nutrition, but it clearly does.”















Map of Cameroon Une fois envolé l'espoir de changement lié au pétrole, les habitants de Kribi se sont concentrés sur le tourisme... Cameroon IRIN Map of Cameroon ... Kribi, un petit paradis pour les touristes et le sida Map of Cameroon ...



Photo: IRIN











