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Summary:Purpose: To evaluate the availability and accessibility of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in two health districts in Cameroon.Methods: The study included 33 patients with epilepsy, 26 physicians, 13 private pharmacists, eight hospital pharmacists, three distributors, and eight traditional healers. Structured questionnaires were used to assess the knowledge of the disease, treatment accessibility, the methods of prescriptions, and the availability and the frequency of delivery of drugs.Results: Only one of 33 patients did not take modern treatment; 9 I % of the patients were followed up by a traditional healer, and 78%, by an hospital physician. Phenobarbitone (PB) was the most frequently prescribed drug by 69% of the doctors; S4% of the physicians considered the traditional therapies to be incompatible with modern drug treatment. By pharmacists, PB was delivered regularly. Other drugs went out of stock frequently. The number of packages in stock varied significantly directly with the frequency of delivery. The mean price pcr package and the mean number of packages in stock were higher in the public hospital pharmacies than in the private pharmacies. A majority of healers explained cpilepsy as the presence of excess foam in the abdomen. The remedies proposed were to stop foam secretion.Conclusions: Availability of AEDs was quite high, but with n o strict correspondence between the rate of prescriptions and the supply of the drugs.

A review and a meta-analysis of the available epidemiological literature for evidence of an association between onchocerciasis infection and epilepsy were carried out. We used EMBASE (1974–2002), MEDLINE (1966–2002), and PASCAL (1987–2002) databases and relevant journals and bibliographies. We limited our analysis to the epidemiological studies, where the status regarding onchocerciasis infection and epilepsy was available for each subject. Nine African studies were included. The common relative risk estimated by the random-effects model was 1.21 (95% CI 0.99–1.47; p = 0.06). The meta-analysis did not show any difference according to the onchocerciasis endemicity level and the African areas. Our results do not allow to conclude for an association between Onchocerca volvulus infection and epilepsy. However, the results are nearly significant. Further research is needed in this neglected subject, in particular for the better understanding of the neurological pathogenicity in onchocerciasis.

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Objective and Methods: It was the aim of this study to determine the relative prevalence and characteristics of degenerative disorders of the main central nervous system in Cameroon. Medical files of neurological consultations of the two main teaching hospitals of Yaounde were considered for a 9-year period ranging from 1993 to 2001. Clinical and epidemiological data were recorded for each patient. Results: Degenerative brain disorders accounted for 3.9% of consultations during the study period. Of the 84 patients received for degenerative disorders, 62 (73.8%) were men. Their age ranged from 9 to 84 years, with a mean of 54.16 years. The main degenerative diseases recorded were the following: Parkinson disease (48.8%), chorea (20.2%), dementia (19%) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (12%). Conclusion: Degenerative brain disorders are not rare in our setting. The appropriate diagnosis and management in this environment may be compromised by the prohibitive cost of diagnostic facilities and the lack of qualified personnel.