No abstract

Purpose: The health practitioners must recognize both the warning signs of child abuse and collaborate in the prevention of its consequences. The general objective of this study was to report the different clinical presentations of abused children received in four referral hospitals in Yaoundé that could be used as warning signs in medical consultations. Methodology: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in four referral hospitals in Yaoundé from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2019. The target population of the study was children under the age of 18 who were victims of abuse. All records of children under 18 years who were victims of abuse were included in this study consecutively. The records were obtained from the archives of the hospitals. Statistical analysis was done using Epi-info TM version 7.2 software. Findings: Female children were the most frequently abused (121; 91.7%) with an age range of 0-14 years (125; 94.0%). The main reasons for medical consultation were the request for human immunodeficiency virus testing (105; 69.1%) and the suspicion of sexual assault (81; 53.3%). The most frequent traumatic lesions were lacerations (67; 59.3%) with the anogenital area (98; 86.7%) as the main body location. Conclusion: Improving the diagnosis of child abuse by studying clinical signs would be crucial in the fight against this scourge in our context by considering the infectious risk, the suspicion of sexual assault and anogenital lesions as the main warning signs. Recommendations: The study recommend campaigns to raise awareness on the issue of violence suffered by young girls, train health practitioners in psychological care and develop psychological monitoring.

Introduction: The health cheque system is a prepayment mechanism aimed at reducing neonatal and maternal mortality through improving the management of pregnant women. The pregnant woman with the health cheque system that she pays at six thousand francs XAF (African financial community) is covered free of charge for all the care provided by the cheque system in the health facilities accredited to the health cheque project. We did a study, with objective to determine the hospital outcome of newborns with a health cheque system (HCS) compared to those without health cheque system. Method: A descriptive cross-sectional study with retrospective data collection was carried out at the Ngaoundere Regional Hospital from January 2018 to September 2021. Results: During our study period, 2985 newborns were received. We saw an increase in admissions over the years, particularly in the group of newborns with the health cheque system. Comparatively, the percentage of newborns cured in the health cheque system group was 76.73% (n = 1643) versus 77.72% (n = 656) those in the non-health cheque system group. Those who died were 8.96% (n = 192) in the health cheque system group compared to 6.27% (n = 53) in the non-health cheque system group. Conclusions and Recommendations: Most patients admitted to our service have the health cheque system. We notice an increase in hospital attendance with the health cheque project. The outcome of the newborn under the health cheque system is not different from that without health cheque system. The health cheque system was successful in getting the larger number of newborns into care. The next step is to put strategies in place to keep these patients in care for the duration of hospitalization.

Introduction: In low-income countries, severe anemia represents a significant risk of mortality. It is generally the consequence of a lack of correct community-based management of mild and moderate anemia and its etiologies. Our study aimed to evaluate the community practice in confronting anemia by mothers of children aged 0 -5 years old before and during the COVID-19 period. Methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study in two phases at the pediatric ward of the regional hospital of Ngaoundere in Cameroon; before the period of the COVID-19 pandemic from December 2018 to May 2019 and during the pandemic period from December 2020 to May 2021. It was a volunteer sample. Were included in this study all mothers of children aged 0 -5 years present in the pediatric ward at the time of the survey who agreed to freely answer our questionnaire. Results: Of the 152 mothers surveyed in the "Before COVID-19" group, 69% went to a health facility when they suspected their children were anemic, 20% gave grenadine juice (Red colored soda), 7% went to marabous, 2% bought street medicines and 2% used other home-made potions. Of the 92 mothers included in the "During COVID-19" group, the majority did not go to a health facility: 36% gave grenadine juice and other potions, 26% went to marabouts, 23% bought medicines from the street and only 13% went to a health facility; 2% did nothing. The average Group rank is not statistically significantly different between the before and during the COVID-19 periods (p = 0.89). Conclusion: Community behavior and practice in confronting anemia deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the majority of mothers resorting to non-effective out-of-hospital solutions. The consequence can be an increase in infant mortality.

No abstract