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Background: The job of mothers though having a positive impact on the family could be detrimental to children's health due to her unavailability. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out from March to August 2014. Mothers of children aged 11 -48 months were interviewed to determine factors which could influence the vaccination of their children. Results: A total of 265 mothers were interviewed. Despite their occupations, they completely vaccinated all of their children. The vaccination coverage of tracer antigens (third dose of DPT/HiB/HepB) was high 97.7% as well as the proportion of children completely vaccinated (91.7%). A mastery of the vaccination calendar of the site, and resumption of activities when the children were more than 4 months old, significantly influenced the completion of vaccination. Only 6 children (2.3%) were not correctly or incompletely vaccinated. The reason given by their mothers were: the lack of time (45.0%), the adverse effects of vaccines (27.0%), forgetfulness (18%), and shortage of vaccines supplies (5.0%). Conclusions: Occupation was not a hindrance to the vaccination of children of live-stock retailers. The problem of absent or incomplete vaccination could be overcome by improving the strategies of social mobilisation, permitting the sensitisation of mothers hesitant to vaccinate their children. A regular supply of vaccines will reduce the missed opportunities, thus maintaining high vaccination coverage in this social group.

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Background: Nutritional education in the community would permit to optimize the advice with regards to the local specificities. The goal of the study was to consolidate the nutritional rehabilitation after hospital management of children severely malnourished. On long term, the impact is to modify feeding habits thus, reducing the prevalence of malnutrition. Methods: Nutritional education was provided to the mothers on how to use local food stuffs for proper feeding. Two random groups of 43 children were made; the first of 20 patients had 3 post discharge visits with the third after 2 months of observation. The second group received routine hospital follow up and only one home immersion for evaluation. Counseling continued during immersions. We compared the dietary diversity on admission and at the end the study between the two groups. Results: Most parents do not feed their children with respect to WHO norms; only 7.0% exclusively breastfed their children till 6 months and 53.5% stopped breastfeeding very early the first three months. At the end of the study, there was an improvement in the knowledge on the varieties of food used to prepare porridges of high nutritional value. The practices of mothers had also changed in particular with the increase in the number of variety food groups consumed by children. Meanwhile, the changes were better in the group followed up at home (p=0.038). Conclusion: In a context where food stuffs are available locally, personalized nutritional education can improve the dietary habits of the population using household immersion.

Introduction le risque de décès serait élevé dans les unités des soins intensifs (USI) des pays en développement. Nous décrivons les décès survenus à l’Unité des Soins Intensifs du Centre Mère et Enfant de Yaoundé au Cameroun. Méthodes étude rétrospective portant sur les caractéristiques cliniques, sociodémographiques, l’itinéraire thérapeutique ainsi que certains facteurs associés aux décès survenus entre 2010 et 2014 chez 200 patients âgés de 3-59 mois. Résultats sur 2675 patients admis, 1807 étaient âgés de 3 à 59 mois et 303 sont décédés. Les taux de mortalité global et spécifique à cette tranche d’âge étaient de 11,3% et de 16,7% respectivement. La plupart (152/200 soit 76,0%) décédait à moins de 24 mois et le délai médian de leur admission était de 7 jours. Plus de la moitié (57,0%) avait recouru à un centre de santé et seuls 66 (33,0%) avaient bénéficié d’une référence. Le paludisme grave (41,5%), la pneumonie (22,7%) et la gastroentérite (27,8%) étaient les pathologies les plus incriminées. La malnutrition et le VIH/Sida constituaient les causes sous-jacentes de décès chez 23,0% et 20,5% de sujets respectivement. La présence de la gastroentérite multipliait le risque de décès d’environ 6 fois (OR = 5,76; P = 0,000) lorsque la malnutrition et l’infection à VIH étaient présentes. Les décès survenaient majoritairement (90,0%) dans les 72 heures d’admission. Conclusion certaines pathologies auraient pu être traitées avec des moyens simples afin d’éviter les complications nécessitant une réanimation dans un contexte à ressources limitées. Il est crucial d’intensifier la lutte contre le paludisme, l’infection à VIH et la malnutrition.