We are working at 3 Baptist hospitals in Cameroon - Banso Baptist Hospital (Northwest Province), Mbingo Baptist Hospital (Northwest Province) and Mutengene Baptist Hospital (Southwest Province).

The Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board manages a number of hospitals in the Northwest and Southwest Provinces providing free healthcare for the rural population of subsistence farmers and their families. The project mentor for World Child Cancer, Professor Peter Hesseling and his team have been visiting the region regularly for a number of years and have achieved success in raising survival rates for Burkitts Lymphoma from 0% to 60%. Our funding partner for the project is the Beryl Thyer Memorial Africa Trust.

Major Challenges

• Increasing demand for Burkitt's Lymphoma treatment without adequate capacity
• As awareness of the curability of child cancer improves the other easily curable child cancers are being diagnosed more regularly. However there is a lack of locally appropriate protocols for Wilms Tumour, Kaposi Sarcom and Retinoblastoma
• Lack of trained healthcare professionals able to administer chemotherapy drugs
• Lack of funding for curative and palliative drugs
• Many children abandon treatment

Project Objectives

• To increase access to curative and palliative treatment for children with Burkitts Lymphoma, maintaining survival rates of 60%
• To develop affordable and effective treatment protocols for other child cancers
• To equip local healthcare professionals with the knowledge and skills to safely administer cancer care in a rural hospital
• To develop the infrastructure that is needed for child cancer treatment
• To improve the collection of statistical data on the child cancer patients

What is World Child Cancer Doing to Help?

• We have developed the twinning partnership between the Banso, Mbingo and Mutengene hospitals with Stellenbosch University / Tygerberg Children's Hospital in South Africa
• We are funding the refurbishment of Mbing and Mutengene child cancer wards
• We are developing a child cancer training programme for local healthcare professionals and mentoring to local doctors
• We are developing links with a Francophone child cancer unit in the capital, Yaounde
• We are establishing local parent support groups to reduce abandonment of treatment, and a child cancer database shared between all 3 hospitals
• We are providing funding for drugs, both chemotherapy and palliative

 

If you are a healthcare professional with specialist paediatric oncology expertise and are interested in getting involved with one of our projects please click here to contact us.

Key Facts

• Cameroon is a lower middle income country with a per capita GNI of US $1,180 (Gross National Income (GNI), Atlas Method, World Data Bank 2010)
• The population is around 19.5 million people, the majority of whom still live in poverty on less than US $2 a day
• the government spend on average US $11 per person per year on healthcare but this is insufficient to treat child cancer
• The result of Professor Peter Hesseling and his team visiting the region over a number of years is an increase in survival rates for Burkitt's Lymphoma from 0% to 60%
• There is a lack of appropriate treatment protocols for Wilms Tumour, Kaposi Sarcom and Retinoblastoma

Cameroon

Project Centre: Banso Baptist Hospital (Northwest Province), Mbingo Baptist Hospital (Northwest Province), Mutengene Baptist Hospital (Southwest Province)
Project leader: Professor Pius Tih, Director of Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board
Twinning Centres: Stellenbosch University / Tygerberg Children's Hospital, South Africa
Start Date: January 2012
Length of Project: 5 Years