Health experts in Cameroon and partners are seeking solutions to adolescent health challenges at the first congress of the Cameroonian Society of Adolescent Health that opened in Yaounde on 14th May 2024.
Discussions at two-day event are focused on the theme “Adolescents and Globalization : Health Challenges in Resource Limited Setting”.
The maiden congress on adolescent health was chaired by the Representative of the Minister of Public Health, Mr. Boukar Oumaté, currently the Inspector General of Administrative Services at the Ministry of Public Health.
“The health of adolescents is an indicator of a country’s development and everyone should be concerned,” Mr. Oumaté said.
The first Scientific Days of the Cameroonian Society of Adolescent Health( CASADO), has been organized in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization. The WHO Resident Representative, Phanuel Habimana, was represented at the event by Dr BAONGA BA POUTH Simon Frank.
CASADO’s maiden conference is taking place with technical support technical support and financial support from WHO Cameroon and the WHO Regional Office for Africa.
Stepping up the Crusade against Cervical Cancer
It is an opportunity for WHO to promote the the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine, mental health, nutritional health and fight all forms of physical and sexual violence against adolescents.
Cameroon added the HPV vaccine to its immunization list in 2020 to fight cervical cancer among young women. In September 2020, the government announced plans to administer the vaccine to 339,908 young girls aged 9. Since the introduction of the HPV vaccine, the Ministry of Public Health and partners, among them WHO, have embarked on educating parents about the importance of the vaccine. From 2020-2022, the HPV vaccine was administered to young girls aged 9-14 who were not yet sexually active. In 2023, vaccination was extended to include young boys within the same age range. WHO is at conference on adolescent health to let the public know why it is important for these young people to get the jab.Prof. Mbu Robinson, Director of the Yaounde Gyneco-Obstetric and Pediatric Hospital says the vaccine does not prevent cervical cancer when young girls are already sexually active.
Adolescents’ struggles
Drugs, juvenile delinquency, unwanted pregnancies, access to good sexual health services and mental health issues are some of the challenges adolescents in Cameroon are grappling with.
“Adolescence is a critical period in our lives when we are transitioning from childhood to adulthood and facing a number of challenges. Adolescents are trying to position themselves in the society, wanting to be adults, but also facing the physical change that comes from puberty. This physical change will also create a factor of vulnerability that can lead to an early pregnancy, infection with a sexually transmitted disease -HIV/AIDS being one of them,” Dr. Bacha Abdelkader, facilitator from UNICEF told CRTV Web.
Recent WHO data shows that adolescents aged 10 – 19 constitute 23% of Cameroon’s population, and suffer from several challenges that are unique to their age group.
These issues concern 19% of girls who are forced into early marriage, a high birth rate of 122 per thousand among adolescent girls, 26.4% of teenagers dealing with an unmet need for family planning, higher than that for adults which is currently 23%. The drug consumption rate and narcotics among adolescents is 26% for tobacco, 20% for alcohol, 15% tramadol and 2% for cannabis.
With regards mental health, 26% of adolescents are said to suffer from severe depression, 42% suffer from anemia, 13% suffer from overweight or obesity, and 19% suffer from accidents on public roads. Physical and sexual violence also constitutes part of adolescents’ struggles.
To address the growing problem of mental wellbeing, especially among adolescents WHO recommends “actions aimed at strengthening mental and physical capacities including cognitive and psychological capacities, in order to maintain them at an optimal level for as long as possible.”
The WHO representative Dr BAONGA BA POUTH Simon Frank says the first scientific days of the Cameroonian society for adolescent health is “timely because this is an ideal framework to address all the problems or challenges related to adolescent health in a context such as ours that suffers from limited resources, and to reflect on high-impact interventions to advance the adolescent health agenda in Cameroon.”
For the President of the Cameroonian Society of Adolescent Health, being proactive in the search for solutions to adolescent health challenges is of utmost importance.
“We organized this conference because we want to sit down with other health experts and find possible solutions to health challenges facing adolescents, so that problems should not arise before we start looking for solutions. We have to look for the solution to better handle such challenges that are usually difficult to manage,” Prof. Essiben Felix, President of CASADO said.
Preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV), adolescent crisis and mental health, puberty, menstrual problems and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are among issues being discussed at the conference.
At the end of the two-day event, experts hope to reach a consensus on how to tackle health problems of adolescents.
Kathy Neba Sina
