Hope for Children Living Wth HIV/AIDS

The number of children who hitherto were unable to receive ART because of one reason or the other in Cameroon especially in the North West and Southwest regions would be doubled in the near future. This is as a result of the launching of the Accelerated Children’s HIV/AIDS Treatment (ACT) Initiative in Bamenda on the 26^th of May 2015.

The project which would be carried out by the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board is a joint President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and Children Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). The initiative is aimed at doubling the total number of children receiving life-saving antiretroviral therapy across at least ten sub Saharan African countries with Cameroon being one of the beneficiaries. The initiative came about for the pure reason that the global plan to eliminate Mother to child transmission of HIV by 2015 still had low children treatment rate because of the several challenges encountered. Some of these challenges included lack of clinical and psychological services to manage children, lack of skills by some healthcare providers and regular stock out of pediatric ARV medication.

The initiative which would be focus in four PEPFAR regions in Cameroon (NW, SW, Littoral and CE) is expected to reach about 11,260 children and 1000 adolescent by the end of 2016. In Cameroon according to Dr. Pascal Nji Atanga, about 94000 children live with HIV/AIDS and a dismal 6% are actually on ART as compared to 25% of adults.

The ACT project which has as slogan, “Find the children, Treat them and Keep them” will put in place strategies to ensure an effective and sustainable implementation of the initiative. Some of these strategies would include the development of a National policy for pediatric HIV/AIDS services, community engagement, HIV case identification and linkage to HIV care and treatment services just to name a few.

While launching the project in the presence of the Director of CBCHB, Prof. Tih Pius, District Medical Officers and other dignitaries, the Regional Delegate of Public Health, Dr. Ndiforchu Victor expressed his appreciation to the people of PEPFAR and CDC. He intimated that the low uptake of the care and treatment of HIV infected children in Cameroon was noted and government can not fold its arms and wait and expect any positive outcome but to do something. He further called on all health units to play their roles to make sure the initiative is a total success.

In his presentation, the PI of the HIV-Free North West and South West, Prof. Tih Pius presented a positive picture of the implementation of the project. It indicated that more women and men are aware of the need to attend ANC though a lot more still need to be done in certain areas where accessibility and other cultural barriers were still a hindrance. He also identified the fact that there was a limited health personnel and some of them were not polyvalent and as such there was need for a reorganization of the services to adapt to the new challenges.