In the hubbub of a large meeting room, Dr. Dorine Ngono shouts herself hoarse. “The purpose of the investigation here is to retrace the itinerary of the case to draw an exhaustive list of all those who have been in contact with the case.”
Dr. Ngono is a physician-epidemiologist with Cameroon’s Ministry of Health. In front of her – wearing masks and sitting six feet apart – are dozens of future contact tracers in training, 40 of whom work for Action Against Hunger. The next day, the teams will embark on their work in the neighborhoods of Cameroon’s capital city, Yaoundé.
“Time is running out,” says Anne Forget, Emergency Coordinator for Action Against Hunger Cameroon, which is providing technical support to the Ministry of Health and has deployed six mobile contact-tracing teams in Yaoundé. If the spread of the disease is to be contained, contact tracing will be crucial.
“When there’s a confirmed case or a suspected case, we send out teams to ask questions about people’s schedules over the last 15 days,” she explains. “Where they’ve been, where they’ve eaten, where they’ve worked, who they’ve been in contact with. And so, based on this list of contacts, we establish those who are at risk of having been contaminated by the person and then we have to follow them, visit them every day for 14 days, asking them very specific questions about their state of health, take their temperature, know if they have cough, fever, breathing difficulties, etc.”
Samuel Feugaing oversees Action Against Hunger’s emergency program in Yaoundé. “In addition to following up on contacts, Action Against Hunger will also focus on raising public awareness,” he says. “We will try to set up watch and alert teams at the neighborhood level, who will be able to alert intervention teams at their level if there are sick people or suspicious cases in the community.”
People showing COVID-19 symptoms are referred to health authorities, and depending on their condition, they will be asked to remain isolated or transferred to one of the four hospitals in Yaoundé able to treat this disease.
“In parallel, awareness-raising activities on hygiene and barrier measures will be disseminated to communities. We must raise awareness of good practices, such as handwashing and distancing. Our approach involves communities because we cannot contain an epidemic without shared will,” says Aurélie Carmielle, Action Against Hunger’s Country Director in Cameroon.
Cameroon registered its first case on March 6. Since then, 1,430 cases have been confirmed and 43 people have died. To date, the disease has been concentrated in cities like Yaoundé and many worry that it will spread to vulnerable areas affected by conflict, such as the Far North region. In this part of the country, where populations have been displaced by violence in the Lake Chad region, just 14.3% of people have access to improved sanitation facilities.
Across all of the 47 countries where we work, Action Against Hunger fears that already vulnerable populations will be driven deeper into hunger and poverty because of loss of income caused by COVID-19. We are also extremely concerned about malnourished children who are in need of treatment and whose futures depend on the ability of their families to earn livelihoods.
