Malaria Country Context 

Cameroon’s climate and terrain are variable across the country with the entire population of approximately 24 million people at risk of malaria. Cameroon has three malaria transmission seasons that vary by geographic region. The forest zone in the South has a permanent transmission season of seven to twelve months. The North and Adamawa regions have a shorter transmission season of four to six months, and the Far North region has an even shorter seasonal transmission period of one to three months. The malaria parasite species Plasmodium falciparum causes the majority of infections. 

Malaria continues to be a leading cause of illness and death in Cameroon, particularly among children under the age of five. In 2018, the national health information system reported about 2.2 million confirmed cases of malaria, compared to a World Health Organization (WHO) estimate of 7.3 million cases. During this same time, Cameroon reported 3,000 deaths due to malaria while the WHO estimate was 10,900 malaria deaths.The North and Far North regions have a disproportionately higher number of malaria cases and deaths compared to the other regions. 

This is PMI Impact Malaria’s geographic coverage in Cameroon: 

PMI Impact Malaria has supported Cameroon’s NMCP in achieving these key accomplishments: 

• Ran a 2019 seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) campaign in 45 districts in the North and Far North regions, reaching about 1.7 million children with medicine to prevent malaria during the rainy season. This included training, supervising, and paying thousands of SMC staff to reach 98.9% of the children targeted in these two regions. 

• Trained 397 health providers in 271 health facilities in malaria case management, malaria in pregnancy (MIP), and the use of malaria rapid diagnostic tests (mRDTs) in the North and Far North regions. 

• Implemented a new approach of supportive supervision at the facility level with standard automated checklists, called OTSS+, that focuses on continuous improvement of the competencies of health providers in case management, MIP, and diagnostics. So far, 225 health providers have benefited from OTSS+ in IM’s two focus regions. Going forward, training will expand to 100 additional health providers to bring quality improvement in malaria service delivery through supportive supervision to a total of 371 health facilities. 

• Rolled out integrated community case management (iCCM) of malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea through training, supervising, and supporting about 362 community health workers (CHWs) in three districts within the North and Far North regions. These CHWs serve about 732,515 people, including 117,172 children under five years of age. Since the launch of the program, CHWs have provided community care and treatment to 612 cases of fever and diarrhea. Going forward, Cameroon’s NMCP will expand the iCCM program to 369 additional CHWs in three new districts, bringing the number of Cameroonians covered by iCCM activities to almost 1.4 million by the end of 2020. 

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Photo Credit: Natalie Hendler/PMI Impact Malaria, Cameroon

Sources: PMI’s Cameroon Country Brief, PMI’s Cameroon Malaria Operational Plan FY 2020, 2019 World Malaria Report Cameroon Country Profile, PMI Impact Malaria Cameroon, and Cameroon’s NMCP