Launching Of COP 19 Project: Worsening Anglophone Crisis Hampering HIV Service Delivery In The NWR.

By Raymond Dingana.

The Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services, CBCHS has frowned at the ongoing armed conflict in the North West Region of Cameron for standing on the way of HIV service delivery in the Region. The was during the launching ceremony of  the Country Operation Plan,COP 19 Project Year in the NWR, Thursday October 24, 2019 in the Conference Hall of the North West Regional Fund for Health Promotion. Because of security challenges brought about by the crisis, many have been displaced making HIV Service Delivery a daunting task.  In a bid to free the Region from the claws of HIV, the CBC Health Services will be implementing the HIV-Free North West Project in thirty Health Facilities carved from Fifteen Health Districts which represent in total, 80% of persons leaving with HIV in the Region supported by the US President’s Emergency fund for AIDS Relief also known as PEPFAR through the Center For Disease Control and Prevention also known as CDC.

Despite the socio political crisis rocking the NWR which has made HIV service delivery a daunting task, the manager of the project Dr. Kome George says, a plan has been conceived to taken care of displaced cases: “We are going to find out if there are displaced people, dispense drugs to them, if there are some whose status are not known, we can do testing and initiate them on treatment. If we don’t, many of our clients will die. We have been having clients whom because of the crisis come back to the facility with what we called a state of Advanced Disease.

The HIV prevalence rate in the region is said to have dropped from 6.35% IN 2011 to 4.8% in 2018. NW Regional Delegate of Public Health, Dr. Che Soh Kingsley says the CBC Health Services will still be providing them with a lot of support: “In addition to technical support that they have been giving, they are going to be giving Direct Service Delivery. This means that, the CBC Health Services will be supporting us with additional trained and experienced staff in the area of HIV management in order for us to achieve epidemic control and that is why we are aiming at testing about thirty thousand more people, linking those infected with treatment making sure that, they achieve viral suppression”.

Professor Tih Pius Mufih is Director of CBC Health Services, read him: “Every health care provider in the region should work in a concerted way. It is one project for the whole region, and everybody that is involved in health care should be a part of that project so that we can bring the epidemic under control by identifying thirty thousand new cases and place them under treatment in order to achieve epidemic control”.

The National Aids Control Program in the Region will be receiving support from the HIV-Free North West Project.

                               Participants At The Launching Ceremony Of COP 19 Project Year.

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