Country Ambassadors
Christine Mandengue, Assistant professor; Lecturer; practitioner; in charge of Nursing studies, Université des Montagnes, Bangangté.
Email: On request
View the Fungal burden of disease in Cameroon: Now published Mandengue 2018.
Personal comment on the major needs in Cameroon which GAFFI should be addressing:
How you have helped GAFFI;I discovered GAFFI in 2015 at Paramaribo (Suriname), at the First Histoplasmosis meeting in the Americas and Caribbean (December, 4th-6th). Since then I have shared my experiences with GAFFI through the open letter on Histoplasmosis. GAFFI invited me in 2016 to the GFIF2 as a member of a working group but could not get a visa. Prof David Denning and I have discussed fungal infections in Cameroon. Recently in collaboration we have a burden of fungal infection in Cameroon, which will be presented at ECCMID 2017
Personal comment on the major needs in Cameroon which GAFFI should be addressing: In Cameroon there is an acute lack of laboratories that can diagnose fungal infection. The problem is acute especially for deep mycosis as histoplasmosis, which is an unknown public health problem in Cameroon, with fatal outcome in HIV infected persons. There is a lack of rapid tools for diagnosis; only staining of tissues is still used, causing false positive or false negative results. Only one effective lab is available in the whole country, which is located at Yaoundé, Centre Pasteur du Cameroun ( http://www.pasteur-yaounde.org ) this lab is not accessible to most Cameroonians. Consequently, there is lack of national surveys of fungal infections and lack of all fungal infections data in Cameroon.
There is also a lack of effective antifungal drugs, even generic and mostly for deep mycosis. Antifungal drugs are mainly provided on the black market
Links to key fungal/global health institutions in Cameroon: Pasteur: www.pasteur-yaounde.org