Malick, a busy life as a community health worker

With a smile on his face and a little teasing word, Malick has become an important figure in Kada’a, his home village in the Far North region. In this area where maternal health is one of the main major health problems with malnutrition, malaria, HIV, diarrhea diseases… He has been a community health worker for about ten years and conducts outreach activities in his community to ensure the well-being of families. Thanks to the training he received from UNICEF after being selected by his community, he has become versatile in his work and has also been carrying out activities to promote reproductive, maternal and newborn health in recent months to enable Kada’a families to adopt essential family practices.

“Every day I take a moment to visit a few households in my community. Together we discuss topics such as handwashing with soap and water, the importance of immunization for children and pregnant women, the importance of antenatal visits and post-partum care, home visits, malnutrition, HIV and diarrhea prevention, and the importance of birth registration. And I give them lots of advice,” he says.

A few months ago, while doing his home visits, he came across Fatima, a woman who was seven months pregnant and had not yet had an ANC. He had to use all his experience to convince her to go for a check-up and make sure that everything was okay for her and the baby. Accompanied by Baba, she went to the health center about 2 km away where the nurse, after analyzing the situation, had to put her on medication and give her appointments that she had to follow regularly because there was a good chance that her baby would not live long or would die prematurely before delivery, putting her at risk herself if she was not followed.

This announcement was a shock to the lady who still remembered her last pregnancy. “I had my first child without difficulty, and I had never gone to the hospital, but during my last pregnancy my son was born and a few minutes later he died. Going through this once again would have killed me, so I decided to go to the nurse every time to follow my pregnancy,” she says. Then Malick took it as part of his daily work to accompany Fatima himself until the day she gave birth to the beautiful Zeina, the reason for her mother’s joy. Talk to her today about pregnancies and she will tell you about consultation. “Before, I didn’t know that the death of a newborn or a woman giving birth to a stillborn child was due to lack of antenatal.

Malick is much loved in his community and through his work, he contributes to the IsDB-funded Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Improvement Project (PASMNI). In this project, UNICEF is supporting the Government of Cameroon in strengthening the implementation of community-driven maternal, newborn and child health interventions

In the beginning he confesses, “it wasn’t easy. But as the behavior of the people in my community is starting to change, I feel galvanized. Even the men who were hostile to ANC, vaccination of their children, when we meet during market days, they don’t hesitate to offer me a calabash of millet wine as a token of their appreciation while inviting me to come home for health advice”.

Today Fatima is happy for her daughter who has already received her 5 doses of vaccines in order to be protected from disease. Her dream for her daughter is for her to grow up in good health and have the chance to become a teacher or nurse.