By Joe Dinga Pefok
The World Bank has extended its support to AES SONEL in its (company) relentless fight to curb river blindness in the Sanaga Basin, in the Sanaga Maritime Division.
Through one of its affiliated institutions, the International Finance Institution, IFI, the World Bank is lending a hand to try to eradicate the tsetse fly that causes river blindness.It is worth noting that AES SONEL has two of its major electricity generating installations (Songloulou and Edea Hydro Power Plants) located in the Sanaga Basin.
Over the years, it has been concerned about the damage caused to the community there by river blindness.As part of its social policy, the company has been doing its possible best in the fight against river blindness by, for example, funding the regular spraying of insecticides in the Sanaga Basin, as well as through research.
"The fight against river blindness is a permanent engagement of AES SONEL; a major aspect in the social responsibility of the enterprise, in which considerable sums of money are invested," the Sub-Director of Communications at AES SONEL, Alexandre Siewe, stated in a release he issued on July 21 in Douala.
He noted that the company, formerly known as SONEL, has been in the fight since 1965.
Meanwhile in the past, a number of other companies operating in the Sanaga Basin were also contributing to the fight against river blindness in the area. But as Siewe noted in his release, those other companies had all since disengaged themselves from the fight, due to the ever-increasing cost of the project.
"Today, AES SONEL is the lone enterprise that has continued non-stop since 1965 to lead in the research aimed at finding effective ways to eradicate the pandemic in the Sanaga Basin," he asserted.
Research, Result, Recommendations
Meanwhile, following AES SONEL's contact with the World Bank, the IFI that came in to support the project, had last year requested the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands to provide both aid and technical advice for the programming and operational phase of AES SONEL's project against river blindness.
"The aid was used in the research carried in April 2007, in the form of a team of eminent professors and researchers who came in from the Netherlands," Siewe stated.Some of the prominent Cameroonian researchers like Prof. Tchuem Tchuente as well as the Chief Medical Adviser at AES SONEL, Dr. Joseph Dieuboue, worked with the team from the Netherlands to find out other major diseases existing in the Sanaga Basin.
The research proper took place in a total of 16 villages in the Edea and Ngambe health districts.A delegation which included the representative of AES SONEL General Manager, a team from the World Bank, and Dr. Dieuboue who represented the researchers, presented the results of the research to representatives of the population of the villages on July 22 and 23, 2008.
The village representatives included the mayors of the councils of those localities, chiefs and elite.The report showed that the three sicknesses prevalent in the Sanaga Basin is filaria, which leads to river blindness, malaria and intestinal worms.
The researchers observed that whereas the regular spraying of insecticides by AES SONEL has over the years helped to reduce the rate of infection, the situation nevertheless still remains serious.
The report described the exercise of spraying insecticides as weak. It was recommended that a more intensive and effective method be applied.The researchers made a number of other proposals on how to effectively tackle the perennial health problems due to the persistent existence of tsetse flies and mosquitoes, among others in the Sanaga Basin.
Five-Year Project
Speaking at the different ceremonies, AES SONEL Director of Human Resources, Jean Pierre Moudourou, who represented the General Manager, Jean David Bile, reiterated the company's concern for the health of the population, and thus the reason for the research.
Moudourou disclosed that AES SONEL has, with the assistance of experts, drawn up a project on how to tackle especially the issue of river blindness in the basin.He explained that the project to run for five years will require huge funding which the company cannot handle alone.
He said AES SONEL will thus need to carry out the five-year programme in partnership with other companies in the Sanaga Basin as well as with some international funding bodies.
He said AES SONEL has at most six weeks to present the project to partners like the Breton Woods Institutions.
He said when AES SONEL will present the project to the different partners, they will have to make a plan to include such funds in their next financial budget, which should be next year.
He insisted that it would be unrealistic to expect the partners to provide their own financial contributions right away, when such a thing does not feature in their 2008 budget.
Moudourou, however, assured that while waiting for the five-year programme to effectively go into operation next year, AES SONEL will continue with the existing project of spraying insecticides.
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