Page 46 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Mbu Daniel Tambi , Peter Arung Etat: Implications of Access to Portable Water
For Child Health Production in Cameroon

Sambe-Ba (2013) noted that diarrhea diseases remain one of the principal causes of
childhood mortality and morbidity in low income countries despite significant
progress in our understanding of the pathogenesis of these diseases and in their
management. According to the World Health Organization, diarrhea disease is the
second leading cause of death in children under five years old worldwide, and is
responsible for 1.5 million child deaths every year. Thus, Schiller (2007) indicated
that the risk of contacting diarrhea diseases is currently 5-fold higher in Sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA) than in industrialized countries. With particular attention to Cameroon,
despite the economic growth relative to the region, is facing a familiar string of
environmental problems which are tightly connected to socio-economic factors that
afflict the population, such as loss of natural habitat, poaching, desertification,
overfishing and Diseases. Among these diseases in Cameroon, many children are
dying of pneumonia (19 percent), diarrhea (18 percent), malaria (8 percent),
neonatal sepsis or pneumonia (10 percent), preterm delivery (10 percent) and
asphyxia at birth (8 percent) and other diarrhea related diseases (GOC, 2011).

Despite the pressing need for appropriate policies, document and disseminate
knowledge in this area, it should be noted that research on child health issues vis-a-
vis nutrition, mother’s employment, fertility, age and education, inequality has been
well documented but issues of water source - hygiene and child health outcomes
using evidence based estimate has not yet been exploited (Cheng et al, 2012). Most
of the studies in this area so far as Cameroon is concern, has instead examine the
role of microbial agents in contaminated water that causes diarrhea diseases or the
epidemiology of rotavirus diarrhea in children under 5 years, such authors include:
Ndze el al (2012), Yongsi (2008, 2010) and Ntouda et al (2013) mean while the
issue of water supply and child health are well develop in other countries with the
same economic and social strata like Cameroon. Some of the authors include:
Bampoke (2013) and Sambe-ba et al (2013) in the case of Senegal, Arval et al
(2012) in the case of Nepal, Brainerd and Menon (2012) for India and Roushdy et al
(2012) for the case of Egypt to name a few.

This study is therefore bridging this gap in that we attempt to link the household source
of water to child health outcomes, the study is also very important because it seems to
be the first to use the Cameroon DHS to quantify the relationship between household
source of water and child health outcomes in Cameroon. Hence, to do this, we will
examine the following objectives: explore the determinants of household source of
drinking water in Cameroon, verify the impact of household source of drinking water on
child Health outcomes in Cameroon and analyze the heterogeneous effects of child
health by child age.

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