Page 54 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

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

This is a common phenomenon with urban residential households, especially when
the health of their children is as stake. Practically the northern regions of Cameroon
are noted on yearly basis to heavily be affected by diarrhea cause by poor supply due
to increase in water volumes. This result reveals that parental literacy is a strong
determinant of household access to portable water. The idea is that, educated people
are well informed so they understand the value of health. Hence the tendency is for
more educated people to adopt every precautionary measure to get the best water in
to the house. This is also confirmed by mothers currently participating in the job
market. Mother’s naturally as the primary caretakers of children, will always
sacrifice a greater portion of their resources being time or finances to ensure that
their children are in good health. In rural Cameroon, it’s common to find father’s
abandoning the burden of children to their mother’s this may partially cause by
cultural and social reasons especially where both parent are uneducated.

Breast feeding mothers are conscious of the quality of water their children are
consuming and so they will prefer to buy refine canned water in the case of
Cameroon we have canned water (such as Tangui, Supermont, Volcanic, Seme etc)
or water treated with chlorine. Even in the most remote village in Cameroon,
mothers with breast feeding children are conscious of the effects of water on
children some of them may go as far as to use Eau de Javel to treat water they give
to their children. The consciousness of women is also explained by the health mass
campaign conducted by the ministry of public health concerning diseases such as
diarrhea, typhoid and malaria. This is the same case with mothers’ fertility rate, birth
interval and child age of zero to fifty nine months. From the reduced form result, we
observed that access to water correlates with male headed households. Whenever a
household is headed by a male, the tendency is for the family income to increase
especially when the couples are both working. Hence, in such homes the probability
is very high for the parent to be aware of the importance of water supply to children.
Today, the slogan ‘prevention is better than cure’ is known by most parents in
Cameroon talk less of the educated and working class.

Other factors that negatively correlate with access to portable water are household
social status especially non-poor households, household size and urban residence. The
result seems to be a reversal of what is expected, however this is not the case; non
poor households located in rural community in Cameroon where the water is not good
enough for consumption will be bound to consumed impure water and vice -versa.

54