Health Library
Short, true health lessons in plain words. English and French. Every article lists its sources. Free for everyone, always. 48 lessons and growing.
Short, true health lessons in plain words. English and French. Every article lists its sources. Free for everyone, always. 48 lessons and growing.
Most malaria is treated and the person gets better. A few signs mean it has turned severe.
Read →Meningitis is an infection of the covering of the brain. It can go from a headache to a death in under a day, and Cameroon sits in the African…
Read →Most pregnancies go well. A small number turn dangerous quickly, and almost all of those give a warning first. These are the warnings.
Read →A stroke is blood not reaching part of the brain. About two million brain cells die every minute it continues.
Read →A seizure looks frightening and usually stops by itself within two minutes. Almost everything people instinctively do to help makes it worse.
Read →Most fevers in children settle. A few are the first hours of malaria, pneumonia or meningitis. You do not need to know which.
Read →Malaria is spread by one mosquito that bites between dusk and dawn. Everything that works against it works by breaking that one contact, and the…
Read →Treating every fever as malaria feels efficient and is the reason many people are treated for the wrong illness.
Read →A treated net is the cheapest medicine in Cameroon, and most of its value is lost to four small mistakes. None of them are about the net being old.
Read →Antenatal care is not a formality before delivery. It is a series of checks for the specific things that kill women and babies in Cameroon, most of…
Read →Breast milk alone for the first six months, then breast milk plus food until two years or beyond.
Read →Malaria is more dangerous in pregnancy than at any other time in an adult life.
Read →Diarrhoea kills children by drying them out, not by the diarrhoea itself.
Read →Undernutrition in the first two years does damage that is not fully recovered later: it shows up as stunting, more infections, and less learning at…
Read →Oral rehydration salts save more children’s lives than almost anything else in this library, and they only work at the right concentration.
Read →More than half of all deaths under five happen in the first month, and most of them in the first week.
Read →A cough lasting more than two weeks is the signal. Tuberculosis is curable and the treatment is free in Cameroon, but it is caught late because the…
Read →Cholera kills by drying the body out, sometimes within hours. The thing that saves people is fluid, and the fluid has to start at home, before and…
Read →Most first aid is one of five situations, and in each one the first two minutes decide more than anything that happens afterwards.
Read →Heat becomes dangerous quietly. By the time somebody says they feel unwell in the heat, the body has usually been losing more than it takes in for…
Read →Typhoid travels from one person’s waste to another person’s mouth, usually through water, hands or food.
Read →HIV today is a condition managed with one tablet a day, with a normal life expectancy and no risk of passing it to a partner once the virus is…
Read →Tooth decay and gum disease are among the commonest conditions there are, they cause pain that stops people working, and a dental abscess can become…
Read →There are now several ways to prevent HIV, and they work together rather than competing.
Read →Most blindness in Africa is avoidable: cataract, uncorrected long or short sight, glaucoma and infection account for the great majority.
Read →Cholera arrives through water and leaves through hands. When a case is reported in your town, a handful of household habits decide whether it reaches…
Read →Typhoid comes from swallowing water or food that has been in contact with human waste.
Read →A first aid box is only useful if it exists before the emergency, and if everyone in the house knows where it is.
Read →Most households in Cameroon wash hands without a tap. That is not a reason to wash less; it is a reason to set up the pouring point once and stop…
Read →Treating water once is easy. Keeping the household’s water safe from the tap or the borehole to the cup, every day, is where it is won or lost.
Read →Soap and water at the right moments prevents more illness than anything else in this library, and costs almost nothing.
Read →Most of what fills a diarrhoea ward comes through water. Water that looks clean can carry cholera, typhoid and the germs that dry a child out in a…
Read →Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known. One case in a market can infect nine out of ten unvaccinated people nearby, and the virus stays…
Read →Polio paralyses, permanently, and there is no cure. Everything against it is prevention.
Read →Vaccination is the single highest-return thing a parent does for a child, and it is free at public health facilities in Cameroon.
Read →People ask this honestly and deserve an honest answer rather than reassurance.
Read →Blood pressure responds to a handful of changes, and salt is the biggest one in Cameroon.
Read →Diabetes means there is too much sugar in the blood, because the body either does not make enough insulin or cannot use it properly.
Read →High blood pressure causes no symptoms until it causes a stroke. It is the leading cause of stroke in Cameroon, it is common in adults here, and most…
Read →Diabetes is managed day by day by the person who has it, not by the clinic. What follows is what that management is made of, in the order it matters.
Read →A large share of treatment failure here is not the wrong medicine. It is the right medicine taken for three days, shared with a relative, or bought…
Read →There is no amount of alcohol that is good for health. That is a change from what was said twenty years ago, and it comes from better studies.
Read →Back pain is one of the commonest reasons adults stop working, and most of it comes from how things are lifted and carried and how long people sit…
Read →Good nutrition is not the same thing as expensive food. The most nutritious items in a Cameroonian market are among the cheapest, and the expensive…
Read →Nearly all "healthy eating" advice is written around food nobody here buys.
Read →Movement lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, protects against stroke and heart disease, and improves sleep and mood.
Read →Smoking damages nearly every organ, and stopping brings the risk down at any age.
Read →Stress is the body reacting to demand, and in short bursts it is useful.
Read →Depression and anxiety are among the commonest health conditions in the world, they are treatable, and they are not a weakness of character or a…
Read →Persistent short sleep raises blood pressure, worsens blood sugar control, weakens the immune system and damages mood and concentration.
Read →People carry things for years because they do not know how to begin, or because they expect the first person they tell to react badly.
Read →Nothing matches. Try a simpler word, or describe the symptom instead.