Sponsored in cooperation with the Earthwatch Institute

Community Health in Cameroon

Adamawa Province, Cameroon

After hiking for hours over rugged plateau and through deep riverine forest, nothing is more gratifying than being greeted by the beaming children of a remote village. They gather around your team cheering "Madame Pileep, Madame Pileep!" They are referring to your leader, Phyllis Jansyn, who has the presence of a female Albert Schweitzer. A nurse and nurse-midwife since 1947, Jansyn was a Peace Corps public health volunteer for two years in Cameroon. Now 73, she is a permanent resident, singularly committed to eliminating intestinal parasites from the villages of the Cameroonian highlands. Your team of volunteers shares that same rare commitment to public health action and research, and gains new inspiration from Jansyn’s stellar example.

Your work in Cameroon is desperately needed. Some of the villages started Jansyn’s program with more than 80 percent of the people suffering from intestinal parasites, including pinworms, hookworms, schistosomes, and tapeworms, and the illness and misery they cause. Fortunately, through the persistent application of relevant medications, education, and simple hygiene, Jansyn’s project has been successful at reducing parasite infestation in these remote villages. Jansyn’s continued success depends on your help examining villagers and helping them understand the importance of clean water, latrines, regular washing, and other hygienic practices. Working with her, you will make a significant contribution to the health of an entire community. "It may be a drop in the bucket," says Jansyn. "But it is a drop!"

• 1 9 9 9 and 2 0 0 0 . T E A M S
• V: Nov 10-24 • VI: Dec 29, 1999- Jan 12, 2000 • Teams for 2000, call for details • Max team size: 7

• M E M B E R S ' . S H A R E . O F . C O S T S
from $1,595 • £930 • Aus $2,450 • Yen ¥187,200

• R E N D E Z V O U S . S I T E
Ngaoundéré Airport, Cameroon

• V O L U N T E E R T A S K S

Your project is based in the highland town of Djohong, a seven-hour drive from the airport. After two days of training, you move out to the bush on foot with the intrepid Jansyn to work in small villages of fewer than 150 people, accessible only by hiking trails. You’ll enjoy lots of walking through lightly wooded country, coursed with waterfalls and valleys cutting into the main plateau.

Rotating tasks with other team members, you take many roles in this vital effort to rid the landscape of parasites. Some days you work with Jansyn examining villagers, giving them medicines, and recording data on wellness and nutrition. Your research will help validate the successes of this project as a model for public health action. On other days, you and the team’s lab technician examine specimens, or you help one of the team’s counselors interview villagers. Each team has the chance to intervene directly in the cycle of contagion by wielding a shovel to install spring boxes (to protect natural springs) or latrines in the communities.

The work is earthy and exacting, but you can be confident that your efforts in this action-oriented research project will have an exponential effect. Every person cured by the clean water, counseling or medical assistance you help to provide is one less to spread disease. Your hard work will also be rewarded with a uniquely intimate experience of Cameroon village life and a sense of being a little Schweitzer-like yourself. You will find yourself agreeing with Jansyn, who states that "health is the first step towards development, and development is the first step towards larger global concerns."

• F I E L D . C O N D I T I O N S
Although the subject of this project is contagion, volunteers do not risk infection thanks to careful precautions on the part of the P.I. Your home base will be cottages at a Catholic Mission in Djohong, with comfortable beds, cold running water, a flush toilet, occasional electricity, and a beautiful view. But much of the time you will overnight in the field, staying in village homes or your own tent with more rustic facilities. You will rotate camp tasks including cooking, cleaning, purifying drinking water, and heating water for bathing.