Cybel Health prevent to heal Louis Martial Ndoumbé
Positive initiative page this month receives a behavioral influencer in the field of Health. Louis Martial Ndoumbé for more than 20 years has been restlessly working in the sensitization of young people in Africa to endemic diseases such as malaria or AIDS that threaten the future of several generations of people.
Hello, Louis Martial. Welcome to the page dedicated to positive initiative on Flashmag! So, what is your background? Why did you think that it was necessary to do in the prevention of diseases?
I’m a corporate lawyer by training. Most recently I trained as a social and solidarity economy entrepreneur I started raising awareness by educating the young people around me when I learned about the damage done by these diseases in society.
When I learned that I was going to be a father for the first time, I was wondering about the world we are going to leave to our children. I must say that I am the child of a midwife and I spent all my childhood in the yard of what will become Bonaberi Hospital in Cameroon. Interested, by education, information and communication I found that traditional medias did not reach all young people in a country because they were concentrated on radio and television, tools that were not always accessible to the everybody.
What is Cybell Health?
The Cybell-Health Program is a program that has been designed and implemented to educate, inform and encourage discussion among young people themselves and between young people, adults and their educators on issues of concern related to health. To help to reverse the plagues such as AIDS, MALARIA, TUBERCULOSIS and others.
Where did you get the idea of creating the Cybell Health game?
I thought about creating a support that could be used everywhere even in the most remote forest of Africa provided you can read and write So adept of board games, I chose to create a multisectoral program based on that principle. Today do you think that your action has helped to reduce ignorance about diseases in Africa? The report is there scary and alarming. 37 years after the discovery of the AIDS virus, while it recedes or stabilizes everywhere else, in Africa it is the under-35s who are most affected.
With the advent of the Internet, smartphones and cyber cafes, early pregnancies have increased fivefold In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, it is 4000 cases for the 2016/2017 school year. A number that equates to girls who will not finish school. In francophone country that I have been traveling since, there is no program
strictly speaking to educate our youth.
And what is the reaction of governments of countries that you furrow vis-a-vis these figures and your initiative?
Awareness raising is done through colloquia, lectures, t-shirts, plays and big slogans. The welcome is always positive that's why I'm invited to these summits to present this initiative But the big problem is the administrative burden and the big money that circulate in this area Have you ever seen young people at these conferences? NO
What do you mean by big money?
Most if not all funds are either allocated by the United Nations through its agencies or by the World Bank or institutions such as the African Development Bank. It's big budgets you know, that sometimes are not going to the right direction.
And you in your initiative have you often received material support? how does your NGO work?
In some countries you are asked for a file and when you present it, the official who studies your file can block it for reasons that I would not explain but you can imagine ... We operate with the support of our members and at some point, with local administrations. With the government of Côte d’Ivoire, we have signed a partnership But the political events have changed things and in the last 3 years after several missions on the spot and meetings of high level, our file is on the desk of the Minister of National Education although the Directorate of Legal Affairs has reviewed the previous convention. We are still waiting. For Cameroon after submission of the file to the Cameroonian Embassy in France, and validation by the Ministry of Basic Education. We are still waiting for the organization of the follow-up that has been recommended to the Cameroonian Embassy in Paris
Have you thought about expanding to other countries beyond Francophone Africa?
Yes of course we are ready to go to any country to implement it. Already we plan a translation in the different official languages spoken in Africa, but we wanted to start with our zone of origin.
Today do you think that dynamics are constant enough to change the game, especially with new communication technologies? And the global black youth who seems more and more conscious?
For new technologies, we have a team of young Cameroonian engineers who have come together to work on the digital aspect of the project. It is enough to gather the means because we have already done different work sessions and they have rewritten the charter of the project. So that's for very soon. African conscious youth has always responded positively to this initiative, and we have different youth associations in different countries that are in contact and some already in partnership for dissemination and representation in their respective countries.
And in the West where you live there are also disadvantaged places where your message should be heard do you think about those?
Absolutely. For Western countries in which we live priority is not tropical
diseases, and for more credibility we thought about starting in Africa first, but we are in discussion with some operators of popular education as they say right here. Because we must consider the fact that in countries like France, there are a large number of people who go to Africa each year for vacation or work, and who have to deal with these problems. Some people have even already created associations to inform on cerebral malaria because they have been victims.
Louis Martial Ndoumbé Thank you for having granted us this interview good continuation.
It is I, who thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this important initiative, it is essential to find mechanisms that will reduce diseases and improve the quality of life of the most disadvantaged populations.
