Improper diagnosis and management of febrile patients results in the persistence of malaria and other conditions with similar symptoms. The algorithm established here with Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) will help in the follow-up and treatment of fever patients according to the guidelines on Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI). This study aimed at determining the causes of fever in children and at valorizing the use of RDTs for the diagnosis of febrile diseases. Fifty children with fever, aged between 0 and 5 years, were recruited in a cross-sectional study at the Ekounou Baptist Clinic in Yaounde. RDTs were used to assess for the four common causes of febrile illness in the area. Microscopy was done and the Plasmodium species were confirmed by nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Of the 50 febrile children, none was rubella seropositive, while 8% had malaria, 22% had toxoplasmosis infection, 8% had Salmonella typhi, 14% had a malaria-typhoid fever co-infection, 4% had a malaria-toxoplasmosis co-infection, 6% had a malaria-toxoplasmosis-typhoid fever coinfection, and 38% were negative for all the suspected common causes of fever in the health district. The overall frequencies of occurrence attributed 32% to malaria, 32% to toxoplasmosis and 28% to typhoid fever. Among all the positive malaria cases (n=16 (32%)) Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale were identified by nested PCR. Malaria RDT results agreed significantly with the microscopy (kappa=0.81; p<0.0001) and PCR (kappa=0.84; p<0.0001) results; and the microscopy results also concurred significantly with the PCR results (kappa=0.77; p<0.0001). Malaria was not the exclusive cause of fever. Toxoplasmosis was found to occur in the same proportion as malaria (32%) in the study population. S. typhi was the third most important infection. Therefore RDTs are appropriate tools for the management of childhood febrile diseases.

Background In 2017, Field access was considerably limited in the Far North region of Cameroon due to the conflict. Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in collaboration with Ministry of health needed to estimate the health situation of the populations living in two of the most affected departments of the region: Logone-et-Chari and Mayo-Sava. Methods Access to health care and mortality rates were estimated through cell phone interviews, in 30 villages (clusters) in each department. Local Community Health Workers (CHWs) previously collected all household phone numbers in the selected villages and nineteen were randomly selected from each of them. In order to compare telephone interviews to face-to-face interviews for estimating health care access, and mortality rates, both methods were conducted in parallel in the town of Mora in the mayo Sava department. Access to food was assessed through push messages sent by the three main mobile network operators in Cameroon. Additionally, all identified legal health care facilities in the area were interviewed by phone to estimate attendance and services offered before the conflict and at the date of the survey. Results Of a total of 3423 households called 43% were reached. Over 600,000 push messages sent and only 2255 were returned. We called 43 health facilities and reached 34 of them. In The town of Mora, telephone interviews showed a Crude Mortality Rate (CMR) at 0.30 (CI 95%: 0.16–0.43) death per 10,000-person per day and home visits showed a CMR at 0.16 (0.05–0.27), most other indicators showed comparable results except household composition (more Internally Displaced Persons by telephone). Phone interviews showed a CMR at 0.63 (0.29–0.97) death per 10,000-person per day in Logone-et-Chari, and 0.30 (0.07–0.50) per 10,000-person per day in Mayo-Sava. Among 86 deaths, 13 were attributed to violence (15%), with terrorist attacks being explicitly mentioned for seven deaths. Among 29 health centres, 5 reported being attacked and vandalized; 3 remained temporally closed; Only 4 reported not being affected. Conclusion Telephone interviews are feasible in areas with limited access, although special attention should be paid to the initial collection of phone numbers. The use of text messages to collect data was not satisfactory is not recommended for this purpose. Mortality in Logone-et-Chari and Mayo-Sava was under critical humanitarian thresholds although a considerable number of deaths were directly related to the conflict.