A household study of illness prevalence and health care preferences in a rural district of Cameroon.

This report gives the results of a health interview survey using a recall interval of one month, in Rural Cameroon carried out between 5 November 1973 and 7 March 1974 on a random selection of 1886 families with 9362 individuals. The disease prevalence in the study area (a positive illness rate of 27.8 percent for a four-week recall period) is analysed by age, sex and treatment preference. People under the age of 15 years suffered predominantly from respiratory (20 percent), digestive (29 percent) and parasitic (12.5 percent) diseases for which Western treatment was preferred (average of 65 percent). In adults musculoskeletal, digestive diseases and generalized body pains were responsible for 63.0 percent of diseases in the age-group 45 and over. The treatment choice was partly Western (50 percent) and partly traditional (20 percent). Traditional treatment was generally preferred for seizures (65 percent) and mental illnesses (87 percent) except for children under four years who received 50.6 percent treatment for seizures from traditional sources and 49.4 percent from Western sources.