Stress during pregnancy, diabetes, maternal obesity affects baby’s brain

By Shanta Sih

Autism, which is a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain, has become a disease affecting many children in Cameroon.

According to Prof. Mbassi Awa who is a pediatrician, autism causes a child to have abnormal behaviour and stereotyped type of movement with lack of interest in so many activities that other children otherwise love. Prof. Mbassi is urging mothers and pregnant women to stay out of stress during pregnancy and equally reduce their consumption of sugar.

“Children born with autism isolate themselves from other children out of stigmatisation and low self esteem and they see themselves different from others and I blame most parents. No child wants to feel unwanted and this disease is not friendly. Most children born with it act abnormal.”

Advanced parental age in time of conception too has been noted as one of the root causes of autism as well as extreme low birth weight. The United Nations reveal that there are about 750.000 autistic people in Cameroon with many of them of schooling age who are kept at home by their parents due to lack of resources.

“I keep my son home not because I love to isolate him from other children. There is no parent who would intentionally do that to any child. Sometimes I look at how my boy stresses and I feel bad but I am left with no choice. Whenever he sees other children, he starts crying seeing how they behave and the things they do that he cannot do which sometimes is traumatizing to him,” Mary Njualem who is a mother to an autistic child explains.

“Workshops and seminars have to be done each year aimed at educating young aspiring mothers and parents on how to avoid having kids with such diseases. Sometimes it is as a result of negligence or ignorance. Let us not bring forth kids and allow them suffer. Africans do not listen they think everything is a joke until it happens,” Magdalene Ngongsa a nurse at the Buea Regional hospital adds.

According to United Nations, there now exists a behavioral management therapist that focuses on autistic patients and their needs