Yaounde Initiative Foundation (YIF)
YIF is a not-for-profit organisation focusing on overcoming key practical constraints
on socio-economic development in rural communities in Cameroon.
The Foundation's goal is to improve the health and well being of communities through
the control of insect vectors of human diseases, improved agricultural production
and environmental protection.
More specifically, the principal objectives are to:
- Reduce debilitating and life-threatening human diseases by controlling their insect
vectors, coupled with other approaches such as bednets and drugs.
- Increase yields and quality of agricultural produce, leading to better nutrition
and higher farm revenues, by controlling crop pests and diseases
- Safeguard human and environmental health by building capacity to prevent inappropriate
and unsafe chemical use.
The Foundation believes these issues are inextricably linked - ill people cannot
farm properly, leading to malnutrition and poverty, which in turn makes people less
able to withstand disease or afford medicines to treat them. Poor communities in
Africa cannot currently climb out of the vicious cycle of disease, poverty and suffering
that is taking them further and further behind the rest of the world, without tackling
these challenges in an integrated manner.
Sanaga River Project
The Yaounde Initiative Foundation has developed a Training programme and during
2007 has a Pilot Integrated Vector Control project in six villages near the Sanaga
River, Cameroon in which ITN and IRS treatments to control mosquito vectors of malaria
are used by Vector Intervention teams in the villages, in conjunction with larvicide
treatments against blackflies, a vector of onchocerciasis (river blindness) in the
area.
Partners
We draw on local knowledge and are supported by in-depth technical expertise and
international practical experience from the Foundation’s partners at Imperial College
London, the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine (LSTHTM).
More information on our activities can be found on our website.
www.yaoundefoundation.org