In Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, deep-seated cultural assumptions regarding disease, death, and health care are crucial factors in child survival. In eastern Cameroon, the focus of this study, traditional beliefs are considered a major constraint to reducing the area”s high infant mortality rate (at least 160 per 100,000 births). Throughout the region, parents perceive children and reproduction with a sense of fatalism and anxiety. Death, disease, spontaneous abortion, sterility, and infertility are explained in terms of supernatural causes (God, witchcraft, sorcery, and curses from ancestors). It is believed that deceased children may transmit diseases to an unborn child or haunt the mother during pregnancy and that unfaithfulness in marriage and the breaking of postpartum abstinence can cause infant death. These beliefs are compounded by detrimental traditional practices, including nutritional taboos that weaken infants physically, making them vulnerable to early death. Moreover, most parents tend not to interfere in other families” affairs, even when children might be abused. The study found that these beliefs and practices generally transcend religion, occupation, and income, and in most cases, even education. Recommendations for considering these attitudes in policy and program design are presented.
