What Killed Professor Anomah Ngu?

The death of one of Cameroon's foremost medical practitioners and scientists, Prof. Victor Anomah Ngu, has recently been announced. One of the gaping lacuna in the announcement is the fact that the cause of death is not mentioned. One announcement simply says that he died after "a protracted illness." Is "protracted illness" the name of a disease? Why not tell us what disease killed him? It may well be that his family did not want the cause of death to be made public. However, the failure to declare the cause of death of such eminent medical practitioner manifests a common ailment in Cameroon's medical practice. This common malady is the fact that the illnesses that kill most people is either hardly known or made public. The secrecy surrounding causes of deaths have therefore led to vacuums that have been filled by all kinds of fanciful rumors born of ignorance of the facts. One of the most blatant of these is witchcraft accusations. Even though declaring the cause of death may not limit accusations of witchcraft, it will give a competing narrative. Given that medical practices in Cameroon are still highly underdeveloped, it will take a long time before the investigation of the medical cause of death will become commonplace. Perhaps one of the ways to honor an eminent medical practitioner such as Prof. Anomah Ngu is to hasten the dawn of such a time.