Reproductive Health
Health & Medicine
The Untold Story of Women Living with Epilepsy in Cameroon
This piece documents the compounded vulnerability of women and girls living with epilepsy in Cameroon, who face both medical stigma and systematic sexual exploitation. Through testimony and analysis, it exposes how deep misconceptions about epilepsy—framed as contagion or spiritual curse—render these women targets for deception, abandonment, and exclusion from protection and opportunity.
100% Jeune, 100% Accolades Merited
A reflection on the role of 100% Jeune magazine in shaping sexual health literacy for a generation of Cameroonians, contrasted against the silence and taboo that surrounded sex education in the writer's own upbringing. The piece argues that as that generation becomes parents, breaking inherited silence on sex and sexuality becomes both possible and necessary.
Infertility and the Silence We Inherit
A physician's essay on infertility—its medical realities, its prevalence, and the social cruelty of intrusive questioning. The piece uses a domestic scene to illustrate how cultural pressure compounds medical struggle, and closes with a direct call for empathy.
The Untold Realities of Back-to-Back Child Delivery
A candid exploration of the physical, emotional, financial, and mental toll of bearing children fewer than 18 months apart—a common practice in Cameroon driven by late marriage, career timing, and family pressure. The writer outlines four core realities mothers face: the overwhelming practical demands, the risk of neglecting the older child's emotional needs, the necessity of building a support system, and the loss of personal life to routine.
Her Vagina Does Not Define Her
A direct, anatomically grounded refutation of the myth that frequent sexual activity causes vaginal looseness. The piece provides baseline facts about vaginal anatomy—shape, colour, size, odour—and explains the actual physiological factors (age, childbirth, hormonal shifts) that affect vaginal elasticity, positioning bodily knowledge as an antidote to shame and misogyny.
Myths About Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies
A clear-eyed breakdown of common misconceptions among young Cameroonians about emergency contraception, distinguishing between folk methods that do not work and evidence-based approaches like morning-after pills and douching.
Swollen Feet in Pregnancy: When Normal Changes Warrant Medical Attention
Pedal edema—swelling of the feet and lower legs—is common in pregnancy, caused primarily by increased blood volume and gravitational pooling. However, the writer distinguishes between benign causes and serious conditions like preeclampsia and deep vein thrombosis that require immediate medical evaluation.
Sexual Education in the Pentecostal Household: Eleven Seconds and a Magazine
A writer reflects on the poverty of sex education in his own upbringing—a breathless eleven-second warning from his mother—and credits the magazine 100% Jeune with filling the gap for his entire generation. He argues that while the magazine's role was vital then, today's teenagers face vastly different media landscapes and deserve equally earnest, ongoing conversations from the adults around them.
Virginity and the Hymen: Separating Fact from Cameroon's Cultural Mythology
This essay dismantles the widespread Cameroonian belief that bleeding during first intercourse proves virginity, drawing on anatomical fact to show that the hymen's state reveals nothing reliable about sexual history. The writer argues that subjecting women to virginity tests based on this misconception is both medically unfounded and ethically indefensible.
Melissa Ndip's Letter to Her Unborn Daughter
Written for Poise's first writing challenge, this letter from Melissa Ndip—a early contributor who died of sickle cell complications days after publication—offers her daughter five lessons on life: that beauty exists within hardship, that integrity matters more than others' approval, that faith is inseparable from ambition, that dreams require explicit planning and persistence, and that untapped potential lives in every person.
Myths About Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies
A medical doctor addresses widespread misconceptions among young Cameroonians about emergency contraception, distinguishing folk remedies and ineffective practices from evidence-based methods. The piece explains the biological requirements for pregnancy prevention and recommends the combination of douching and morning-after pills as a reliable approach.