The GREY Lab

A healthy population is a more productive and consequently, wealthy population. Agriculture is a major occupation in Cameroon (and most countries in Africa), employing about two thirds of its economically-active population and accounting for about 40% of its GDP. Keeping agricultural workers healthy, therefore, is a sure way of improving their efficiency and hence their standard of living. The GREY Lab, short for The Agricultural Health Survey Research Laboratory, is a not-for-profit research group with primary objective, improving the health and welfare of workers in general and agricultural workers in particular, through scientific research (diagnostics), so as to develop strategies (interventions) to improve their productivity. Having already carried out work in Sugarcane plantation workers as well as in many smallholder farming communities in Cameroon with promising results, our goal is to extend our work to other regions and occupational settings in the country and continent, for the overall improvement of the state of health of all agricultural workers on the continent. Involved in international multicenter collaborative research effort, the International Consortium of Collaborators on CKDu of the International Society of Nephrology. In addition, being an organization with a keen interest in health promotion, especially at the community level, we are co-organizers of arguably the biggest health and fitness event in the country, the Walk for Life, which in two editions has sensitized hundreds of thousands on the benefits of physical activity to health. The Walk for Life has permitted us screen about a thousand people for conditions linked to lack of physical activity such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, retinopathies (eye conditions).