Paradox of Cameroon’s Referral Hospitals.

These medical facilities by definition, should provide health care which medical staff at lower health services lack the skills, the facilities or both to manage a given clinical condition. 

They then seek the assistance of providers at Referral Hospitals which are better equipped and specially trained staff to treat patients with a particular episode of a clinical condition.

The paradox, however, is that with several Referral Hospitals in Cameroon with Yaounde having the best in the country, including the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital, many top government officials often scurry abroad, even to other African countries like Morocco and South Africa, when they catch a cold.

Currently, there is a correspondence on the social media, which has not been refuted, that the Cameroon government spent next egg of 40 million FCFA for the medical evacuation of Prof Joseph Owona, a former member of the Constitutional Council, before he was called to glory in France.

The correspondence, signed by the Minister of State, Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, and dated December 7, 2023, ordered the Minister of Finance to send to France the sum of 39,500,000 FCFA (thirty-nine million five hundred thousand FCFA)

“I have the honour to ask you to kindly release and urgently make available to the Paierie at the Embassy of Cameroon in Paris, the sum of FCFA 39,500,000 to support Mr Joseph Owona, member of the Constitutional Council medically evacuated to France…”.

The Guardian Post doesn't object to any Cameroonian who at his personal expense would want to go abroad for medical treatment or checkups. What is, however, worrying is that those often evacuated have served or are serving the government at top positions and earn fabulous salaries and other pegs not available to the average civil servants and can afford their treatment.

With the millions ministers, directors of public enterprises, senators, etc earn, should they be treated abroad, while taxpayers, earning a minimum income of 46,000 francs monthly, pick up their bills?

Should top government officials not patronise the local hospitals they pride in announcing their construction? Is rushing to countries like France, the United States, Morocco, South Africa and Switzerland, when senior government officials, including private citizens close to the regime, not to prove that they do not have faith in the country's Referral Hospitals?

How can a country which aims to emerge in 2035, still be evacuating people abroad spending a whopping 39,500,000 FCFA on a single individual, who at one point was Minister of Public Health?

Yaounde should be able to equip its Referral Hospitals to the point that the Head of State and his ministers can consult there when they want to go for medical checkups.

But that has not been the case. The health delivery system in the country, especially in troubled Regions like the North West, South West and Far North, is nothing to write home about.

Government apologists often boast that "the Head of State has been constant and firm in his commitment for the health of Cameroonians as this has been at the centre of his policy since 1982".

Last year, public health personnel across the country were on strike to demand improved working conditions and salaries for temporary employees, among other demands.

Services in government hospitals are supposed to be free and some drugs subsidised, but in practice, the services are often more expensive than in private hospitals. 

Patients who do not have money to pay bills in State medical facilities that are supposed to be free are often detained in hospitals until their bills are paid. Even with instructions from the Minister of Public Health that patients should not be refused admission because they have no deposits, doctors continue to spurn it.

Cameroon's doctor-patient ratio is one doctor per 50, 000 persons. At the African level, the ratio is 10,000 people to one doctor on the average. There are not enough medical doctors and with the unattractive working conditions, many are fleeing to other countries.

There is no question that the Cameroon health delivery system needs amelioration. Government understands that, which is why it often brags of the creation of Referral Hospitals. But the evidence on the ground is that those who propagate such creations do not patronise the Referral Hospitals.

They go abroad because they lack confidence in local medical facilities. If our Referral Hospitals can be equipped and staffed to live to the billing of what the name suggests, there would be no need even for the Head of State, talk less of ministers, to travel abroad for treatment.

As the Head of State said in his 2023 end-of-year speech, government ministers should implement austerity measures by cutting expenditure, including foreign trips. 

They should also forbid medical evacuations that at the expense of taxpayers' cost. Most importantly, government should and provide Referral Hospitals in the country with state-of-the-art equipment and attractive emoluments for specialist doctors.