Open Letter to the Minister of Communication
What will Cameroon achieve after the departure of the hospital ship? What will doctors and nurses learn about the management of such cases? If I stick to my personal experience of these humanitarian missions so prized by us, NOTHING. The visiting teams are generally complete. No one checks the qualifications and authorizations of its members. Local doctors, if admitted, often have to look at the surgical field from afar. There is little communication and sometimes even condescension towards them. In spite of everything, they have the duty to follow up postoperatively. Under these conditions, several serious complications occurred after such missions, but worse, the humanitarians were no longer there. My colleagues understand better what I’m talking about. It is high time that the National Order of Physicians of Cameroon verifies the qualifications and accredits the doctors involved in such missions so that our country ceases to be a pétaudière-deposit of experimental raw material for some charlatans.
It is also necessary that a training component of the premises be imposed on promoters of such missions so that a transfer of skills gradually takes place with a view to our emergence in the medical field. Finally, I must stop asking foreign expertise for things we can do ourselves and reserve missions and exchanges to really orphaned and highly specialized areas.
I am pleased that about 6,000 of my compatriots will find a solution to their problem. But what about the millions of others who suffer from chronic diseases and cancers, or will lose their autonomy or their lives in the aftermath of an accident? When is another ship to cure this silent crowd of deprived patients? When is a boat for the countless crowd of women who can not afford an optimal follow-up of their pregnancy? Mr Minister, it is obvious that it is not hospital ships that will lead us towards emergence. However, one of the ships that will definitely lead us to this is the universal health insurance we all want.
