Need for access for all

Quite unknown to many Cameroonians, Yaounde has been host to an important unit taking care of women who have difficulty in bearing children. On October 13, 2011, the President of the Republic signed a decree creating the Yaounde Gynaecological Endoscopic

Surgery and Human Reproductive Teaching Hospital. In so doing, the President wanted to upgrade the quality of health care delivery in the country, but above all, address women’s specific health problems. A document recently published by the unit specifies that in providing the best conditions for procreation to women so as to enable them to fully accomplish their original mission as mothers, the hosp ital also participates in the fight against poverty.

But how will such a modern unit be useful in the fight against poverty when the vast majority of women, especially those with difficulty in procreation, still do not know of the existence of the unit, let alone the huge technical possibilities that exist there?

This state-of-the-art institution spreads its activities in four main areas of women’s reproductive health such as gynaecology, obstetrics, reproductive biology and pre-natal diagnosis laboratory and teaching. The presence of this unit has brought relief to many Cameroonian women who had begun to turn to witch doctors and other diviners to address their reproductive health problems, especially those linked to infertility.

The new structure has come to open new and wide windows of opportunity to countless women who, unable to bear children, had begun to lose hope. Because of the very private and intimate nature of fertility issues, not too much of the hospital’s exploits have been brought to the public place for acclamation, but there are many victories to count when time will come for stock-taking.

What is still left to be done however is communication which, for now, remains the weak link because many patients who would have readily come to the hospital are unaware of it existence. And yet the technical possibilities of the hospital are most modern and can match many others in the advanced countries.

Maybe the location of the hospital, quite close to the Yaounde General hospital which is a referral institution, has led many to believe that it was either an extension of same or some high-level research institution. For many Yaoundeans who live virtually under the nose of the institution, as it were, the hospital simply does not exist, not to talk of the totality of Cameroonians who are still to be properly informed about the existence and usefulness of the unit.

For the hospital to attain the noble objectives for which it was established, an effort has to be made to get the unit better known, but even above all, do everything possible to ensure that service costs are adapted to the real purchasing power of Cameroonians, otherwise it will simply continue to be considered an elitist institution that many have taken it for so far. It must be accessible to all!