Getting to the Logical End

Douala city inhabitants and, in fact, the generality of Cameroonians are beginning the year with some good news from the health sector.

Last Thursday January 23, the President of the Republic appended his signature on an executive order formally creating the Douala Mother-and-Child Specialist Hospital. By so doing, he was not only drawing this old project out of the drawing board and whose delay in getting really started was already becoming a source of worry, but was, above all, making good a commitment he took last December 31, 2013 in his state-of-the-nation address to the nation that three new ultra-modern hospitals were to go functional in the course of 2014.

The Presidential text talks about the creation of the institution, but this technical language should not leave any doubt as to the physical existence of the new hospital. The text only came to give a legal existence to the structure which beautifully adorns a slope on the right side of the main entrance into Douala in the Yassa neighbourhood. The sheer beauty and the architectural masterpiece is already in itself a reference and an attraction seen from the fact that many passersby and even people in adjourning areas were already wondering what this structure was going to be, as it stands outstandingly as a pearl on the architectural crown represented by this sprawling orderly section of Douala.

But that is enough for the setting. In fact, the President's announcement, timely and well-received as it was by an impatient population, badly in need of essential and even quality medical services, has several other issues to address than the eye immediately meets. If errors surrounding the management of similar projects around the country are not corrected early enough and within the euphoria generated by the Presidential announcement, this joy and excitement could jolly well be replaced with simmering feelings within weeks.

On the same day the President of the Republic was signing the document to get the specialist hospital off the ground, Yaounde was, significantly, hosting a come together to address the irksome question of partnership funding, a veritable ill that has almost consistently bogged down projects that are co-financed. The Minister of the Economy has summoned project managers to examine the best possible strategies and introduce best practices into the system so as to ensure that the share of the state in co-financed projects is paid up on time and regularly to sustain the running of same.

This situation is literally negating some of the most ambitious projects and initiatives likely to have taken the country out of some of its developmental difficulties just as it is also straining relations, in some cases, with some partners in development, overly ready to help, but which rather find on the Cameroonian side, lackadaisical interlocutors, to say the least. For, how can one match this apathetic posture of state representatives with the urgency of filling the scandalous deficit in several development areas?

For, the cases range from simple life-changing issues such as mass vaccination to gargantuan projects which can quickly propel the nation to emergent economy status. With vaccination, it is reported that urgent as it may be, vaccination campaigns even against some of the most dreaded diseases, are hampered by the late release of counterpart funds, leaving hapless citizens at the mercy of pandemics and other diseases. The Kribi deep sea project, one of the nation's most ambitious industrial endeavours, suffered from scandalous setbacks because of the unavailability of counterpart financing, prompting the Chinese partners, at one time, to consider closing shop.

The Douala Mother-and-Child specialist hospital is too vital a medical institution to be allowed to be infested by this virus of partnership funding. All involved in the project must be seen to be vindicating the wish of the President of the Republic who, in providing this ultra-modern facility, was showing his acknowledgment of the urgency of addressing the precarious situation of mother and child health, one of the Millennium Development Goals over which our nation is lagging. The project must be taken to its desired and logical end.