By Moma Sandrine
The current socio-political unrest in the North West as well as the South west regions of Cameroon are plaguing the populations of these two regions in unimaginable sufferings.
In the North West, in the domain of health, the crisis has hit a toll. Although the total number of people who visit hospitals has witnessed a slight decrease, the number of casualties has ironically increased. In an exclusive interview with a medical doctor at the Casualty Unit of the Bamenda Regional Hospital, Dr Sahlah, The SUN was told that there has been an increase in recorded trauma cases caused by the crisis. “Generally, many hospitals have witnessed a decrease in the clientele. Since 2016 till date, we’ve registered more trauma cases especially caused by the crisis. Before this time, we mainly registered medical cases and only a few trauma cases that were limited to road accidents”.
Furthermore, the ongoing crisis has caused an increase in the number of gunshot cases recorded at the regional hospital “There are some weeks that we register just one or 2 gunshot cases while there are some weeks that we register up to 15. On lockdown days most especially, we register a good number of casualties”, Dr Sahlah stated.
Another severe casualty cases being recorded are rape cases and those that have suffered from gender based violence. These cases have been on the rise since 2016 to date. “Gender based violence, GBV is quite increasing; we have more cases of rape, during this period. There has been an increase rate of GBV related to the crisis. We have also received other medical cases such as patients who come with a heart disease who live in vicinity where there have been severe gunshots, with all of the fright, and the high cardiac activity during this moment has caused some of them to have stroke”, he explained.
As the crisis continues to take its toll on the population, more kidnap cases are recorded. The aftermath of these kidnaps are usually severe injuries caused by beatings and such cases are equally rushed to the hospital “We have registered several cases where people were kidnapped and tortured severely, with machetes and other objects, severe injuries in some cases which are very much infected depending on how long the person stayed in captivity”, Dr Sahlah narrated to The Sun.
With the prevailing situation in the North West region, the Governor had last year imposed a curfew on the population, restricting the movements of persons after 9pm. This has to an extent increased the number of road traffic accidents, as Dr Sahlah furthered. “Given that there is curfew, there is a mad rush in town around the curfew hour, and most people prefer to use bikes especially those who find themselves far away from their homes as this hour approaches. In the cause of this rush, we have so many road traffic accidents primarily resulting from bikes. It does not change from before but we have realized that during curfew hours, there is a lot of road traffic accident”.
The North West Regional Fund for Health promotion, PIG has equally suffered the setback of the crisis. This as it has been very difficult for them to effectively supply medicines to all the seven divisions of the North West Region. The regional director for PIG, Richard Mbarika tells us the challenges the sector has been facing “We cover all the 7 divisions and even all the 19 health districts to supply medicines but in this crisis, it is difficult. The major problems we face are road blocks but in some of the areas, the population has relocated. Where there are road blocks, it is difficult for us to take medicines to those areas. Places like Wum Health District, those around Benakuma, Kumbo too have been affected and as such we cannot go physically to these places. We cannot put ourselves in between bullets. Today we were supposed to pass through Fundong to go to Nkambe, but we heard that there was a road block and as such we just had to halt our movement”, Richard Mbarika narrated.
The director goes further to say they have been intercepted by both separatists and the military, preventing the smooth supply of medicine “We have been intercepted a good number of times. We tried pent rating Bafut but we could not cross because we met some armed men who refused us access. At the end of the day, we had to return with the medicine. We also had a similar encounter on our way to Bali when we were going to supply medicine”.
The challenges associated with the crisis have also caused a tremendous drop in the supply of medications to the different health districts “We are operating on less than 50% of our capacity now. In some months, we even operate on less than 20% of our capacity. In October last year, when we had a lockdown and in February this year, I don’t think that we supplied up to 20% of our capacity, and it’s a negative impact on the health of the population. If we did not supply 80%, it means 80% of the population did not have access to medicines and it means some people might probably die because they could not have medicines”.
Again, several women have had still births while others put to birth at home resulting in complications. In other cases the women die because of labor complications in areas where accessing medical facilities is almost impossible.
In business, the crisis has had a devastating effect on business. In 2017 most especially, several shops were set alight by unidentified persons because the owners of the shops had defaulted the “ghost town” laws that had been imposed on them by separatist fighters.
In other cases, some business men and women packed out of their business places to other regions. Those who are left in Bamenda lament the slowdown in business “Before the crisis started, I used to sell for up to 30.000FCFA a day but now there are days that I could sell for just 1000frs”, a cosmetic dealer told The SUN.
The tough times business persons are going through is pathetic as another shop dealer explains “Business is really bad. The only reason why I am still coming to my shop is because one cannot just stay at home doing nothing. Most often I come and go back without selling a dime. It’s terrible. I hardly even make up for my rents now”.