Richard Kwang Kometa
5 August 2011
Several malpractices have often been decried in the health care sector in Cameroon, least of which has not been corruption. Conscious of the situation, government came up with the “Change Habits, Oppose Corruption” (CHOC) Project. Created on February 23, 2007, the CHOC Project not only seeks to enable Cameroon implement the UN Convention on the fight against corruption, it also seeks to draw up a national anti-corruption strategy. The health care sector was one of the areas targeted by the CHOC Project as a priority concern.
To measure the impact of the project, a number of health centres were identified and results have so far been satisfactory, according to officials. The Prime Minister’s initiative equally triggered similar attention from the National Anti-corruption Commission which has taken a particular interest in ensuring that Cameroonians have good medical care void of corrupt practices.
In effect, given that the population remains the main victims or beneficiaries of hospital services, they are bound to be at the centre of any attempts to get rid of corrupt practices within the sector. Thus, the idea of getting the civil society involved in curbing any misconduct within the health sector as contained in the CHOC initiative is salutary.
Habits like obliging patients to pay more than required for services in hospitals, forcing poor and disease-stricken citizens to go to specific health centres which are privately owned in lieu of state-owned hospitals, paying for drugs in private hands instead of getting them from hospital pharmacies and even exchanging hospital beds for heavy sums of money, have been some of the obnoxious practices in certain hospitals. With the Change Habits, Oppose Corruption Project, those badly treated in hospitals only have to know where to go with their grievances in order to seek redress.
The conspiracy of silence often maintained by victims of malpractices in hospitals, perhaps because of fear of reprisal, cannot help in improving the health care situation in the country. No matter the number of government services involved in the fight against corruption, the people have a key role in reinforcing any such measures. Consequently, people have to be courageous enough to denounce any anomalies they face in hospitals so as to complement the measures put in place by the state. Failing which, the CHOC therapy that can improve health delivery in the country will not get anywhere.
Assessing the first phase of their programme to ensure rapid results against corruption within 100 days, the head of the National Anti-corruption Commission, Dieudonné Massi Gams expressed satisfaction that the health domain was one of the sectors producing positive results with less malpractices now recorded. Such a sense of fulfilment must be accompanied by a reinforcement of the CHOC therapy being put in place so that no one should have the courage to fall back to the bad old habits.
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