Despite being a new concept in Cameroon, mutual health insurance schemes, experts believe, have made a lot of progress especially in the North West Region of the country.

The region has at least a Mutual Health Organisation in 15 out of its 18 health districts with about 30 000 benficiaries, figures given by Dr Che Soh Kingsley, Focal point for Mutual health activities at the North West Regional Delegation of Public Health during an Open Day for Mutual Health Organisations in the North West Region Organised by the Support Service for Grassroots Initiatives of Development (SAILD), a promoter.
Dr Che who presented a paper on the Role of the MHO in improving the population’s access to quality health care, during the occasion expressed optimism that these schemes were only going to grow further judging from the strategies already put in place.
“Being a new idea, we have to grow gradually and we really have much hope given the strategies that we are putting in place. We are doing much sensitisation, we are trying to extend to other districts that are left and more especially, we have promoters that are willing to extend the idea to where it has not yet been instituted.”

The Open day which was the first of its kind was organised in Santa Sub Division and brought together elected management organs and other influential members of Santa, Ngwo, Batibo, Bafut, Nforya, Bambui and Ntare Mutual Health Organisations promoted by SAILD from all over the region to share experiences and ideas on their activities.
In addition to the paper presented by Dr Che, the Mayor of Santa, Wanki Clement dwelled on the role of Councils in the promotion of MHOs while Ngenchi Stephen, SAILD Bamenda Branch Manager talked on the role of promoters on the promotion and development of MHOs.
The occasion whose excitement was taken out by the sudden death of the hard-working Manager of Santa MHO Zoungnou Christopher through a ghastly accident just two days before, was boycotted by the D.O for Santa who allegedly claimed that the organisers minimised him by not coming to take him from his office though he was duly served an invitation letter.

Despite the optimism expressed by Dr Che Kingsley, experiences shared by Board members and Managers of MHOs and the growth rate of these schemes show that much was still left to be done if the target of 40% coverage by 2015 was going to be met.
As of now, slightly more than 2% of the population of the region is covered by the schemes and their Board members and managers regretted that members register and do not contribute, some do not understand the concept of solidarity, others only come to register when they are sick and so expecting to go straight for treatment.
Other experiences showed that some councils, the elite and chiefs were lukewarm towards the schemes and contributing to a lack of interest by their populations and worse still, some promoters go into unhealthy competition thereby wiping out the little confidence some members of the public might have had in the mutual health insurance schemes.

“We had taken a step forward to create a network,”

Stephen Ngenchi, Branch Manager, SAILD Bamenda
Experiences of the Managers of MHO show that the schemes are encountering so many problems which are detrimental to their growth. What are you going to do

to better the situation after this open day ?
Before the holding of this open day, we had taken a step forward to create a network that will try to take care of some of these difficulties such as their inability to be sustainable. By January 2010, the network will kick off.
How soon will a law on MHOs come out to make it mandatory for each person to be a member ?
We expected this law to be passed last June, unfortunately, there were some loopholes and the bill was sent back to the Prime Minister for more study and so we are still expecting.

How are you managing the problem of competition between promoters of MHOs in the field which paints a really bad image of the schemes ?
Well, we are talking with Managers of our schemes to try to collaborate with other promoters because competition per se helps to bring growth but there should be a well defined procedure so that things are done the right way for the benefit of the citizens. This is because some promoters want to destroy others or simply stop them from functioning which is not good for development work and not good for those who are supposed to benefit from these schemes. The Regional Delegation also said they were trying at their own level to stop this problem.

Following experiences put forward by the managers, it can be said that there is a great need for sustained sensitization. Is the means available ?
When we started this initiative, we disbursed a lot of means to go down to the field and carry-out sensitization but after some time we were a bit blocked but I think from next year we shall try to restitute that and go back to the field to see that the majority of the people are given the right information in a way to make them understand the importance of community-based micro-health insurance. We strongly believe just hoping that we will have the means to do that. by B.D.S.


“The NWR should be proud of being the best,”
Dr Che Soh Kingsley, Focal point, Mutual Health Activities, RDPH, NW

One of the problems faced by MHOs is the parallel practices in state hospitals. What is the Ministry of Public Health doing to solve that problem?
We are already doing much as far as solving that problem is concerned. We are looking at the role of the medical advisor. Being the Focal point of Mutual Health activities in the NWR, I am at the same time the North West Regional Advisor for all the Mutual Health Organisations that are promoted by the North West Special Fund for Health and our role is to verify all the bills that these hospitals are presenting and look into the pertinence of the diagnoses, prescription and make sure that there are no such practices in these hospitals. I go there, we discuss the problems that we encounter and we try to look for solutions but I will reassure you that this has been an opportunity for us to stop corruption in hospitals. It has never happened before that there is somebody who is coming to check the activities of even mission hospitals but this time around I can remember instances when I went into a mission hospital and I refused certain practices and we corrected them and we are sure that we are moving towards fighting corruption completely.

Do you really think that the concept of MHOs has been adopted by the people?
The concept of Mutual Health Organisations is a new idea in our health system. I want to make this point clear that we have made so much progress. In the North West Region, we have at least one MHO in 15 out of the 18 health districts and we are at the registration of close to 30 thousand beneficiaries. We think that we are on the right footing and the NWR should be proud of being the best as far as the implementation of Mutual Health Organisations is concerned as of now at national level by B.D.S.