Healthcare: Matching Infrastructure With Personnel

Health, they say, is wealth and Cameroon has been making considerable efforts over the years to construct modern hospitals and acquire state-of-art technical platforms to ensure the wellbeing of the population. In effect, efforts are underway to dot almost all the regions with modern health facilities capable of handling life-threatening cases for the population. For instance, Regional Hospital Centres are being constructed in the regional headquarters with those of Ngaoundere and Bertoua inaugurated in 2024 alone. Those of other regions were already rendered operational earlier on and the others will be inaugurated subsequently as soon as their construction ends. Indeed, there is visible progress, at least in infrastructure.
This goes in line with what President Paul Biya says has always been his core concern since acceding to the helm of State, to improve the living conditions of Cameroonians. With health infrastructure on good footing, the Head of State feels there is an urgent need to match them with quality and quantity personnel. Obviously so as good health is a combination of existing infrastructure as well as the quality and quantity of health personnel, well trained and motivated to handle diverse illnesses that disturb the population. 
This certainly explains why President Paul Biya in his 2025 New Year address to Cameroonians on December 31, 2024 announced a special recruitment of health personnel, beginning this year. His disclosure that, “To improve this sector’s performance, I have ordered the recruitment of 9,944 health workers over the next five years. This special recruitment initiative will not only help to reduce unemployment among young health sector graduates, but also significantly improve patient care,” visibly got many elated and anxious. 
As expected, young graduates from the different health training schools are eager to get into the hospitals to showcase their know-how in saving lives and making a living for themselves and their families. Meanwhile, the population who struggle to get attended to in hospitals owing to the wide patient-doctor ratio hope to have easier access to these professionals henceforth. Attaining this objective and fully operationalizing the Universal Health Coverage Scheme could be a giant push to healthcare delivery for the population who badly need it.
Hopes are therefore high that the Head of State’s commitment that, “We will keep up our efforts to enhance healthcare delivery by upgrading hospital technical facilities and expanding the health map. The recently inaugurated Ngaoundere and Bertoua regional hospitals are part of such efforts,” would be translated into reality by all competent administrations.   
As eligible aspirants await the recruitment decision and what is needed to vie for the available places, public health stakeholders mus...