Coordinator of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Cameroon has on 10 June 2022 condemned the destruction of the district hospital of Mamfe in the South-West region. In the statement, the UN representative states that on 8 June 2022, suspected elements of a non-State armed group (NSAG) reportedly carried out an attack in the locality Mamfe and f Egbeko and in the course of the event the hospital was also set on fire and destroyed. All patients had to be transferred to other medical centres.
According to the OCHA Cameroon, the Mamfe district hospital is covering more than 85.000 people living in the area. The hospital serves as main medical reference covering medical needs of remote areas in Manyu division of the South West Region.
Its destruction will deprive people of urgently needed care and further weaken the local health system. In their statement, OCHA Cameroon state that there have been at least five attacks against healthcare since January 2022 in the course of the ongoing crisis.
The crisis in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon has seen a large number of attacks on healthcare. With health workers or patients threatened, abducted, injured or killed as well as medical infrastructures damaged or destroyed.
According to the Humanitarian Coordinator, ‘Attacks on healthcare workers, patients and facilities are serious violations of international human rights law, they must be investigated and perpetrators must be held to account…Health care workers are every day saving the lives of thousands of people and must be allowed to work without fear or concern for their safety or that of their patients.”
