In just two decades, the small Dominican health centre in the Mvog-Betsi neighbourhood has become one of the best hospitals in the Cameroonian capital. Founded by a coalition of Dominican women’s congregations to provide health care to the most vulnerable, it now boasts 180 beds and specialised services, including a palliative care unit and a centre for people living with HIV/AIDS.
At first glance, the hospital looks like a labyrinth where spaces and corners are used to provide all the services. The dental clinic occupies two small rooms with an average of 210 patients per month, while the ophthalmology service, which has more space, receives more than 400 patients per month and is associated with an optical shop where lenses for eyeglasses are produced.
The hospital’s blood bank has a stock of 250 bags of all blood types. It also has a pharmacy that only dispenses drugs prescribed by hospital doctors. Another centre of energy in the hospital is the laboratory, which performs more than 12,000 tests and analyses per month, from the simplest, such as the diagnosis of malaria, to the most complicated, such as lipid profiles or bacterial cultures.
The origin of the hospital dates back to 2005. The then Master General of the Order of Preachers, Father Carlos Alfonso Azpiroz, encouraged the different orders of the Dominican charism to work together. Responding to this call, seven Dominican women’s congregations decided to join forces to create a health centre where the poorest and most vulnerable could have access to medical care.
On November 3 of that year, the Dominican Health Centre was inaugurated in the Mvog-Betsi neighbourhood of Yaoundé, but it was soon found to be too small. In April 2006, the first stone of the future hospital was laid, which was inaugurated on February 7, 2008. However, the health needs of the population made it necessary to construct a new building, and a third is currently under construction to house the new maternity ward. The current one is too small to adequately accommodate the 200 women who choose to give birth at the centre every month.
Five of the original seven congregations remain. All the nuns are African and belong to the Dominican Sisters of Blessed Imelda, the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, the Dominican Sisters of the Annunciation, the Dominican Missionaries of the Holy Family, and the Congregation of Saint Dominic, which has assumed the general direction from the beginning. Sister Judith Moche, from Cameroon, is the director of the Saint Martin de Porres hospital.
Sister Moche says, “The centre was created for social work to help the poorest and we remain faithful to this principle. We never send anyone away without first receiving at least the emergency health care they need. First, they are treated and then we see if they can pay or not”. The director confesses the inability of the centre to self-finance and for this reason accepts aid that comes from both abroad and within the country.
The hospital recently received a modern tunnel incubator for phototherapy. Nurse Nathalie, head of the service, says, “It has already started saving lives because it offers rapid results in children with severe jaundice and other pathologies”. Nursing and medical students from both Europe and Cameroonian nursing schools attend the hospital. Not only that, but also religious men and women, young people and women in training from different congregations, come to carry out their apostolate in the hospital.
Sr. Moche says, “We recently welcomed a large group of Dominican novices and asked them to come on Wednesdays so as not to have them coincide with other groups. We distributed them in different services, even in the maternity ward, because everywhere there are people who need to be listened to, both patients and their companions. Even if the religious do not intervene at a medical level, they do a great service in that essential part of listening and accompanying the sick”.
Social Services and the CIF. – Marlène Claudine Melingui is a social worker and coordinates Social Services, which is responsible for identifying all the poor people who cannot afford medical care. “When we determine the degree of poverty of a person, we help them with a total or partial reduction in the cost of care. Every month, about 100 people receive help from the hospital,” explains Melingui. In addition, the Social Services visit the neediest people to ensure they are continuing their treatment.
Within the hospital, there is the Itinerant Training Community (CIF), which in coordination with Social Services, is committed to disease prevention and the pastoral care of the sick. Every day, it organises conferences in the hospital waiting room on topics such as cancer prevention, AIDS and tuberculosis. The members of the CIF visit the sick in their rooms, pray with them, listen to them, and, if they need to receive the sacraments, call the priests to assist them. They also help prepare the two monthly Masses celebrated at the hospital, which are attended by many patients and their companions. The centre has a Dominican ethos, which is training, education and preaching, and could not limit itself to simply being a hospital.
In 2014, the Dominican Hospital Centre, San Martin de Porres, was the first in Cameroon to open a palliative care unit. The palliative care unit is currently located on one floor of the hospital. In addition to the wards, it has a living room where patients can meet with their relatives. Some of the patients are hospitalised, while others are cared for at home, where they are cared for by the medical team, made up of doctors, nurses, psychologists and a priest in charge of the chaplaincy.
According to one of the nurses, Geoffroy Essama, “The goal of everyone is to improve the quality of the patient’s life so that they leave this world with the least possible pain.” Essama confesses that the main challenge is finding morphine or other substitute drugs, because “They are difficult to obtain and the demand is so great that we are always running out of drugs”. What is not lacking, neither in the palliative care unit nor in the rest of the services of San Martín de Porres, is the human warmth, dedication and the desire to serve to be found in this social hospital whose inspiration lies in the Christian faith, which is the source of life and hope.
Although the majority of HIV-positive people now have access to effective retroviral drugs, new infections and relaxation in the fight against the virus can increase in infections. All this has justified the existence in San Martin de Porres of a service like UPEC, directed by Dr. Jocelyne Cheukak Ngangom, who is in charge of the clinical and psychological monitoring of patients with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
UPEC currently accompanies around 2,300 patients. Cheukak states, “Every year we identify and integrate more than 180 new cases into our programme. The hospital is responsible for setting up the treatment and administering the doses to patients, the cost of which is covered by the Cameroonian government. In addition to the six people who report directly to the hospital, UPEC employs about 20 people from partner associations, mostly administrative staff and social workers who ensure that patients take their medications. (Enrique Bayo) – (Photo: E.B)
