Good day and I hope that this report will meet everyone in good health and spirit. The purpose of this report is to update donors on our efforts to implement our HIV/AIDS mobile project in the Zang Tabi Taah, Meta Mbengwi North West Region in Cameroon, Africa for the people within 28 villages in the remote jungle area in Meta Cameroon in which family members, teenagers and children are suffering from the horrific effects of HIV/AIDS.
Based on the current military conflict in the NW and SW Regions in Cameroon, our team had to abandon our work in the area and evacuate to an undisclosed safe area outside of the Meta area. Although the JRCCA Team is on the run and in hiding, the health team has continued to be inspired and determined to provide basic health care and training while on the run and in hiding in order to be able to assist the families to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS. Health Team is requesting basic support for resources that will enable them to survive during this time of crisis because they had to leave their homes with only clothing on their back during the night.
Moki Edwin Kindzeka reported that since August 2018, Medical staff are fleeing hospitals in Cameroon's troubled English-speaking regions after attacks this month left several nurses dead and many others wounded. Medics say they are stuck between a military that accuses them of aiding armed separatists and rebel fighters who say hospitals betray them to the army. Elvis Ndansi, of the Cameroon trade union of nurses, says the killings and abuse provoked outrage in the medical corps. Working in the area with the on-going military crisis is unsafe for our health team at this time. While in hiding we are maintaining basic health care for our displaced families.
"The military comes, chase them out of the hospital, brutalize them, beat them. As medical personnel, we all stand to condemn these acts and say they are very wrong. Medical personnel are supposed to be protected in times of war. They are there to take care of all casualties, be they from the military, be they from the Ambazonians or secessionists. Their role is to save lives," Ndansi said.
Despite the danger of traveling in the region, hundreds of medics showed up Wednesday for a funeral to honor Nancy Azah and her husband Njong Padisco. The couple, both nurses, were shot dead last week, reportedly by Cameroonian troops.The couple were on their way to present updated plans for the hospital and urgent care center where our program will be housed at our board meeting on August 11, 2018. Nurse Arrey Rose says the association of nurses called on the medical community to show solidarity by attending the funeral service. "We have mobilized to let the world know that doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and pharmacists are tortured and killed just for saving lives," Rose said. "God spared mine when I was pulled out of hospital and beaten just because I was accused of hiding terrorists. Many are dead, many are wounded."
The violence has led patients and medical staff to desert hospitals in both the northwest and southwest.
Eighteen-year-old Mundi Ernestine says that when she took her younger brother to Bamenda regional hospital, there was no one to treat him.
"God has been sustaining him," Ernestine said. "We were not attended to in the hospital for a week because the staff was absent. We had to carry him on our back through the bush to Bamenda, which is a bit calm. He is recovering, but my fear is that many are dying in the bushes just because there is no nurse to help."
The Cameroon Medical Council says, due to the ongoing conflict, the exact number of medical staff who have fled the two volatile regions is unknown. More than 300 civilians and security forces have been killed in Cameroon's English-speaking regions since 2016, when separatists launched their drive for an independent state they call Ambazonia. The United Nations says at least 200,000 people have been internally displaced in the conflict and tens of thousands have fled to neighboring Nigeria as medical staff abandon hospitals in Cameroon's troubled region in a report by Moki Edwin Kindzeka.
On August 28, 2018 we succeeded in moving families and health team out of the deep forest in Zang Tabi Meta NWR to an undisclosed site where they are safe from the gun shots but are facing other adversities living in a foreign area in their native, Africa.
