MSF CAMEROON: The mental and physical toll of a decade of conflict in Cameroon
Under-equipped health facilities, staff shortages, recurrent epidemics, and food insecurity continue to affect people’s health in Cameroon’s Far North region, which is also affected by the ongoing Lake Chad Basin crisis.
Attacks, displacement, and food insecurity have become part of the daily life of some communities in Cameroon’s Far North region, who have been living with the consequences of a prolonged conflict for more than a decade.
“I fled my village in 2019 after repeated attacks,” says Hawa Marie, an internally displaced woman now living in Mora. “We were afraid because of the gunfire. With my six children, we had to leave everything behind. Life here (in Mora) is difficult — we don’t always have enough to eat”.
Hawa Marie is among the thousands of people forced to flee their homes due to ongoing violence along the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. The Lake Chad Basin crisis, which began in Nigeria in 2009, has spread across the region, affecting Cameroon’s Far North, western Chad, and south-eastern Niger.
According to UNHCR, more than 3.6 million people have been displaced, including over 500,000 in Cameroon. Displaced families face precarious living conditions, limited access to healthcare, and chronic food insecurity.
“The situation in 2016 and 2017 was extremely difficult. We were receiving gunshot-wounded patients at all hours, coming from everywhere,” says Danzabe Elias, logistics supervisor at Mora District Hospital. “We often had to go out at any time to provide care, which made the work particularly exhausting. It is even harder when the wounded we receive are sometimes our relatives, people we live alongside”.
In response to the ongoing health needs in the Far North region, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supports primary and secondary healthcare, mental health care, reproductive health services, and emergency surgical care. At Mora district hospital, where MSF has been present since 2015, teams have performed over 4,500 surgical procedures since 2021.
Conflict is worsening poverty.
Insecurity also affects livelihoods. Fear of attacks and kidnappings prevents many people from farming or transporting their harvests, worsening poverty and food shortages. “People are afraid to go farming,” explains Wasa Hassan, a community health worker in Kourgui. “Kidnappings for ransom have become common, and fear dominates daily life.”