Cameroon’s ten regions, prioritised by need
AFCA is a national organisation. We are not tied to one region, one language community or one town, and we go where the gap between a person and a qualified clinician is widest.
In practice that means rural and peri-urban communities where the nearest health facility is far, understaffed, or unaffordable — and settlements carrying additional strain, such as areas hosting displaced families. Every site is agreed in advance with the district health authority responsible for it.
Centre
East
Far North
Littoral
North
North-West
South
South-West
West
Campaigns are delivered in English and French, and through local-language interpreters drawn from the host community.
How we decide where the next campaign goes
Requests always exceed capacity. These are the criteria we weigh, in this order.
Distance to the nearest functioning facility
How far a resident has to travel to reach a clinician who is actually present, and what that journey costs in transport and lost income. The further and costlier the journey, the higher the priority.
Evidence of unmet need
What the district health service, local clinicians and community leaders report about untreated conditions, missed antenatal care, and patients presenting late. We ask for evidence, not impressions.
A committed local partner
A council, chiefdom, school, parish or association willing to mobilise residents, provide a suitable venue and stay engaged afterwards. Without a local partner, turnout collapses and follow-up is impossible.
Authorisation and safety
Written agreement from the competent health authority, and a realistic assessment of whether the team, the medicines and the patients can be kept safe on the day.
Somewhere to refer patients on to
A named facility that will receive the cases we cannot treat in a day. We do not run a campaign into a place where a referral has nowhere to go.
Funding actually in hand
Medicines, tests and transport are confirmed and paid for before a date is announced. AFCA does not advertise a campaign it cannot yet deliver.
The gap we are working inside
Cameroon’s difficulty is not only that care is scarce. It is that the cost of care falls almost entirely on the household that needs it.
physicians for every 10,000 people nationally — and the distribution is heavily weighted towards the largest cities, leaving rural districts far below even that figure.
WHO / World Bank health workforce data
of national health financing is paid directly out of pocket by households at the point of treatment, rather than pooled through insurance or public funding.
WHO Global Health Expenditure Database
of Cameroonians hold health insurance of any kind, which means for most families an illness is an unplanned cash expense that competes with food and school fees.
National health financing analyses
What that adds up to
A treatable condition becomes an emergency because the consultation was postponed. A pregnancy goes unmonitored because the trip is unaffordable. A campaign does not fix a health system — but it removes both barriers, distance and cost, for the people standing in front of us that day, and it sends the serious cases into the system with a written referral instead of leaving them to deteriorate at home.
Where we have worked
Foumban, Noun Division — West Region
A full free medical campaign delivering general consultations, screening and on-site dispensing of prescribed medication, run with local authorities and hosted in the community.
Services delivered: general consultation, blood pressure and blood sugar screening, malaria testing, maternal and child health checks, health education, free medication and onward referral.
Planning the next campaign
Sites for upcoming campaigns are confirmed once a local partner, an authorisation and the funding for medicines are all in place. Communities and health authorities are welcome to put their area forward at any time.
Campaign-by-campaign figures — patients seen, conditions treated and medicines dispensed — are published on the impact page as each campaign is closed out and reconciled.
If your community is being missed, tell us
Councils, chiefdoms, health districts, schools, parishes and community associations can all request a campaign. We will tell you honestly what is possible and when.