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Psychological Care Lacking in Cameroon's Separatist Conflict

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   BABUNGO, CAMEROON - Cameroon's three-year separatist conflict has left
   close to 3,000 people dead and growing numbers in need of psychological
   care. An influx of people impacted by the conflict are flooding into
   trauma centers across the English-speaking regions of the central
   African state. Medical officials say they are running short of supplies
   and trauma workers are struggling to provide care.

   A middle-aged woman cries for help at the Integrated Mental Health Care
   Center in Babungo, a village in Cameroon's English-speaking Northwest.

   She tells a reporter her husband was shot dead in a crossfire between
   the military and separatist fighters in September. Then on Saturday,
   her only son's body was found in an abandoned school building in the
   town of Mbengwi.

   In the same trauma center, 19-year-old Yvonne Ikah says that last month
   three armed men in the English-speaking town of Bamenda stopped her on
   the way to school and raped her.

   "They told me to climb on a bike [motorcycle] and I tried resisting.
   But, when I saw the gun, I had no option. They took me to a bush. I
   insisted that I was an orphan. They beat me and I had no option. What I
   went through, I am not sure I will ever want to go back there again,"
   she said.

   As Cameroon's separatist conflict heads into a fourth year, the number
   of trauma victims is only growing.

   At the Babungo Mental Health Care Center alone, the number of patients
   has tripled in the past two months to nearly 600.

   Trauma care specialist Evangeline Nchang says patient numbers jump when
   fighting stops, as it becomes safer to travel to the center.

   "The trauma is just too much," she said. "Youths are dying, elderly
   people are dying, even old mothers that cannot even run away when the
   guns are being shot. They are just shot like that. There are more
   mental patients every day because of the trauma of this crisis."

   There are not enough beds, so the patients sleep on the floor in
   crowded hallways.

   Medical supplies are running short, despite donations from Germany and
   the United States.

   And director of the trauma center John Tumenta says most staff have
   fled because of nearby fighting between Cameroon's military and the
   separatists.

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