When Cameroon’s medical doctors become farmers!.

Others are leaving the country for better opportunities abroad, abandoning patients in the lurch.

Speaking on Club d’Elites of Vision 4 Television last Sunday, Dr Roger Etoa, a member of the National Medical Council of Cameroon, divulged that approximately 55% of doctors have left the country, five years after their training.

“We analysed the career paths of doctors five years after their training. The results are quite worrying- more than half of them, approximately 55%, have disappeared after five years,” he said.

"Furthermore, nearly 10 percent find themselves unemployed. It is, nonetheless, surprising to note that trained doctors find themselves without jobs, some being forced to take up street vending, livestock farming, or other subsistence activities,” Dr Etoa said.

Regarding remuneration, he also disclosed that the average salary of a doctor, five years after training, is between 200,000 FCFA and 300,000 FCFA.

According to a-2018 survey by the National Medical Council of Cameroon, more than 5,000 Cameroonian doctors practice abroad, while there are only 4,000 practicing in the country.

The "increasing emigration" of Cameroonian doctors is caused by "difficult working conditions" as well as "low salaries and...everything that accompanies the salary for the doctor's comfort", the survey emphasised.     

The departure of doctors increased with the double salary cut in the Cameroonian civil service in 1993, where some categories of personnel lost up to sixty percent of their incomes. The study, for example, revealed cases of doctors earning barely 50,000 CFA francs.

“This situation therefore raises a broader question about the working conditions and the value placed on the medical profession,” Dr Roger Etoa stated. 

Currently, a doctor's salary is approximately 175,000 FCFA. 

“If we train one hundred doctors each year at the Faculty of Medicine in Yaounde, and in other schools across the country, nearly a thousand young Cameroonians will be knocking on the doors of medical schools in Africa and Europe,” the survey indicated.

To stem the exodus, the National Medical Council of Cameroon recommends raising salaries, improving working conditions for healthcare staff, and opening more medical schools in Cameroon.

The Guardian Post notes that while the country has been struggling towards attaining Universal Health Coverage launched in 2023, the system still faces major challenges, including exorbitant cost, low insurance coverage, shortages of qualified personnel, and equipment, which explains why top government officials scurry abroad, even when they catch a cold.

There is no doubt that the country has some of the best professionals in the medical field as proven by a recent medical feat at the Douala General Hospital on a 70-year-old patient.

In the words of Dr Manaouda Malachie, Minister of Public Health, announcing the success story, "the Cameroonian health system has just achieved a major breakthrough in cardiology, unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the Douala General Hospital successfully performed its very first TAVI (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation) on a 70-year-old patient at high surgical risk".

He explained in a press statement that “this is a medical feat that demonstrates the strengthening of our technical facilities and the expertise of our teams”.

"On behalf of the President of the Republic, H.E Paul Biya, and his Government, I congratulate the top management of this hospital as well as all the teams who carried out this delicate operation. I am very proud of you. Cameroon is moving forward, moving forward, and moving forward again,” Dr Manaouda Malachie had recounted.

While The Guardian Post joins in congratulating the Douala surgeons, it should not just end at kudos but should extend to incentives and salaries, comparable to their peers in Africa so as to keep our best brains at home.

There is no reason starting salaries for doctors in neighbouring Gabon, for instance, are from 400,000 FCFA rising to 1.5 million FCFA after five years of service, while their counterparts here are on peanuts and extorting poor patients to ameliorate their pay.

Apart from poor renumeration, there is the lack of equipment, and even when they are available and become defective, they are hardly repaired to make qualified doctors and specialists perform their best like the isolated case observed in Douala, which is a testimony to the competence of the country's experts who should not be allowed to scamper out or become farmers because of poor pay or no equipment to practice what they know best.

This article article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3734 of Tuesday March 17, 2026