The health crises of the last few years, notably the Ebola epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, have had a disproportionately strong direct impact on not only health but education outcomes across Africa. Achieving better health and education outcomes are very closely related and interdependent.
Even as nations turn the page on COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear: another health crisis will come along, not too far from now, that will have a significant impact on health and education outcomes. What to do is far from certain, given that nations are still learning the lessons of COVID-19 and Ebola, even as recent variants spread and future ones are feared to be just around the corner.
In Cameroon, health and education sector workers have been overwhelmed by the risks of inherent in attending to patients of the COVID-19 pandemic but on account of the fact that they are themselves, along with their patients, victims of senseless bloodletting brought about by the worst outbreaks of violence in the country since its independence.
The crises of the last few years notwithstanding, the education and health systems in Cameroon have achieved impressive progress since independence. Literacy rates have increased thanks, in part, to free elementary education. Healthcare continues to expand, but both sectors have quality concerns and corruption is rife.
Inequality has grown, corruption, according to anecdotal accounts, is rife, and the already basic education and health infrastructure put in place since independence is heavily strained or collapsing. The country’s fast-growing population threatens to overwhelm the health, education and other social services.
As COVID-19 restrictions are lifted and these and other sectors gradually reopen, FECH is committed to working with partners – the first of them the people of Cameroon – to put in place a program adapted to the post-COVID-19 world. One that makes remote learning efficient and telemedicine easier to practice and more accessible; one that explores options for home schooling and at-home healthcare; and one that partners with students, parents and teachers as well as with healthcare workers to improve education and health outcomes.
More important than formal education, our programs seek to ensure that learning continues long after students leave school or in informal settings for those who never make it into the four walls of a classroom. This is important because no country can achieve its social or economic development without making significant improvements to its education and health systems.
While all countries, including Cameroon, have put in place good policies to advance these goals, without effective implementation, they constitute nothing but a listing of good intentions. Our goal, at FECH, is to help create win-win approaches for traditional, local, district, divisional, regional, and national programs.
We are keen to set up and support programs that recognize that students are motivated to achieve and parents are willing to consent the heavy sacrifices needed to keep their children in school if education pays dividends in the form of jobs and higher incomes that improve the quality of their life. Teachers and healthcare workers are motivated to do a good job and avoid corrupt practices if their enrollment into training facilities were free of corruption and their work environment is conducive, pay is equitable and promotions reward high-performing staff.
