Saint Martin de Porres Dominican Hospital Center in Yaoundé (Cameroon)
In just two decades, the small Dominican health center in the Mvog-Betsi neighborhood has become one of the best hospitals in the Cameroonian capital. Initiative of a consortium of Dominican women’s congregations to offer medical assistance to the most vulnerable, it currently has 180 beds and specific services such as the palliative care unit or the accompaniment center for people with HIV/AIDS.
I woke up early to avoid the usual traffic jams in Yaoundé and arrive at the San Martín de Porres Dominico Hospital Center before 7:30. At that time all the people who work at the hospital meet every day to pray and exchange information and its director, Sister. Judith Moche wanted me to be present.
A hundred people filled the room. It was Monday, a day assigned to religious men and women to encourage prayer, so we began the day under the protection of the apostles Simon and Judas Thaddeus. Other days the prayer is led by Christians of other faiths or by Muslims and everyone prays with the same respect. An ecumenical and interreligious meeting for a heterogeneous group of doctors, orderlies, nurses and auxiliary and administrative staff united by the same objective: “Put man on his feet”, the hospital’s motto.
After the prayer, someone read the report of the passing of the guard. After some new workers showed up, those who finished the watch went to rest and the rest joined the service. In that human group of more than 160 people, a fraternal atmosphere was evident that Sister would later confirm. Judith: “A good part of our staff has a great sense of sacrifice and many go beyond what could be asked of them for their work, even going so far as to split their vacations into weeks so that the service they provide does not decline.”
Variety of services
For those who visit it for the first time, the hospital resembles a labyrinth where all the spaces and nooks are used to provide all the services. The dental clinic occupies two small rooms through which an average of 210 patients pass every month, while the Ophthalmology Service, which has more space, welcomes more than 400 patients per month and is associated with an optician where lenses for prescription glasses. Although the essentials are not missing, one of the center’s eye doctors, Innocent Kuade, regrets that sometimes they are forced “to refer certain patients to other centers because they lack other devices that would allow us to do eye ultrasounds and retinographs, among other things.”
The hospital blood bank has a reserve of 250 bags of all groups. In addition, they have their own pharmacy that only distributes medications prescribed by the center’s doctors. Another of the hospital’s lungs is the laboratory, which performs more than 12,000 tests and analyzes per month, from the simplest, such as malaria diagnosis, to more complicated ones, such as lipid profile or bacterial culture tests.
family work
The origins of the hospital date back to 2005. The then master general of the Order of Preachers, Fr. Carlos Alfonso Azpiroz, encouraged the different orders of Dominican charisma to work together. Responding to that call, seven Dominican women’s congregations decided to join forces to create a health center where the poorest and most vulnerable would have access to health. On November 3 of that year, the Dominican Health Center opened in the Mvog-Betsi neighborhood of Yaoundé, but it soon became too small.
In April 2006, the first stone of the future hospital was laid, which was inaugurated on February 7, 2008. However, the health needs of the neighborhood forced the construction of a new building and a third is currently being built to house the new maternity. The current one is too small to adequately serve the nearly 200 women who choose the center to give birth each month.
Two congregations withdrew from the project and each of the five that continue contributes at least two nuns to serve in the hospital and to join the board of directors. All the nuns are African and belong to the Dominican Sisters of the Blessed Imelda, the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, the Dominican Sisters of the Annunciata, the Missionary Dominican Sisters of the Holy Family and the Congregation of Saint Dominic, which from the beginning has assumed the general direction . The Sister Moche, Cameroonian, is the second director in the center’s history. He succeeded Sr. Cristina Antolín, Spanish, who had to leave the hospital after being elected prioress general of her congregation in 2017.
social hospital
The center was born as a social work to help the poorest and remains faithful to that principle. «We never expel anyone without first having received, at least, the emergency health care they need. First he is cured and then we see if he can pay or not,” says Sister. Moche, which also recognizes the center’s inability to finance itself. For this reason, in 2008 the center was equipped with the Cooperation and Projects Service, responsible for seeking funds to improve the services provided by the hospital, both qualified personnel and the necessary technical material.
One of the most important benefactors of the center is the Spanish Catholic NGO Manos Unidas which, among other projects, has financed the equipment of the Radiology Service and acquired the house attached to the center that houses the Care and Support Unit (UPEC, for its acronym). in French) for HIV/AIDS patients (see p. 47). Recently Manos Unidas has made it possible for Neonatology to acquire a modern tunnel incubator for phototherapy which, according to Nathalie, the person in charge of the service, “has already begun to save lives because it offers rapid results in babies with severe jaundice and other pathologies.” Currently, the Spanish NGO is supporting the Pediatric Service to ensure that none of the boys and girls who pass through the hospital leave it without having completed their treatment.
Several Spanish health centers contribute to the training of staff. An example of this is Gérard, an ultrasound technician, who was able to complete an intensive three-month course at the Vithas Valencia 9 de Octubre Hospital. That training “gave me confidence to work in this highly specialized service.” Another example is the recent collaboration agreement with the Fundación Alcorcón University Hospital.
Nursing and Medical students from France, Spain and other countries who carry out their professional practices at San Martín de Porres are common, as are many students from Cameroonian nursing schools with which agreements have been signed. Then there is the wave of religious men and women, young people in formation from different congregations, who carry out their apostolate at the center and whom the director tries to coordinate as best as possible. «Recently – says Sister. Moche – we have welcomed a large group of Dominican novices and we have asked them to come on Wednesdays so that they do not coincide with other groups. We have distributed them in different services, even in the maternity ward, because everywhere there are people who need to be heard, both patients and their companions. Although the religious do not intervene at a medical level, they do provide a great service in that essential part of listening and accompanying.
Social service and CIF
Marlène Claudine Melingui is a social worker and coordinates the Social Service, responsible for identifying all indigent people who cannot afford access to medical care. It is about avoiding roguery so that no one takes advantage of the good will of the hospital and prevents those most in need from benefiting. «When we establish the degree of indigence of a person, we help them with a total or partial reduction in the cost of treatment. About a hundred people receive help from the hospital every month,” says Melingui. In addition, the Social Service visits the people most in need to ensure that they continue treatment.
The Itinerant Formation Community (CIF), in coordination with the Social Service, is responsible for the prevention of diseases and the pastoral care of the sick. Every day he organizes talks in the hospital waiting room on topics such as the prevention of cancer, AIDS or tuberculosis. The members of the CIF visit the sick in their rooms, pray with them, listen to them and if they need to receive a sacrament they call the priests to assist them. They also collaborate in the preparation of the two monthly Eucharists that are celebrated in the hospital, in which numerous patients and their companions participate. The center has the Dominican seal, which is formation, education and preaching, and could not be limited to just being a care hospital.
Palliative care
The San Martín de Porres Dominican Hospital Center was the first in Cameroon to open – in 2014 and at the initiative of Sister. Antolín – a palliative care unit: “We saw that many patients affected by very advanced cancers and other diseases died in an undignified manner and with a lot of pain and we decided to open a house to welcome them, treat them and accompany them,” explains the former director .
Currently, the palliative care unit is on one floor of the hospital. In addition to the rooms for patients, it has a living room where they can meet with their families. Some of the patients they care for are hospitalized, while others are receiving home treatment, where they receive care from the medical team, made up of doctors, nurses, psychologists and a priest responsible for the chaplaincy. According to one of the nurses, Geoffroy Essama, “everyone’s goal is to improve the quality of patients so that they leave this world with the least possible pain.” Essama confesses that the main challenge is finding morphine or other substitute drugs because “they are difficult to obtain and the demand is so great that we are always in short supply.”
What is not lacking either in the palliative care unit or in the rest of the services at San Martín de Porres is the human warmth, dedication and desire to serve of this social hospital, whose inspiration is in the Christian faith, which It is a source of life and hope.
THE VALUE OF UPEC
The World HIV/AIDS Day that we celebrate every year on December 1 reminds us that the virus is still there. Although most HIV-positive people currently have access to effective retroviral medications, UNAIDS recalls that in 2023 there were 1.3 million new infections and that relaxing in the fight against the virus can increase its incidence. All of this justifies the existence in San Martín de Porres of a service like the UPEC, directed by Dr. Jocelyne Cheukak Ngangom (in the image), which provides clinical and psychological monitoring of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis patients.
The UPEC, created in 2008, currently supports around 2,300 patients. According to Cheukak, “each year we identify and integrate more than 180 new cases into our program.” Many of them arrive when the Pediatric Service detects a child carrying the virus. Tests on their relatives confirm that the parents are also HIV positive. The center monitors pregnant women carrying the virus in particular to prevent their children from being born with it.
The hospital is responsible for establishing the treatment and giving patients their doses, the cost of which is covered by the Cameroonian Government. In addition to the six people who report directly to the hospital, around twenty people work at the UPEC in charge of collaborating associations, especially administrative staff and social agents who ensure that patients take their medication.
The UPEC regularly organizes awareness campaigns to combat HIV/AIDS, which does not always prevent infections. Cheukah Ngangom is pessimistic: «We notice that many people stop treatment and others multiply casual partners. Easy access to pornography on the Internet makes many young people want to experiment without protecting themselves. “A recent study identified nearly 9,000 infected young people between 17 and 23 years old, something unheard of in Cameroon.”
