Cameroon Health & Education
Most children have access to free, state-run schools or subsidised, private and religious facilities. The educational system is a mixture of British and French precedents with most instruction in English or French. Cameroon has one of the highest school attendance rates in Africa. Girls attend school less regularly than boys do because of cultural attitudes, domestic duties, early marriage and pregnancy, and sexual harassment. Although attendance rates are higher in the south, a disproportionate number of teachers are stationed there, leaving northern schools chronically understaffed.
Seven state-run universities serve Cameroon's student population. More than 60,000 students were enrolled for the 1998–1999 school year. A council of deans, school directors, and representatives of state ministries governs the schools under the leadership of a vice-chancellor. State funding for universities is low, and student registrations nominally make up 25% of the higher education budget. Since 1993, with the decentralisation of university education, free tuition was replaced with registration fees of 50,000FCFA for Cameroonian nationals and 200,000FCFA for foreign nationals. Although there was initial resistance to this new format, the government has been vindicated almost two decades later, as university attendance has since more than quadruppled. Competitiveness between the various universities has been encouraged. Administratively, the University of Buea, dubbed the Anglo-Saxon university, is the best organized. However, cuts in faculty salaries in 1993 have made it difficult to maintain full staff, as there has been an increasing exodus of teachers to foreign countries in search of better wages.
Since 1990, private institutions have sprung up in at least five regions. These schools charge fees that are five to ten times those levied by state schools. Nevertheless, they offer short professional-training programmes in areas such as accounting, management, journalism, and Internet technologies, so they are popular with students. Some of these schools nonetheless fall short of government minimum standards of infrastructure and faculty and must operate unlicensed.
The quality of health care is generally low. Outside the major cities, facilities are often dirty and poorly equipped. Endemic diseases include dengue fever, filariasis, leishmaniasis, malaria, meningitis, schistosomiasis, and sleeping sickness. The HIV/AIDS seroprevalence rate is estimated at 5.4% for those aged 15–49, although a strong stigma against the illness keeps the number of reported cases artificially low. Traditional healers remain a popular alternative to Western medicine.
Click here to discover more of Cameroon, "Africa in Miniature".
