Dr. Ekema Anjorin: Pushing Mutual Health Scheme in Limbe
The Junior Chamber International, JCI, Limbe Chapter, last December 2008, honoured one of Limbe’s youthful and promising medical practitioner’s, Dr. Ekema Anjorin with an outstanding achievement award in community health.
This was within the chapter’s yearly program of rewarding some young men and women below the age of 40, with special awards, in recognition of their contribution to the development of the city of Limbe. Though above 40, Dr. Anjorin was given a special award because of his extra-ordinary inputs into the development of Limbe in the health sector, notably his contribution in the fight against HIV/AIDS through his NGO, the Uphealth Foundation, which was created in 2000 and which has touched over a million people.
Dr. Anjorin also launched the Healthy People, Healthy City Program in 2008, which is focused on making Limbe the healthiest town in the republic with a four-component structure. The first is the Wellness Program which is to prevent the Limbe population from having diseases like gastro-enteritis through frequent hand washing, cardiovascular diseases through exercise, chronic diseases like breast, cervical and prostrate cancers through yearly screening.
The second component is making health care accessible and affordable through the Uphealth Mutual Health scheme. The third is the retraining of health professionals to make them more effective in their work while the fourth is the development of diagnostic health services and hospital development.
The opening of the Hill Crest Group clinic, a modern, well-eqipped polyclinic which caters for the local population in the villages around Limbe II SubDivision such as Kie, Botaland, Wovia, Ngeme, Mokindi-Isokolo etc. and beyond was also a major factor taken into consideration by the Limbe JCI led by the enterprising Dona Forbin Public Relations Officer of the Limbe City Council.
Mutual Health Scheme
When he launched the Uphealth Mutual Health Scheme in Limbe in April 2007, many thought it was a long shot that would yield no discernible and positive results. But Dr. Ekema Anjorin, Founder/Director of UpHealth Foundation, a Cameroonian NGO, which has been actively involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS and also Director of the Hill Crest Group Clinic, believed strongly in what he was doing and knew exactly where he was going.
Barely more than a year into the scheme, Dr. Anjorin says that they have already “recruited 400 members into the scheme”. Though the target of 1000 members for 2008 was not met, the amiable medical practitioner is confident that they will surpass this target in 2009 because of the interest the population is showing and the affluence he and his team are registering at the Uphealth Foundation Office in Half Mile and the Hill Crest Clinic in Mokindi. The latter is the authorized clinic for the Uphealth Mutual Health Scheme.
In a chat with The SUN, Dr. Anjorin came back to the tenets of his pet project. “Mutual Health Scheme is a co-operative where people make contributions for their health so that health care is accessible and affordable”, he stated, adding that their main target is to surpass the Cameroonian goal of the Millenium Development Goal, MDG, of making 40 percent of Cameroonians to be involved in a mutual health scheme by 2015. “Our goal is to make sure that 60 percent of people in the Limbe municipality have affordable and accessible health-care by 2015”, Dr. Anjorin said, confidently.
Expounding further on the concept, Dr. Anjorin, in his late forties, says the blackman or local people have always thought of putting something aside for the rainy days. This, according to him is the reason why most “njangi” houses and groups have what they call “sinking funds”. “The mutual health scheme is like a sinking fund where, when there is a problem, you can benefit from it, if you are subscribed to it”, Dr. Anjorin avers.
Translating this to a real life situation, Dr. Anjorin posits that people get really sick but don’t have money to pay, so they have to rely on family relations to assist them go to hospital. “If you are in a mutual health scheme, you are covered because you have access to health care even without cash to pay”, he assures.
The Uphealth Mutual scheme is open to all Cameroonians above 18 and requires just FCFA 1000 to register and become a member. There is also a monthly contribution which varies as per the kind of coverage. Of course, a new idea like this cannot go without its lot of problems. Dr. Anjorin says the biggest problem is how to convince Cameroonians to pay in advance because, as he puts it, “many Cameroonians don’t understand how they can pay for their health in advance”.
Dr. Ekema Anjorin, left the reputable St. Joseph’s College Sasse in Buea in 1977 and studied general medicine at the University of Ile-Ife in Nigeria from where he graduated in 1991. He worked at the Lagos Ikeja General Hospital upon graduation. He came over to Cameroon and was employed by the Cameroon Development Corporation from 1996 to 2006.
Between 2006 and 2007, he was HIV Physician Training Manager with the International Training and Education Centre for HIV, ITEC. A consultant with the Pan African Institute for Development in West Africa, PAIDWA, since 2002, Dr. Anjorin is also Director for Africa for Health Link Africa, an international NGO involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
But what is Dr. Anjorin’s vision? Hear him, “with the launching of the Uphealth Mutual Scheme in Limbe, I feel that within the next five years, over 50 percent of the people in Limbe will have access to affordable health care and over 60 percent will be healthy. With this, I believe, we will be able, to a very large extent, prevent situations of sudden deaths resulting from cardiovascular diseases and chronic diseases like breast cancers”.
By Norbert Wasso Binde
