Methods

This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in July 2020 in Cameroon. Cameroon is a bilingual and multicultural Central African country, with about 28 million inhabitants in 2022 across the countries 10 administrative regions [10]. The country healthcare system has a pyramidal structure, organized into three levels: i) the peripheral (operational) level, which is at the base of the pyramid. It consists of an extensive network of district hospitals (DH), sub-divisional hospitals (CMA) and Integrated Health Centers (IHC), which are spread across the country’s 10 regions [11].; ii) the intermediate level, which consists primarily of regional hospitals (RH) and Regional Hospital Centres (RHC), whose technical platforms are higher than that for district hospitals; iii) the central level, which is at the top of the pyramid. It consists of specialized reference hospitals, including General Hospitals (GH) and Central Hospitals (CH) as well as well as administrative structures that are responsible for developing, regulating, and coordinating health strategies. Figure 1 shows the distribution of these facilities across the countries 10 regions.
Table 1: Distribution of Health Facilities in Cameroon by type and by region