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