Nkongsamba, Cameroon –As part of the activities to commemorate the 2023 World Population Day in Nkongsamba, Littoral Region, UNFPA deployed its mobile clinic team to ease access to reproductive health and family planning-related information and services for women, girls, and youths. Over a period of 6 days, the mobile clinic went through the streets of Nkongsamba with medical personnel providing services to some beneficiaries while referring others to the closest health facilities. This initiative allowed for the provision of services such as counselling, administration of contraceptive methods, age-appropriate sensitization on Sexual and reproductive health, and menstrual hygiene management matters.

A mobile clinic is a customized motor vehicle equipped with a stretcher and other basic health materials and commodities and that travel to communities to provide a wide variety of health services while serving as an advanced strategy generating higher demand for services.

During the week-long commemoration of World Population Day, the health personnel on board ran sensitization campaigns to encourage target persons to come in for the administration of available services and prevent unwanted pregnancies and infections with HIV. Christine N., a middle-aged woman, was one of the beneficiaries: “I decided to take a modern contraceptive method because I do not want to have any more children. I have six children already and I realized that the more I gave birth the more it was weighing down on me.” Besides giving women the power to decide when to have children and how many, modern contraception also relieves them from constant fear and anxiety related to unintentional pregnancy. “Before, I would be scared and worried about getting pregnant after each sexual intercourse with my partner. Now, that I am on contraception, it is no longer the case”, says Pamela N. Christine and Pamela are among the 18,503 women and girls who were reached by the mobile clinic campaign run in Nkongsamba.

Women make up about 51% of the population of Cameroon. However, gender inequality is still very much a challenge in many parts of the country, limiting women’s ability to make decisions about their lives, health and sexual and reproductive rights. This increases their vulnerability to violence, harmful practices and preventable maternal deaths. On the other hand, access to information and services related to family planning is still low, the reason why only 15, 4% of women in Cameroon use modern contraception. 

Thanks to partners such as KfW Development Bank, UNFPA Cameroon was able to acquire two mobile clinic vehicles and carried out 5 major mobile clinic campaigns in hard-to-reach localities throughout the year 2022. This greatly contributed to achieving 229,446 new users of modern contraceptive methods last year. The mobile clinic campaign in Nkongsamba in 2023 has shown signs of acceleration toward giving more and more women and girls opportunities and choices while contributing to the overarching goal to end the unmet needs for family planning by 2030 in Cameroon.