BY Chinje Hopeson
While the crisis in the North West and South West Regions, which long escalated into an armed conflict, continues to take new twists, healthcare personnel and professionals of other walks of life are suffering as gun battles between Ambazonia separatist fighters and the military rage on.
The healthcare and other humanitarian workers have been caught between the Ambazonia separatist fighters and government defence and security forces.
While the separatist fighters have sometimes kidnapped and also killed some health and humanitarian workers, defence and security forces have, on their part, have been arresting any health and humanitarian worker accused of having links with separatists or providing healthcare and humanitarian assistance to separatists.
The military is also accused of having killed some health workers. The arrested healthcare personnel, we gathered, are being detained under horrible conditions.
Some have reportedly died in detention. It is in this light that many of them have fled into hiding.
Medical professionals concerned for their lives
It should be recalled that attacks on hospitals by both the military and armed separatists have left medical professionals in the English-speaking regions concerned for their lives.
Many of them have lost their lives. This was the case in August 2018 when Nancy Azah and her husband, Njong Paddisco, who were nurses who ran separate clinics in the small town of Mbengwi in the North West Region were shot dead by the military while on their way to attend to people wounded in the armed conflict.
The nurses’ deaths had sparked outrage among medical staff who said they were being threatened by both sides of the conflict: government security forces accuse them of treating armed fighters and hiding some in hospitals while the armed separatists accuse medical staff of disclosing their identities to the military.
Another case is that of a young medical doctor who had just left school and was working in the North West Region. She was shot by military men – she did not die.
In another instance, an ambulance was taking a patient from one hospital to another and somewhere in the bush, the military shot at it and damaged the ambulance, hurting the nurse who was accompanying the patient.
Meanwhile, in February 2022, Shey Janet, a nurse, was killed and a medical doctor wounded as a 16-man team of medics came under bullet attacks in Mile 90 Nsongwa, Bamenda. Bullets were rained on their vehicle, snatching the life of the health worker who, before her demise, served at the Women's Health Programme of the Cameroon Baptist Convention, CBC.
Healthcare workers flee
Meanwhile, many healthcare workers are fleeing for fear of their lives. One of the healthcare workers who have been caught between the separatist and the military is Odilia Chenue Muyeh, a nurse who is said to have worked at Tubah District Hospital, Bambili in Mezam Division of the North West Region.
Sometime in April 2016, Muyeh is said to have been kidnapped by separatist fighters because her elder brother was a soldier. She is said to have been brutalised by the separatists and was later hospitalised because of injuries incurred during the torture.
Muyeh’s family received constant threats from the separatist fighters. She and her family are said to have later fled the locality.
However, her ordeals were far from over. She is said to have later been accused of siding with separatist fighters. Muyeh is reported to have been held at a hospital and later transferred to a military detention facility.
Muyeh later appeared before a tribunal in Yaounde, after which she was released on bail. She later settled in Toumaka village in Babadjou, West Region, where she worked as a nurse at the Prestige Health Centre.
She is reported to have also been providing community healthcare. However, sometime in July 2022, information emerged that she and some of her colleagues had been accused by the military of treating wounded Ambazonia separatist fighters.Muyeh is said to have suddenly vamoosed and since then her whereabouts is not known.
While the military is said to have launched a manhunt for her, separatist fighters are also reported to have also been searching for her. If arrested, Odilia Chenue Muyeh will be tried in a military tribunal, under the 2014 anti-terrorism law, whose maximum punishment is the death sentence.
That is if she is not killed outright like many others who have been victims of extrajudicial killings within the context of the armed conflict in North West and South West regions.
Meanwhile, if the separatist fighters lay hands on her, Muyeh will definitely be killed, like many others who have been victims of atrocities committed by the fighters.
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