Health Districts in NWR Commit to Promote Safety, Protection in Facilities
Safeguarding is a practice that is absent in many health facilities due to ignorance or lack of will to practice it. In its partnership with five health districts of the Northwest Region, the Comprehensive Program for the Empowerment of Persons with Disability and Inclusive Access to Basic Services of Health, Education, and Livelihood in the Northwest Region of Cameroon amongst other areas is focusing on safeguarding in health facilities.
It is in line with this that the project organized a 2-day workshop on inclusion, gender, and safeguarding for staff from these district hospitals: Wum, Nkambe, Santa, Nkwen, Foundong, and SAJOCAH Bafut. The workshop held at the Baptist Center Nkwen Bamenda from May 24-25, 2024 with objectives to build the capacity of participants on basic concepts of inclusion, reasonable accommodation, Gender, safeguarding and Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA), validate safeguarding policies and code of conduct, and set up a referral system.
Expounding on the importance of the workshop, the lead facilitators, the Safeguarding Officer, Boyo Maureen and the Gender Officer, Che Jessie explained to participants that a risk assessment was done at the start of the project to ascertain and, or identify potential risks related to sexual exploitation, abuse, and Sexual Harassment (SEAH) and other forms of harm and abuse that an organization may face. These include: risks to staff, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders with measures put in place to mitigate the risks. Some gaps were identified thus, the reason why the training was organized to train two staff per facility to build their capacities on Gender, safeguarding, and SEA, setting up a one-stop-shop, a referral system, and the importance of appointing a safeguarding focal point as well as advocating for the recruitment of a social worker.
The Project Coordinator, Lohshie Eugene schooled participants on the inclusion of vulnerable groups and persons with disabilities in health care delivery. In a group work, participant reflected on the different vulnerable groups who are persons with disabilities, children, women, and the elderly. They also identified barriers that these groups of persons face in accessing health care such as the physical structure of the hospital, lack of signages to direct them to points of care in the hospital, assistive devices, staff attitude, and Finances amongst others. The session enabled the participants to identify measures of overcoming those barriers such as awareness raising amongst staff and working with the hospital administration to put in place systems that will enable this group of vulnerable persons to access services.
The Gender Officer used her experience to drill participants on Gender Based Violence which is experienced by both men and women. She emphasized the concept of psychosocial support services, its ethics and when to provide it to clients who come to the hospital. She told them to practice “Do no harm approach” as they offer services adding that they need to always get an informed consent from the client before doing their job.
On her part, the Child Safeguarding Officer, Boyo Maurine drilled participants on safeguarding, its principles, and its code of conduct. Given that she was involved in conducting the risk assessment in the different health districts, she shared some of the gaps in the protection and safety for service users. Some of these gaps included: access to quality care and causes of issues that bring clients to the hospital, which may stem from abuse either at the level of the community, families, or other situations.
At the end of the reflections, participants agreed to have a customized code of conduct that will be signed by all staff of each institution including volunteers and contract workers which will enable them to be more cautious of harm to vulnerable people as they carry out their duties. They also identified the need to develop guidelines, especially for government institutions like district hospitals which will help them understand the procedures on how to manage issues on the safety of children which will include prevention and responding to abuse as well as minimizing the effects on the victims.
The workshop participants appreciated the project for building their capacity on safeguarding which is relatively new for most of them. Speaking to one, of the participants, Dr. Beri Bala from Wum District Hospital, she expressed that, thanks to the partnership with the project, some areas of the hospital building have been modified with the construction of ramps to improve access to the different service points of the hospital. She added that this has led to an increase in the number of persons with disabilities accessing the hospital.
It is hoped that with knowledge acquired from the workshop, these health facilities will put in place sustainable systems in their health facilities that will ensure the protection and safety of the vulnerable persons who access their services.