The Secretary of State to the Minister of Public Health (Minsanté) in charge of epidemics and pandemics, Alim Hayatou, inaugurated the coronavirus isolation center at the Laquintinie Hospital in Douala on 16 July. This center is composed of 21 rooms equipped with oxygen, air conditioning and telephone systems, a gas station, and all other components for space security, according to the company that carried out the work.

“I am here to testify to the entire national community, the delivery of the first isolation center in our regional hospitals instructed by the President of the Republic who asked each region to do its utmost to ensure that patients are properly treated in very good conditions,” he said during the inauguration.  “This first pilot isolation center of Laquintinie de Douala (...) will make it possible to isolate several patients who will not have been admitted to an ordinary treatment center,” the secretary of state added.

The Covid-19 isolation unit will increase the capacity of Douala, a city that alone concentrates nearly 85 percent of the positive cases in the Littoral region. In its national coronavirus response strategy, the government has decided to equip each region with isolation centers. In addition to Douala, the centers in Bertoua (East) and Ebolowa (South) have also been inaugurated. The other regions will follow.

Unlike the special centers for the care of patients with Covid-19, which will be dismantled after the pandemic, the isolation centers, housed in hospitals, have a permanent vocation. One of their objectives is to enable hospitals to maintain their number of beds dedicated to the care of other diseases.

With the establishment of these centers, the government aims to improve the care of patients suffering from Covid-19. As of 16 July 2020, Cameroon officially had 16,157 confirmed cases, with 13,728 recoveries (85%) and 373 deaths. “Cameroon has one of the best recovery rates in Africa and even in the world compared to a global recovery rate of 4.6%,” says the Ministry of Public Health.

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