Access to health care is a fundamental human right, which places a legal obligation on states to ensure access to quality, timely, acceptable, and affordable health care for its citizens. However, many states struggle to meet this basic right for their citizens given that every year about 100 million people are pushed into poverty, while 150 million people suffer financial catastrophe due to out of pocket payments for health. In Cameroon, studies have shown that about 64% of households cannot access healthcare, because they perceive the cost of care to be high. In 2012, the National Health Accounts (NHA) estimated that about 70% of the Total Health Expenditure (THE) for the country was borne by households. Compared to its peers, the contribution of Cameroonian households is the third highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the average is 34%. To remedy this situation, Cameroon has initiated reflections aimed at establishing a universal health coverage (UHC) scheme for its population. This paper therefore aimed at providing a synthesis of Cameroon's progress and assessing if the country is on track to achieving UHC by 2035.

Cameroon faces significant income and health inequalities, due to the health sector's reliance on out-of-pocket spending for 70% of healthcare financing. To solve this problem, the government in 2015 began reflections for the putting in place of a universal health coverage (UHC) scheme. However, a number of planning, budgeting and resource management processes must be strengthened to facilitate this reform. This paper aims at reviewing the structure of resource allocation within the ministry of health to assess if it reflects the government's desire to enhance service availability and readiness for the impending UHC. Data was derived from finance laws (chapter 40) of 2014 to 2018. The data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel. The results reveal a high centralization of the budget in favor of the central administration to the detriment of the operational level. Allocations to the regional and district levels are insensitive to the size and needs of the population of the regions and districts. As a consequence, there are great disparities between the regions and between urban and rural areas, leading to inequity in service delivery. In order to increase the quantity and quality of primary care in an effort to reach UHC, we recommend that more resources be directed to the operational level while district managers are capacitated to effectively and efficiently use these funds.

Diarrhoea remains a major public health concern of our times with bad drinking water and frequent poor disposal of human waste matter. Caused by a variety of conditions, it spans from diarrhoea which are of viral bacterial to sometimes metal intoxication. In Cameroon, it is one of the 10 major causes of illness. To assess the burden and lost income due to diarrhoea, the study quantified how much households in the Bamenda Health District (BHD), North West Region (NWR) of Cameroon are losing because of the incidence of diarrhoea related infections. A cluster sampling technique was used to select 8 Public Integrated Health Centres in 8 Health Areas, with an estimated population of about 189,730 people. Data for all reported diarrhoea cases for 2011 and 2012 was collected from the Health Centres. The Cost of Illness (CoI) methodology was used to quantify the direct and indirect cost of diarrhoea infections. It was estimated that about USD22, 361 and USD37, 198 was lost by households in general in 2011 and 2012 respectively. The economic burden over the two years was estimated at USD53, 602.3. If this amount were projected over 10 years it will imply that about USD260, 000 will be lost to the treatment of diarrhoea infections.