Nwambe Sydoline, a 34-year-old woman from the village of Akwaja, was expecting twins. Her village is in Cameroon’s Northwest region, where families have endured years of conflict and have limited access to essential care like safe childbirth.
Ramatou, a 22-month-old child whose family has limited access to nutritious food in the Northwest’s Wumfi village, is also among the millions in Cameroon who need urgent humanitarian assistance.
In Cameroon, the country’s health system is fragile. Services are limited, and many people lack information about the care they need and how to access it. That’s why our local outreach teams meet families where they are—their homes, neighborhood markets and community health posts—to form interpersonal connections and deliver lifesaving care. This story is about two people whose lives were changed after our local community engagement team met their families and provided the lifesaving aid they needed.
First Outreach, Then Outcomes
For both Nwambe and Ramatou, our door-to-door engagement and direct health education made the difference. In Akwaja, the communications and training provided by our outreach helped Nwambe understand the risks of home birth and the benefits of delivering at a facility. So when her labor began, she came to the local health center, where Sirri—a midwife whom we trained and supported with supplies and equipment—assisted with the delivery of Nwambe’s twins. “I was thinking of delivering at home,” Nwambe says, “but Sirri’s explanations convinced me to come to the health center instead.”
Today, Nwambe is now a proud mother of healthy twin boys. She continues to bring them to the International Medical Corps-supported health center where she gave birth for routine immunization and health checks.
In Wumfi, one of our Community Health Workers (CHWs) conducting screenings at households identified signs of malnutrition in little Ramatou in time to refer her to lifesaving care at the nearest outpatient therapeutic program (OTP), where she received therapeutic food and began to improve. As part of Ramatou’s routine treatment, International Medical Corps staff members also administered antibiotics and deworming medication.
After her discharge from the OTP, a CHW continued to conduct regular home visits, to ensure that Ramatou was thriving and that her mother, Mairamou, was administering the therapeutic food correctly.
“I am so happy to see my child healthy and playing like other kids,” Ramatou’s mother says. “I have learned a lot during this process, and I am now better able to provide my child with nourishing, balanced meals.”
A Playbook That Works
Stories like Nwambe’s and Ramatou’s show why International Medical Corps implements programs that emphasize engaging with the community, why we hire and train skilled local frontline workers, and why we provide clear referral pathways to ensure healthier outcomes for the families we serve.
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- We educate. Our frontline teams help families identify risks and opportunities for their health. In Nwambe’s case, we reinforced the importance of giving birth at a health facility to ensure her twins’ safety. For Ramatou, we showed her mother how to screen her child for signs of malnutrition and modeled healthy feeding practices, enabling Ramatou to recover at home.
- When needed, we refer. Often, the health needs of the people we serve exceed the measures they can take at home or the services we can offer at small, local health clinics. Our teams provide clear pathways to, and assistance accessing, more-advanced services.
- We follow up. Our care continues past the clinic door. Staff members we’ve trained provide ongoing health services to Nwambe and new mothers like her at clinics we support. For Ramatou, our team conducted weekly visits after her discharge from the OTP, and enrolled her mother in a support group for new mothers.
We have been providing aid to the people of Cameroon since 2008. In 2025 alone, we reached more than 222,000 people through our community engagement and more than 150,000 with nutrition services. It is a challenging environment, but the need is great—and we are driven to provide lifesaving care, no matter where.
Find out more about our work in Cameroon and around the world.