ABSTRACT
In the absence of a national health insurance scheme, how do the poor in Cameroon tackle health issues and finance healthcare? Poor people use over ten mechanisms to finance healthcare, including monetary gifts from relatives, from their children, and from their friends, community-based health insurance, loans from relatives, from acquaintances, from friends, and from indigenous financial institutions, business loans from microfinance institutions, sale of assets, savings, income from economic activity, and payment by instalment. Most of these healthcare financing instruments are intimately intertwined with local social norms. It is due to the social embeddedness of these instruments that monetary gifts and loans, albeit different from an economic standpoint, are regarded as social debts. Moreover, some people use traditional medicine as an alternative to modern medicine while others see both as performing a complementary role.
