The Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cameroon has been providing financial assistance to facilitate access to primary health care to about 8,000 refugees in Yaounde and Douala since 1998. In May 2012, on a request from UNHCR, Catholic Relief Services took over the health assistance program. The project will help UNHCR fulfill its mandate to protect the basic human rights of urban refugees, including the right to health.

The Catholic Church is one of the major civil society actors in the country and the Episcopal Conference of Catholic Bishops is highly respected by the government and citizens of Cameroon. Catholic Relief Services has maintained a strong partnership with the secretariat general of the episcopal conference since 2001. This partnership has gained momentum with the appointment of Msgr. Sebastien Mongo Behong as the new Secretary General by the general assembly of Bishops on May 6, 2012. Through the Nkeng-Shalom, CRS is working with the secretariat general of the Cameroon Episcopal Conference to address potentially explosive ethnic, governance and political conflicts.

Created in 1999, CODAS-Caritas of the Yagoua Diocese in the Far-North Region of Cameroon provides the rural poor with the skills and financial means needed to improve their livelihoods.

One of the key areas of CODAS-Caritas' work is water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Since 2009, they have overseen the construction of 20 boreholes and 30 wells with manual pumps, sensitized 94 villages on WASH program, and created more than 50 water management committees. CODAS-Caritas is the Catholic Relief Services implementing partner for the DIAGEO-funded WASH program.

The World Bank-sponsored Development Marketplace program has improved local governance through increased participation and transparency in the education, health and forestry sectors. This was achieved by providing financial and technical support to 15 grassroots associations and organizations that were winners of a national-level competition to select the most innovative, high-impact and replicable project ideas.

The UNHCR primary health care assistance program for urban refugees fits into Catholic Relief Services' strategy, which focuses on improving the health of people living in Cameroon by strengthening health care delivery systems and improving access to quality health care for poor and vulnerable populations.

Catholic Relief Services is the sub-recipient to the Ministry of Health for the orphans and vulnerable children component of Global Fund Round 10. The 5-year project has the objective of providing the most critical support services to the 20,000 most vulnerable children and orphans throughout the country.

Given the decrease in household incomes in Cameroon, Catholic Relief Services is mainstreaming the Savings and Internal Lending Communities model into its programming.