Abstract

Background: Diabetes is a noncommunicable disease with a very high prevalence, morbidity and mortality rate worldwide, especially in lower- and middle-income countries like Cameroon. Diabetes remains a serious public health threat in Cameroon, exacerbated by inequality in its management within the country. Inequality in diabetes management plays a remarkable role in widening the health outcomes gap between diabetics, who have greater access to diabetes care resources and those with limited access. Objective: The main objective of this narrative review is to determine the factors or causes of diabetes inequality in Cameroon and highlight opportunities and or approaches to reducing inequality in diabetes management.
Methodology: This study is a review of works that address diabetes management, including those that cover diabetes inequality and health systems and research gaps, to underscore the challenges and opportunities that can be exploited to achieve equity or at least reduce inequality in diabetes management in Cameroon. The study reviewed research articles, grey literature and corporate and organisational documents related to the objective of this work. Local, regional and international documents were examined from the Internet databases: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Google, and Google Scholar. The keywords: inequality in diabetes management, diabetes management, health systems and research gaps in diabetes management were combined with Boolean operators AND and OR to pull up relevant works. Works were screened and included based on the inclusion criteria. Both thematic and content analyses were performed on the selected works.
Findings: The review found that: (a) socioeconomic and environmental determinants of health, (b) health systems and research gaps, (c) lack of trained health personnel, and (d) socio-political crises are responsible for the rising inequality in diabetes management.
Conclusion: The study highlights the need for strengthening and empowering the health system of Cameroon to address determinants of inequality in diabetes management through equity-oriented strategies and distribution economics in the management of diabetes in Cameroon.

Keywords:Inequality in diabetes management, diabetes management, health systems and research gaps, Cameroon, Sub-Saharan Africa