Dialysis Centre Development – Buea Regional Dialysis Centre
How 13 additional treatment posts ended overload and restored full, four-hour dialysis in Cameroon's South West Region.
This is the story of a centre that had become a victim of its own success, and how a well-planned extension restored not just capacity, but the quality and dignity of care.
Headline outcomes:
- 13 additional treatment posts
- Full 4-hour dialysis restored
- No more long waiting times
- Nurses working in shifts with proper rest
- Regular preventive maintenance
The Challenge
The Buea Regional Dialysis Centre was established in 2012 with 8 treatment posts, allowing 20 patients to receive three treatment sessions per week. Over the following decade, demand grew far beyond what the centre had been built to handle, and the strain began to show everywhere.
By 2023, the numbers told a stark story: only 6 functional treatment posts remained for 135 patients. Equipment broke down frequently, and there was little time for the preventive maintenance that keeps machines reliable. Repairs took a long time. Nurses had little rest between sessions. Patients faced long waiting times for treatment. Most tellingly, to fit more patients into each day, the standard treatment duration had been reduced from four hours to three hours and thirty minutes, a compromise on the very quality of care itself.
A centre built to serve 20 patients was now stretched across 135. The challenge was not only to add capacity, but to restore reliable, full-length, dignified treatment, and to make it sustainable.
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The Solution
In 2023, the government, through the Ministry of Public Health, initiated an extension project to alleviate the centre’s challenges and improve patients’ quality of life. Following a thorough selection process focused on companies capable of solving these problems and ensuring the centre’s sustainable operation, Gima-Bambot MedTech Ltd. was chosen to execute the project.
Rather than simply adding machines, the solution was designed to fix the whole system, and to keep it working:
- 13 additional hemodialysis treatment posts, dramatically expanding capacity in a newly completed building.
- A modern B. Braun Avitum AG dialysis system, installed and commissioned as a coordinated project deployment.
- Rigorous practical training for the nurses on the newly installed equipment, so the team could operate the expanded service safely and confidently.
- A regular preventive maintenance and monitoring regime, delivered through our biomedical engineering expertise, to keep every post reliably available.
This combination, equipment, deployment, training and maintenance, is what turned an emergency into a durable, sustainable dialysis operation.
The Implementation
With the new building completed, Gima-Bambot delivered the project on a tightly controlled schedule:
- Installation (23–30 November 2023). Gima-Bambot began installation on 23 November 2023 and completed this phase by 30 November 2023.
- Nurse training. The Gima-Bambot training team then provided rigorous practical training for the nurses on the newly installed B. Braun Avitum AG system.
- Go-live (1 January 2024). Treatment with the new equipment commenced on 1 January 2024, with continuous support from experienced in-house nurses.
- Ongoing maintenance. A regular preventive maintenance and monitoring regime was put in place to protect long-term reliability.
The Results
Since 1 January 2024, the transformation at the Buea Regional Dialysis Centre has been clear and measurable:
- 13 additional treatment posts in service, dramatically expanding capacity.
- Improved patient outcomes, the direct result of restored, reliable capacity.
- Nurses now work in shifts with adequate rest periods, protecting both staff wellbeing and care quality.
- Regular preventive maintenance and monitoring, replacing the cycle of breakdowns and slow repairs.
- No more long waiting times for patients.
- The standard treatment duration of four hours per patient has been restored and maintained, no longer cut short to fit demand.
For a centre that had been forced to compromise on the length of treatment itself, restoring the full four hours is perhaps the most meaningful result of all.
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The Impact
The impact reaches every person who depends on the centre. For patients living with chronic kidney disease in the South West Region, the extension means full-length, reliable dialysis without long waits, treatment that is no longer rationed by a shortage of working machines. Improved patient outcomes follow directly from that reliability.
For nurses, the change is just as profound: proper rest between shifts protects the people on whom safe dialysis ultimately depends. And because the project built in preventive maintenance from the start, the centre’s new capacity is protected against the very breakdowns that once crippled it, the difference between a one-off fix and a genuinely sustainable operation.
Delivered for the Ministry of Public Health on the B. Braun Avitum AG system, the project shows how pairing equipment with training and maintenance restores not just capacity, but the quality and dignity of care, and offers a replicable model for renewing overstretched dialysis centres across Cameroon and the wider CEMAC sub-region.
This is one of several renal care projects through which Gima-Bambot is transforming healthcare across Africa, alongside the new centres at Ngaoundéré and Bafoussam, the extension at Hôpital Général de Douala, and capacity building at Maroua.
Project overview
Ready to expand your dialysis capacity?
When demand outgrows a centre, patients pay in longer waits and shorter sessions. Let's extend your hemodialysis centre with the posts, training and maintenance to serve every patient in full.