The Challenges and Adaptation Strategies of IDPs in Kumba Town, Cameroon

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to investigate the challenges of IDPs specifically the food security challenges, habitation challenges, health challenges and the adaptation strategies employed by IDPs to cope. The study found that households use severe strategies like reducing the number of meals eaten in a day, some rely on less expensive foods, reducing the quantity of food consumed, some limit consumption by adults for small children to eat well, some consuming seed held for the next season and rely on help from friends and relatives to mitigate the incidence of food shortages. Most of the IDPs put clothes and mattresses on the floor and use double beds to remedy sleeping space. All of them live in the outskirt where houses are relatively cheap. They prefer local pharmacies to hospitals since they need to spend little or nothing to consult and must not do a laboratory test. They boil water before drinking to help remedy diseases like typhoid, and malaria among others.