Communication barriers between health care providers and official language non-proficient patients (OLNPP)1in the Far North of Cameroon have disastrous consequences for the quality of health care provided to this underprivileged population. These barriers are due to the complete lack of communication skills of patients in the official languages, the high level of illiteracy in this part of the country, the training of health care providers that does not take into account the multilingual and multicultural complexity of the country (health care providers in the country have been trained exclusively in French and/or English, the exoglossic languages that have been adopted as the official languages of the country). Moreover, the lack of a governmental language policy in the health sector in general and for patients who are non-proficient in the official languages in particular contributes to some extent to maintaining or widening this communicative gap. From the perspective of health care providers, this paper therefore aims at investigating the significance (health care providers’ estimated proportion and frequency) of patients’ official language illiteracy in Far North Cameroon health centers, the current strategies used by health care providers in these health centers to overcome these barriers, make some suggestions to overcome communication barriers in Far North Cameroon health centers, investigate the consequences of communication barriers on health care provision in Far North Cameroon health centers and propose a language policy for Cameroon health centers. Data were collected through questionnaires completed by 487 health care providers selected by simple random sampling from 45 health centers (government and private) in the region. Quantitative analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), while qualitative analysis followed a thematic approach. The work is discussed from the perspective of the Cultural Competency Model (Brach and Fraser 2000). The results show that 98 per cent of health care providers in health centers in the Far North region face language barriers in their daily practice, and the situation is more common in rural than in urban health centers. Furthermore, the estimated proportion and frequency of health care providers encountering patients who are non-proficient in the official language is very significant. Despite the fact that some healthcare providers and OLNPP patients share some home languages in their verbal repertoire, the proportion of healthcare providers who communicate with patients through these home languages is very insignificant. Various strategies are proposed to improve the current linguistic practices used by healthcare providers to overcome communication barriers. The paper proposes an exo-endonormative approach to language policy in health centers in Cameroon.

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