Roselyne Koa Ndzana : The setbacks of a Cameroonian clinical nurse in Canada

Having lived in the country for three years, this specialist in gerontology and global health was dismissed from her job for having denounced the cases of ejections of African nurses from a training program supervised by the Canadian government.

Arriving in Canada as part of the Project for the Recognition of the Skills of Nurses Recruited Abroad (PRCIIRI), which aimed to recruit 1,000 nurses initially and 1,500 in the long term, with degrees from outside Canada, to reinforce the Quebec health network, hundreds of Africans found themselves in a disastrous situation in a vast Central American country, far from their native land.

Ejected from the program before the end of their training, these immigrants, some of whom left their countries of origin with their entire families (wives and children), found themselves in extreme precariousness, having lost the benefits linked to the project, in particular their scholarships, their medical insurance and the possibility of working as a beneficiary attendant (nursing assistant), even though they had several years of experience practicing nursing in the country. “Some suffered from depression and ended up in psychiatric hospitals, others found themselves unfit to do their jobs,” relates Roselyne Koa Ndzana, wife of Etoa, a clinical nurse living in Canada who has set herself up as an advocate for her African “brothers” and “sisters”.

A victory with a bitter taste

Indeed, having arrived in this country three years ago from France, where she had been living since 2009, it was she who brought the case to the public through outings on social networks and in various media after having been contacted anonymously by several victims. Her fierce activism would also bear fruit since practically all of these immigrant healthcare workers from Africa would be reinstated in the program, even though they had been refused for several months.

Except that this victory will cost her her job, since she will be fired by her employer, driven by a desire for revenge, while she is on maternity leave. This specialist in gerontology and global health was then occupying the prestigious position of Assistant Chief at the Integrated Health and Social Services Centre of Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Cisss-AT). Recruited as part of the “Journée Québec”, she was not concerned by the Prciiri, since she had to settle a few years earlier in Canada with her children in order to join her husband who has lived there for about twenty years. Six months after her dismissal, nothing has changed despite her numerous complaints and appeals to the Quebec authorities. The three entities in charge of this program, notably the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI), the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Higher Education have remained silent so far.

The causes of the upheaval

After consulting the report obtained from the organization responsible for providing educational support in the country, the Canadian newspaper “Le Devoir” published a series of articles at the end of January that trace a series of events that led to the ousting of nurses of African origin from the government program. It reveals cases of racism and humiliation suffered by these trainees who were part of Phase 3 of the said program. “Nurses recruited in Africa were victims of intimidation and denigration at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue CEGEP and in hospitals in the region where they were trained, according to a report obtained by Le Devoir from the organization responsible for providing educational support (…) Examples of racist and humiliating remarks follow one another in the heavily redacted report in which a dozen of these future caregivers trained in Amos and La Sarre testify,” we can read in one of the newspaper’s articles.

The same source reveals that a teacher “shouted at students in the hallway and called them incapable.” “From then on, the students had the impression that the teacher’s goal was to eliminate some of them,” the report further reveals. “There are people who determine before the assessments who will succeed and who will not. And it’s based on appearance. That’s said. There are witnesses,” Roselyne protests.which also benefited from the support of theOrder of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ). And according to Le Devoir, it is this situation that led to a wave of student failures in the spring of 2024 and, as expected, to ejection from the program, with the corollary loss of their allowances mentioned above.

Met by journalists, the medical training officials, including the assistant director of the international training and recruitment project of the Idhc of the Consortium, Maria Rosa Sgambato, did not deny the allegations of racism and the problems that occurred at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue CEGEP. While acknowledging these discrepancies, she spoke of isolated cases. Moreover, by authorizing most of the students who failed to retake their exams, the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration has implicitly supported the fight of Roselyne Koa Ndzana, who today only asks to be exonerated after her unfair dismissal.