This research approaches the notions of health and the right to health through the prism of social representations. The objective is to analyse the social appropriation of these two notions within the Cameroonian population. Participants from the Ministry of Health and Justice, human resource managers and laypeople (n = 110) were interviewed via a questionnaire of free and hierarchical associations. The data collected was subjected to similarity analysis and prototypical analysis through Iramuteq software. The results show a nuanced representation of health, centred on the notion of well-being, with positive valence and a negative connotation around illness. Two social logics oppose each other in the representation of the right to health: that of the laypersons, centred on free access to care, and that of the other participants, who focused on the need for health insurance. These results take on their full meaning when they are integrated into the colonial history of Cameroon, which is a breeding ground for negative representations that result in strong protests against the state and healthcare personnel.