In 2002, Edna Adan Ismail (the former First Lady of Somaliland and then its Foreign Minister) set up the country’s only maternity hospital, in the capital city Hargeisa. The hospital continues to treat women and children as well as providing general care to patients across the Horn of Africa.
Hargeisa, Somaliland. The maternal mortality rate in Somaliland is one of the highest in the world; every year nearly 4,000 women die in childbirth and one in eleven children die in infancy. A lack of folic acid, a crucial supplement for women in the early stages of their pregnancy, means a high percentage of infants born with severe birth defects such as spina bifida and hydrocephalus. The Edna Adan Hospital is equipped to deal with cases like this and many more. It is a small hospital but has a strong team of well-trained and dedicated staff: midwives, nurses and doctors, all of whom are determined to save the lives of those they treat.
It is Edna Adan’s mission to end preventable child and maternal death in Somaliland and to eradicate the practice of female genital mutilation. FGM is internationally recognized as a human rights violation against girls and women. Approximately 140 million girls and women have undergone this harmful traditional practice and in Somaliland the rate of women who have been affected by it is extremely high. This practice not only threatens the life of women generally, but also means that giving birth risks the life of both mother and baby.
The Edna Adan Hospital’s mission is to increase the survival rate of pregnant Somaliland women by training and equipping 1,000 midwives to provide medical monitoring, treatment and education. Among the surgical operations, the hospital pioneered the first repairs of women with obstetrical fistula and the first children with hydrocephalus in Somaliland to have a shunt inserted. The hospital regularly hosts international surgeons who perform specialty surgeries such as repair of cleft palates, club feet, spinal bifida, burn contractures and other orthopaedic and plastic surgical needs. The international surgeons are also training national Somaliland surgeons who are now providing these surgical interventions at the hospital on a regular basis.
