Maternity Health Care In Hargeisa, Somaliland, And Xray Of A Foot

Dec 13, 2010
Paul Bradbury

Maternity health for the Somali girl - Charles Roffey

Health care for Somali women improved in 2002, with Hargeisa's first maternity hospital offering a lifeline to every Somali girl. A traveller's view.

This article is the second part of a series of writings on the experiences of living in northern Somalia in 2002. In the first, John Travolta's former private jet developed engine trouble, forcing an overnight stop in Baidoa, where an impromptu game of football left the author with a badly damaged foot.

My first contact with a beneficiary of our aid projects was both fascinating and humorous. One of the budget sub-grants was to finance the construction and equipping of an outpatient clinic for the only maternity hospital in Hargeisa, itself under construction. No health workers had been trained here since 1986 and health care was in a shocking state.

First Maternity Health Care Clinic in Somaliland

Edna, the ex-wife of the ruling president, had taken improving maternal health as a personal crusade. She had begged, borrowed, cajoled, pleaded for the construction of the hospital, working tirelessly to realise her dream. The opening of the clinic was two days away and we popped in to make sure everything was in order for the opening ceremony.

I was impressed by the quality of the construction, impressed by the cleanliness, impressed by the dedication of the staff and construction workers. Impressed also by the transformation of the site, which previously had been a graveyard, then a military training camp and finally a torture cell for the repressive regime of Siad Barre, before finally becoming a hospital.

Edna was an inspirational lady, and she showed us photos of her as First Lady in the 1960’s on a state visit to the White House, meeting the German President in Bonn and so on. She was immediately concerned about the state of my foot and would not let me leave until she had tended to it. And, as was recorded for posterity on local television in the opening speeches a couple of days later, that is how I became the first male patient in the as yet unopened Hargeisa Maternity Hospital.

I was in fact only the second patient to be treated, beaten only by a woman suffering from a burst appendix. She had endured a twelve-hour car journey to get to the hospital and survived. Her thank you speech at the opening of the clinic was moving.

An English Experience Of A Somali Foot Xray

My foot was still giving me trouble a few days later. My heroics on the football pitch in Baidoa were a distant memory but it still hurt when I walked, and so I thought that perhaps I should have it x-rayed as a precaution. And thus began a four-day saga.

I wasn’t expecting Harley Street facilities, which was just as well as I would have been massively disappointed. When we eventually tracked down an x-ray machine, it was closed for lunch (well maybe not it, but there would be nothing happening until 4.30). I haven’t had many x-rays in my life, a few at the dentist perhaps, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I walked in and was asked to put on a protective jacket.

The operator was just about to x-ray my head when I pointed out that the pain was actually in my foot, whereupon I was told to remove my boot and lie back on a metallic bed. There was a camera type thing and I thought it best not to look. Imagine my surprise when, having affirmed that I was ready, the bed moved to the left and then back again. It seemed that I was being photocopied. Hmmm…

Money Changing in Hargeisa

Never fear, all will be revealed soon. Not for another forty minutes apparently. Why the delay? No point asking that question. The one good thing was the x-ray cost 50,000 shillings, or $7. I had made the mistake of changing $20 on my first day, for which I was given 284 not very shiny 500-shilling notes. That’s a lot of notes to carry around. With nothing to buy here, they were becoming a burden.

We went back to the office and I instructed the driver, through an interpreter, to collect the x-ray later, ask what was wrong with my foot, and report to the guest house. He wasn’t seen for two days. Eventually, he returned with a brown envelope. I tore it open. There was my foot, or rather a foot with my name, Poul Braby, scrawled incomprehensibly beside it. There was a funny dark bit in the middle.

Now where is the doctor’s written explanation? The only paper inside was the receipt (please don’t tell me I have to claim back those hundred notes). No explanation, nothing. I quizzed the driver. The x-ray man had advised him to take the x-ray to a doctor for analysis. Brilliant. The encouraging thing was that it costs 10,000 shillings to get an appointment (another twenty notes).

Fortunately, I met an Algerian doctor over dinner that evening who looked at the x-ray and then my foot, concluding that strained ligaments were the likely problem.

Apart from the humorous episode with the ‘photocopier’, what stayed with me from my brush with the Somaliand health system was the sheer dedication of people like Edna to deliver basic services for all, with little but their personal drive and charisma to make it happen. An inspirational lady.

Read more about living and working in northern Somalia.