Seven children died from diarrhoeal disease in October in a remote part of Somalia’s Mudug region, according to staff at a small locally run health centre.
The manager of the health centre in Budbud, Safiyo Mohamed, told Radio Ergo the children died between 19 and 26 October.
“The diarrhoea infection has been spreading in Budbud for 20 days now and we don’t have many facilities in the clinic. We offer the services we can to these vulnerable people. Extremely sick individuals are transported by our ambulance to Galkayo,” Safiyo said.
Budbud lies 165 km south east of Galkayo, Mudug’s main city, towards the coast.
The journey takes a whole day on rough roads in the ambulance, donated to the clinic by the international NGO Mercy USA. The ambulance goes only once a week, however, with a maximum capacity of three people at a time.
Around 60 patients, mostly children, are being cared for at home as the clinic is already full. Families are told they can bring the patients to the clinic for treatment and medicine but not for admission.
Safiyo said around 10 sick people are being brought to the clinic every day and their capacity to cope is over-stretched.
“The worst cases were are getting are children, because the children are generally malnourished due to the drought. Also they are drinking contaminated water as there are no other sources of water available,” Safiyo said.
Water supply in the area is very low and reservoirs are visibly discoloured with dirt.
Malabo Abdi Hassan, a mother of seven, is worried about her five-month-old baby, who caught the diarrhoeal infection from his older siblings. The family lives in a makeshift hut under a tree after being displaced from a rural part of Mudug where their livestock died in the drought.
“Three of the children are now suffering from the disease, the youngest is the worst affected, the other two are not very bad although they have watery diarrhoea. The baby is dehydrated and vomiting. Whenever I take him to the hospital they give him injections but he has not recovered. I think he has other problems as he is restless and in pain. He was skinny before but now he is sick he has become desperately thin,” Malabo told Radio Ergo.
Malabo said transporting her baby son to Galkayo would cost $400 and she could not afford it.
