Saleban Mohamed Mire lost two of his daughters, aged six and two, from measles in the space of a week in the remote and forgotten northern Somali village of Fardhin.
After one daughter died, he sold his last remaining camel to get the money to transport the other sick child to the nearest hospital, some 45 km away on poor roads in the dusty town of Boame.
But they arrived there too late to save her.
“After my first daughter died at home we decided to rush the other one to hospital. We organised some money but it took us four days to travel to the hospital. She was in a critical state when we got there and the doctors couldn’t do much to save her,” Saleban told Radio Ergo.
“I blame the lack of health care [in our area] for their deaths from this disease,” he added.
The family, with eight children, ended up using the $350 they got from the sale of their camel to pay the medical fees for their dead daughter, who spent two days in hospital.
Saleeban said there were other families in his village with patients affected by measles and with no means of accessing hospitals.
“We have seen deaths of children in the area, I took part in the burial of two other children two days ago in Karin-Kafood village, I presume that they died of measles,” he
Dr Mohamed Yasin Warasame, known as Hayte, who works in a private hospital in Boame, told Radio Ergo that three people died whilst being treated in his hospital.
“There are over 50 people who have been hospitalized with the disease. It is causing concern particularly in Karin-karfood village. The people who are sick in the rural areas where there are no medical services are the worst affected,” he said.
The District Commissioner’s office confirmed the deaths of three people including a six- year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy.
Boame lies in the border area between Puntland, Somaliland and Ethiopia. Its control is disputed by Puntland and Somaliland and as a result it has very poor services and little if any access to aid. The people living there are traditionally nomadic pastoralists.
The commissioner of Boame district, Hayle Hassan Shire, told Radio Ergo’s local reporter that people often contacted his office asking for help but they were not able to do much to stop the spread of measles in the district.
“We tried to ask for aid from Puntland administration two weeks ago but they have not yet responded,” the commissioner said.
He added that vaccination services do not always reach the 15 remote villages in the district, where there are also up to 20 spontaneous camps that have been set up by distressed pastoralists displaced from their normal migration patterns by the terrible drought.
The recent rainfall in some areas has prompted a new movement of large numbers of people in search of water and pasture for their animals. This has led to the spread of diseases such as measles.
Apart from one private hospital, Boame has only two Mother and Child Health centres.
Dr. Hayte said there is a need for health services to be taken out to the people in distant villages.
“We are private hospital and we have medicine, we treat whoever comes here at a fee and we sometimes give them services on credit. But there are many others who cannot afford to reach the hospital. These people need humanitarian aid,” he said.
