(ERGO) – A group of university graduates in Mogadishu has been visiting IDP camps in the city to identify patients in urgent need of medical treatment that can be provided at Erdogan Hospital.
The volunteers have ensured that many extremely poor families have received the treatment they need free of charge. The group that was formed in April has links to Erdogan Hospital, formerly called Digfer Hospital.
So far they have brought 53 patients, including 43 children, from the camps for life-saving treatment for conditions including hydrocephalus and tumours.
The hospital normally charges for its services. Some operations cost up to $1,200 while in-patient services cost at least $60 per night.
Fadumo Ahmed Nur, a mother from Beled-Amiin Camp, on the outskirts of Mogadishu, told Radio Ergo that her one-year old daughter was improving her mobility after an operation for hydrocephalus. Fadumo said she realized her daughter was sick when she was four months old, but she had no money to take her to hospital and simply hoped that she would get better. However, her baby’s head grew abnormally large and she could neither cry nor speak and her vision became impaired.
Fadumo has been washing clothes to earn $2 a day when she can to feed her family, since they moved to the camp in 2016 after drought destroyed their farm in Bay region. They had no harvest for two years.
Another patient happy with his free treatment is Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, 27, who underwent dialysis. He had been suffering much pain and kidney failure for almost a year. Mohamed has lived for six months in Garasbalay camp south of Mogadishu, after his family of three children were displaced by drought in Lower Shebelle.
