(ERGO) – Fadumo Mohamed Ali, a poor mother of 12 children, has relied on free healthcare for her family at Beyla hospital in Banderbeyla over the past decade and hoped to deliver her 13th baby there, due in just 10 days’ time.
She gave birth to seven of her children in this health facility, the last three being by C-Section surgery. However, in the past two months she has found it hard to get her regular maternity check-ups and is worried that a scale down of services at the hospital will affect her delivery.
“I gave birth there and when my children are sick I take them there and we are always welcome. Some services that were readily available previously are not the same now, such as diagnosis, availability of medicines, or injections,” she said.
“We didn’t know where to call – we were informed yesterday that these services are no longer available. The people are very worried indeed.”
Beyla hospital is one of 52 health centres in Karkar region in Somalia’s Puntland state that has been providing free health care under the Shine project, supported by the international NGO, Save the Children.
However, some of the hospitals under Shine are no longer offering free services such as obstetrics and surgery. They are only offering check-ups and prescriptions with patients now supposed to buy the drugs at private chemists.
“I am worried because I’m in my eighth month now and thinking that I will undergo a C-Section. Previously I was hopeful but now I’m worried because even my children depended on the hospital’s services for malnutrition and other issues. We can’t even move to Qardo which has the closest health centre because everything is expensive,” she said.
Shine project has been running for 19 years and people in Karkar benefited from free basic health care, maternity services, vaccination, medicine, emergency services among others.
According to the hospital management, an average of 60 women a month normally deliver in the hospital, which is the only one in Beyla. There are only a few privately owned pharmacies in the town. The hospital management said women are coming to the hospital seeking services but their hands are tied as they do not have enough medication.
Dr Mire Mohamed Ali has worked in Hafun district hospital under the Shine programme for the past two decades. He said that two years ago his salary was reduced by 20 per cent due to earlier funding cuts. For the past two months, he has received no salary at all.
With 14 children, six of them in school, he has not been able to pay their education fees. He is still working irregularly at the hospital, but as he has a family to feed, he is actively looking for another fulltime job.
“This will be a burden because the children need a living, they need school, they need to learn the Koran and we need to pay the bills. We have some relatives at home living with us, they all depend on me whether I get it from the heavens or the earth or somewhere else!” said Dr Mire.
He noted that on average each month Hafun hospital saw 1,800 sick people, including about 120 mothers seeking maternity services.
“Many people depended on the hospital’s services including people from rural areas and those in the city. If there are emergency cases now it’s hard to attend to them as the vehicles don’t have fuel or drivers. There is also little medicine left,” he said.
The coordinator of Puntland’s health ministry in Karkar, Dr Abdilahi Artan, told Radio Ergo that the project was affected by a political impasse between the federal government and the Puntland administration.
“Shine project used to work in this area and was formerly Change project supported by the United Kingdom. This project [Shine] was run by Save the Children and when the project was about to be renewed, we know that the federal government decided to take the project to Jubaland state so our region was left without health care. We can say that the federal government has politicised social services,” he claimed.
The Puntland area representative of Save the Children, Mohamed Abdikadir Said, told Radio Ergo that a shortage of funding had led to a downscaling in services provided in some hospitals in Karkaar. However, he confirmed that they were still supporting 39 out of 52 health centres in Karkar, as well as community outreach health services in hard-to-reach villages.
“Save the Children works closely with the government of Puntland, donors and local communities to fundraise and mobilise resources for quality and equitable services for children and their communities in Somalia,” he noted.
