NetworkNewsToday: 09 December 2009 - WHO: World Health Organization's surgeons strive amid incessant violence and intensifying humanitarian crisis to help train local doctors save lives and care for the local population in war-torn Somalia. Amid incessant violence and intensified humanitarian crisis, World Health Organizations surgeons in Somalia strive to help save lives and reduce illnesses. These surgeons train local doctors in the country's most dangerous areas, particularly in South-Central Somalia, to perform surgery on patients.
Dr. Omar Saleh, a WHO surgeon working in a Buale hospital in South-Central Somalia, said that everyday the hospital receives more than 200 patients. These patients suffer from a variety of illness such as malnutrition, tuberculosis as well as from trauma and bullet wounds.
SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Omar Saleh, World Health Organizations surgeon in Somalia:
We have started doing operations, we announced to the community that we are here. I think every day we receive more than 200 patients coming from all the region, from all Middle Juba to here to be examined.
In the town of Buale, where for decades the local population had been without access to healthcare, WHO surgeons demonstrated surgical procedures such as removing lipomas (benign tumours) and bullets from children, men and women.
These surgeons showed the local doctors how to perform the surgery, eventually allowing them to take over the procedures which are vital to saving lives.
According to WHO, training local staff is an important part of the plan to improve health care in Somalia. Today medical students are graduating from WHO-supported university programmes in Somalia with the aim to care for their people.
WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Eric Laroche confirms that almost half of Somalias population today is in need of humanitarian assistance.
SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Eric Laroche, Assistant Director-General, World Health Organization:
One should recognise that nowadays there are 3.6 million people that are in need of humanitarian assistance, which is almost half of the entire population of Somalia.
The 3 December Mogadishu attack that killed Somalia officials, including the Minister of Health, and graduating Somali medical students was a reminder of the challenges faced in Somalia both by the people of Somalia and humanitarian workers such as doctors.
WHO, however, is committed to rebuild the countrys healthcare system. Dr. Laroche said that the organization will stand very firm on its commitment and support the health workers in Somalia.
SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Eric Laroche, Assistant Director-General, World Health Organization:
WHO is going to stand very firm on its commitment to rebuild the system and to support the health workers in Somalia.
The humanitarian situation in Somalia is increasingly dire. Today every 1 in 5 children are malnourished and the number children killed and maimed as a result of fighting continues to rise.
So far, some 1.55 million people have been displaced by the fighting, including more than 500 000 people now living in temporary shelters in the Afgooye Corridor, the 30-kilometre stretch of road west of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, which is the most densely populated settlement in the world. . NetworkNewsToday:
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