Somalilander-American frontline COVID-19 in U.S. also battling pandemic in their African homeland We are a group of Somalilander-American Doctors, Nurses, Dentists, and Allied Health Professionals at the frontline in our country’s battle against the new Corona Virus.
But despite the scale of the pandemic, we also know that in the U.S., we have the knowledge and the capacity to defeat the disease. We are not, however, so hopeful about the situation Somaliland, where our parents, siblings, and people live without essential health services, let alone in the face a pandemic which strains the enormous social and economic capacity of industrially advanced countries.
Despite being a model for peace, stability, and democracy in Africa, Somaliland is already suffering from devastating climate change impacts such as cyclones, deforestation, and breakout of locusts that devoured the people’s subsistence farming and grazing areas. On top of this comes the Corona Virus, with a country that has only twenty-six hospitals for about four million people. In 2016, the World Health Organization assessment found that only 52 percent of Somaliland health facilities had essential equipment. And as the country’s Minister for health development recently said in an interview:
“Our hospitals need respiratory ventilators, oxygen generators, personal protective equipment, disinfectants, gloves, gowns, masks, and consumables. Most of our hospitals have no functioning intensive care units [ICUs] except the Hargeisa referral hospital, which can serve limited patients. If God forbid, cases of COVID-19 presented in hospitals, it is the Ministry of Health’s constant preoccupation about how to manage situations when there are no functioning ICU units.”
It is against this background, that we decided that as we fight at the frontline here as U.S. citizens, it is an obligation on us also to extend assistance to the health facilities of Somaliland to buy emergency equipment for main hospitals in combatting COVID-19. Thank you for donating to help us save lives on two frontlines.
For more information and donation details visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/covid19-preparations-somaliland
