East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital
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East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital (EBMCH) is a non-profit institution helping women and children in Baardheere, Gedo, Somalia. The EBMCH was started by a concerned individuals based in North America. The hospital known to locals as Isbitaalka Bariga Baardheere, is managed by local nurses and one of the most experienced midwives in the District of Bardera of Gedo Region in Somalia.
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[edit] History
EBMCH was established in May 2006. Bardera didn't have anything resembling maternity hospital for the longest time before EBMCH came into the picture. Bardera is the home of the largest district and most populous city in Gedo Region.
The majority of medicines, medical supplies, and information comes from friends of the hospital who live in the United States and Canada. The hospital has some of the most up-to-date equipment in all of the MCHs in Bardera City. The general hospital which served the community during the previous 40 years, was demolished with the central government in 1991.
All of the beds in the hospital were welded by a local entrepreneur, and as expansion is sought to further serve the community, more supplies will be bought from the community business people.
[edit] Creation of Bardera Maternity Hospital
East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital was envisioned to be a step-by-step and long-term oriented medical facility where basic medical needs of Gedo's largest city would be met. With the support of a few friends, including Dr. Aden Loyan and trained nurses, EBMCH founder Zaila Sheikh Dini Jama is able to pay all the expenses of EBMCH including medicines and medical supplies, rent for facilities, and staff salaries.
Zaila retells a story of a woman who in early 2006 had received financial support from overseas family members and after a relatively normal pregnancy, gave birth and almost died from ensuing bleeding, recieving no immediate medical advice and no recovery help of any kind in Bardera. Zaila then states, "Imagine what other women in similar situations are going through across Somalia and in Bardera."
The woman in the story, How EBMCH Started, could have purchased medical supplies such as supplements long before she got weak and could have also gotten nutritional advice, but there was no maternity hospital in Bardera at the time. Zaila concluded other women were suffering many times worse. Therefore, she set out to create EBMCH. First, as a maternity hospital, and second, as a place with knowledgeable staff who can offer all the possible medical services to the community.
Correct nutritional information and basic prenatal services will go a long way for pregnant women in Bardera as food is mostly available in the largely farming town. Over 96% of households in Bardera purchase their household food needs.[1]
Women in Bardera now get the advice of trained nurses and midwife. They also get reliable supplements and medicines as well as medical advice throughout the pregnancy and after the child is born. The EBMCH has a pharmacy and supplies are being established with the help of EBMCH friends as well as local NGOs. The Bardera Red Crescent donated supplements to the EBMCH, and the UNICEF arm based in Nairobi gave some medical supplies to the EBMCH in early 2007.
[edit] EBMCH as a maternity hospital
East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital was initially envisioned as a maternity hospital but the need of the community for broad medical services facility was an immediate need which needed an urgent solution. Currently, all women and mothers can get medical advice and relatively cheap medications. The UNICEF has afforded EBMCH some supplements for expecting women and new mothers. Nurses make scheduled visits to homes of new mothers where they dispense basic medical services including free supplements for the mothers as well for the new babies.
Since there is no functioning ministry of health, the hospital staff does whatever it can to help improve the health of the community, particularly, the health of women and children. Prevention of problems is the goal of the staff at East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital.
[edit] East Bardera Hospital services and facilities
Patients who receive medical services include children as well as adults. The hospital mostly focuses on women's and children's health services. Nurses and midwives go out into the community where they give medical advice and services to women in their homes. During 2007, over 1400 women received prenatal and maternity help in their own homes or at EBMCH facilities.
Maternity Services Rendered 2007 & First Quarter of 2008
| Year | At EBMCH | Cared at Home | Stillbirth | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 1,478 | 1,481 | 10 | 2969 |
| 2008 | 313 | 770 | 2 | 1085* |
*2008 first quarter figures. The previous year shows almost equal number of women being helped at their homes compared to those at EBMCH maternity ward.
Soure: Fardowsa Abdinur Hashi and Yahya Farah, April 2008 EBMCH Report
Facilities at East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital contain five rooms, with three rooms having patient beds including a delivery bed. As of the end of 2007, no other MCH in Bardera offered full maternity services and this has overwhelmed the staff at East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital in their quest to provide maternity services to women across the city. Data compiled by the staff shows close to 3000 women being helped either at the EBMCH facility or in their own homes. Lack of emergency response vehicles made half of those women who were given maternity services to give birth at home.
[edit] Staff at EBMCH
The medical team at East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital numbers six in total. There is the head nurse who is also the Director of East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital.[2] Other staff includes an additional nurse, a midwife, an assistant midwife, a junior pharmacist, and an assistant pharmacist.
Nurse Fardowsa serves as the Assistant Head Nurse at East Bardera Mothers and Children's Hospital. She has held this position since October 2007.
Markabo Bilal Kulow Markabo has served the Bardera community for over 10 years as a midwife.
The staff at EBMCH is hard at work in finding solutions to one deadly occurrence in Somalia during each dry season: the deadly watery diarrhea or Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD). Communities across Somalia suffer from this annual occurrence. The East Bardera Hospital is planning to establish a permanent treatment center for this disease and other communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis and HIV AIDS.
The hospital currently gets many of its medical supplies from the United States and Canada; the majority of medications at larger Somali markets such as Mogadishu and Kismayo are often unreliable and sometimes dangerous for consumption.
[edit] Community participation in strengthening EBMCH
The staff at EBMCH encourages visitors from North America and Europe to bring well-preserved over-the-counter medicines and donate them to the EBMCH's Pharmacy Department. They have requested medications that have a long shelf-life because non-air-conditioned room temperatures are too high for many medicines.
