Somalia: AI Reports Troubling Health Care Findings

Only an estimated 15 percent of people in Somalia have access to medical care in rural areas as security forces continue to target health workers amid the Covid-19 crisis, Amnesty International (AI) said in a new report.

In the report released in August 2021, the human rights organisaton also found that health workers faced multiple challenges including an initial lack of sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE), prolonged working hours and delayed remuneration.

The study, titled We Just Watched Covid-19 Patients Die, was conducted between April and June, 2021.

The report was based on over 40 interviews with health and humanitarian workers, government officials, finance experts, as well as analysis of government budgets and policies.

AI said the study investigated the government’s response to the pandemic and its capacity to provide timely access to basic health care as well as protection of health care workers.

The report found that access to health facilities for Covid-19 patients has been severely limited, with just one hospital in the capital, Mogadishu, managing all Covid-19-related cases across the south-central region during the first wave of the pandemic.

‘The already fragile health care system in the country was immediately stretched to its limit, exposing the authorities’ failure to take adequate measures not just to prevent the pandemic, but also to treat and control it as required by international human rights law’, the report said.

‘Twenty-five health workers told Amnesty International that the government was caught off-guard by the pandemic and that there were no testing and treatment capabilities’.

‘We scrambled at the beginning. Everything was a mess. We had nothing to treat patients. There was no oxygen, no ICU beds, and no ventilators. We just watched patients die, it was really sad’, the report quoted a senior doctor as saying.

AI’s analysis of the country’s budgets between 2017 and 2021 showed that the average budget allocated for health was only two percent.

The report also found that health workers had to work in dangerous and conflict-affected environment.

‘Security forces have continued to target health workers during the pandemic. In one of the worst incidents, eight health workers at a mother and child clinic in Gololey village, Middle Shabelle region, were abducted and killed by unidentified armed men dressed in Somali military and police uniforms in May 2020’, the report said.

The report however noted that the Somalian government is faced with budgetary constraints, and prolonged conflict that hampers its ability to provide basic public services.

Somalia recently reached the decision point for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. This means it is also now eligible for additional budget support and grant financing.

HIPC was launched by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996 to offer debt relief for nations with unsustainable debt burdens.

‘In this regard, the Somalia government should ensure a sufficient portion of debt relief proceeds, and new grants made available’, the AI report said.

‘Such funds should be used to ensure sufficient access to health facilities across the country, including in the capital, Mogadishu, and in the regional states’.

The report also called on government to procure and make Covid-19 vaccines available for all and establish well-equipped health facilities across the regional states, particularly in remote areas.

In addition, the organisation urged the government to investigate the killing of the eight health workers in Gololey village, prosecute those responsible and appropriately compensate the victims’ families.

Source: Amnesty International

Photo source: World Bank

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