Barely a month into her work, trained community nurse Hawo Ali Mohamed has already sent 45 pregnant women showing signs of anaemia to local hospitals in the southern Somali district of Kismayo and referred 60 children to get the important vaccinations they had missed.
Hawo, 35, is one of more than one hundred women now going door-to-door in Kismayo as part of a government-run programme called Marwo Caafimaad (Female Health Workers), raising awareness about health and extending healthcare to communities in remote areas.
“This project is first of all about awareness and we give people information about communicable and non-communicable diseases and how to deal with them. For instance, malaria is prevalent in Kismayo so we remind people to use mosquito nets always and to close their windows,” said Hawo.
During October she has visited 15 to 20 families a day, creating awareness about diseases while also checking up on the patients assigned to her. She refers chronic diseases and complex health issues to hospitals in Kismayo.
The women health workers carry some medicines including oral rehydration salts, iron tablets for pregnant women, as well as malaria spot tests.
“There are many challenges, the people don’t really know much about health. Some believe that I am making money from them and their illness,” said Hawo.
As a single mother, Hawo’s earnings of $114 now support her family of 11 people including her two children and siblings. Before she got this job, they all depended on relatives living abroad but her income augments the remittance support and they can enjoy three meals instead of two. She pays for food, water, and electricity bills and her two children’s $24 school fees.
Hawo competed among 200 women and was among the 107 selected for the one-year training programme for Maarwo Cafimaad. As a qualified nurse already, she used to work with the health ministry in Kismayo and was periodically involved in awareness campaigns.
The training she received at the ministry of health in Kismayo, five days a week over the course of a year, has enabled her to diagnose blood pressure, diabetes, malaria, and TB, to attend to pregnant mothers, to conduct blood tests, to treat certain illnesses and ailments, and to follow up on childhood immunisations.
The health workers were also trained in raising awareness among the people in the neighbourhood. From 1 October 2022, each woman was assigned 200 houses under their care.
The head of the programme in Kismayo, Abshir Yusuf, said they are trying to provide essential awareness and supplies to local communities and increase health coverage across remote villages.
“The health centres provide an important service but there are more people who do not visit these centres than those who do. Pregnant women prefer to give birth at home and it’s important that they get regular checkups, which mostly doesn’t happen,” he explained.
The project is funded by the World Bank and run by the government of Somalia in the regional states and is expected to run until 2025.
Fardowsa Mohamed, living in Kismayo said she is now connected to the hospitals and gets regular checkups thanks to her Maarwo Caafimaad health visitor.
Fardowsa, who gave birth to her first child at the beginning of October, said her parents advised her to give birth in a traditional midwife’s house near their own house. Although the health workers could not convince her to give birth in a hospital, Fardowso did agree to take her baby to be vaccinated.
“She (the health worker) advised me to eat vegetables and breastfeed my child instead of using powdered milk. They gave me a lot of advice,” she said.
This project has been beneficial to 20,000 families living in Dhobley, Kismayo, Bardera and Dollow in Jubbaland state.
