Not yet named but much loved by watchful parents, a newly born baby boy is a small symbol of change: a birth, not a death for Somalia’s key war hospital.
After more than two decades of bloody civil war, Somalia remains a very dangerous place, but security has slowly improved, with Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaeda on the back foot despite launching a deadly bombing campaign.
For the surgeons of Medina hospital, whose specialized war wound operating theatres were set up shortly after the collapse of the government in 1991, that gradual reduction has meant they can start to focus on more everyday health problems for the first time, and not just bomb blasts or bullet wounds.
“Medina... is the thermometer of the temperature of the security in the city,” said hospital director Mohamed Yusuf Hassan.
Surgeons now are tackling elective surgeries - scheduled operations, not emergencies - and the decrease in war wounds the Mogadishu hospital treats shows how the “situation has improved,” he added.
While the war wounded last year made up almost all of the hospital’s cases - 95 percent, Hassan estimates - that has now eased to around three-quarters.
“Step by step security is improving,” Hassan said, adding he hoped that in the year ahead elective surgeries could rise to as many as half the hospital’s cases.
In Somalia, however, improvements are relative.
In the emergency ward, a government soldier rests by the bedside of a colleague, shot in the belly last week.
Beds crowd even the corridor, with more than a dozen people all shot or wounded in recent attacks by Shebab Islamist extremists, or clashes between rival groups within the often violent city awash with guns.
But in the obstetrics ward, Shurkri Abdi recovers from a Caesarean section performed to deliver her seventh baby - and her first child born inside a hospital.
“I was living in the bush and I didn’t expect to come to the hospital,” Abdi said, her still unnamed child sleeping in a cot beside her. “But I fell down and my baby was in danger so they took me here.”
For Nimo Abdi Hassan, the doctor who delivered the child, such cases signal a shift in Somalia’s fortunes.
“War-wounded patients only used to be received here," she said. But since the number of cases involving gunshot wounds or shell injuries has fallen, staff are treating a greater variety of cases,” she explained.
“If peace continues, we could transfer from an emergency hospital to a general hospital for all cases,” she said.

Bullets to babies, Somalia’s war surgeons learn skills of peace

A woman holds her six-year-old malnourished son as they sit in a hospital in Somalia. (AFP)
AFP, Mogadishu-Somalia
Thursday 02 May 2013
SHOW MORE
Last Update: Thursday, 02 May 2013 KSA 08:44 - GMT 05:44
DAY | WEEK |
-
7223 Views Full moon to align directly above Kaaba in Mecca on Jan. 28
-
6784 Views Coronavirus: Dubai restaurants offer discounts for vaccinated diners
-
4141 Views Coronavirus: Dubai’s new restrictions disappoint hospitals; entertainers struggle on
-
1938 Views US will help Saudi Arabia defend against attacks on its territory: State Department
-
1522 Views More than 250,000 foreign workers exit Saudi labor market within 3 months
-
1106 Views Britain, France and Germany ‘strongly condemn’ air attack on Saudi Arabia
-
23069 Views Coronavirus: Dubai temporarily postpones Pfizer vaccine campaign amid global shortage
-
10968 Views Coronavirus: Dubai orders hospitals to cancel surgeries amid surge in COVID-19 cases
-
8888 Views The American University of Beirut’s battle for survival
-
8282 Views Coronavirus: Dubai suspends live entertainment permits as COVID-19 cases surge
-
8021 Views Coronavirus: Dubai's latest COVID-19 rules for weddings, restaurants, gyms, concerts
-
7223 Views Full moon to align directly above Kaaba in Mecca on Jan. 28
SHOW MORE