Red Crescent in Somalia

“Ordinary Somalis - men and women, the children and the elderly - do not, and cannot, wait for the signing of peace agreements or the creation of transitional authorities. For them, life goes on regardless of policies, interventions or the support of the international organizations.”

-Sean Deely, manager of the SRCS's recovery project.

The Somali Red Crescent Society was founded in April 1963 and as of 2002 has 5,800 members and volunteers, with 376 programme staff and 32 core staff. Their mission is to “prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found. It also strives to prevent diseases and promote health and social welfare.” Unfortunately, due to the conflicts and instability within Somalia itself, the Society is dependent fully on external support and donations.

In Somalia the life expectancy is an alarming 47 years, with nearly 50 Somali women dying each day due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Only 1 in 10 children are immunized against all major diseases, and the constant and horrific violence to be found across the country. In addition, severe flooding in 2006 and drought in 2007 has led to near famine situations in the south. The country also has “no health infrastructure” and as a result holds the title of having the “worst health indicators in the world.” These are only a few of the combined crises which have resulted in appalling health conditions predicted to deteriorate even further as long as “an appropriate and adequate public health network” is unable to be established. Despite this, the SRCS helps nearly 1,000,000 Somalis each year, and without them the situation would be nearly beyond recovery.

Although providing first aid training and services to local communities is a core focus of the society, it also runs 49 “mother-and-child health/outpatients clinics”, mostly based in rural and nomadic areas. Of these 12 are located in the northeast region of Puntland and a further 6 in the north-western region of Somaliland. The remaining 31 are spread throughout central and southern Somalia. They also run a surgical hospital in Garowe, which has 90 beds, 132 staff and an average of 19,595 patients every year. In addition to other hospitals, it has “three rehabilitation centers”, one in the capitol and two in other cities. Here “orthopaedic appliances and physiotherapy treatment are provided to disabled Somalis”, 64, 407 each year; the number of which is growing dramatically due to the violence in the country.

The SRCS are partnered with the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), often handling the running of surgical hospitals, family tracing services and distribution of supplies and information. They are also partnered with the Norwegian Red Cross, in respect to the rehabilitation workshops, the International Federation and the Italian Red Cross.

PS> The Red Crescent is an internationally accepted symbol that stands for emergency
assistance. Although any religious connection has been denied the Red Cresent is used in
Muslim countries instead of the Red Cross. There has also recently been established the Red Star of David, used primarily by Jewish emergency workers, which also denies religious
connotations.

PS2> I admit that I plagiarised quite a bit with this information, however, the full articles with the information I used can be found here, here and here.