Somalia: Fears of the spread of the Corona epidemic and challenges to the health sector

Qasim Ahmed Sahl-Mogadishu

Concerns about the spread of the Corona epidemic are increasing in Somalia, amid suspicions that official statistics do not translate the reality on the ground, and that injuries and deaths are more than announced, given the unusual movement in cemeteries, according to reports in social media.

The Ministry of Health indicated Monday that the total number of coronavirus infections was 756 cases, the total number of deaths 35 and the total number of those recovering 61.

Somali Minister of Information Mohamed Hir Mari said recently that the government considers the Corona virus to be the cause of any death in Somalia at the current circumstance, while the mayor of Mogadishu Omar Mahmoud said on Friday that their administration has recorded five hundred deaths in Mogadishu since April 19 last, they believe that the owners have died Because of corona.

The head of the main cemetery in Mogadishu Abdullah Al-Sheikh confirmed the burial of 558 cases in the cemetery in the same month, explaining to Al-Jazeera Net that the cemetery was receiving nearly four hundred cases before Corona, and that the increase of 158 includes 14 achieved cases of having Corona and ten cases of drowning, which led some to believe The rest were killed by the virus, too.

Residents fear that the epidemic is spreading widely in Somalia, especially in Mogadishu, where about three million people live. 

Indifference
as to the reasons for the increase in injuries, attributed by physician Mahmoud Abdi Hassan to apathy in the markets, streets, mosques and means of transportation, and the lack of commitment of many people to the means of prevention and social separation.

He says that many of them show symptoms of the epidemic and refrain from reporting their condition, and they consider it as a common cold, and some of them hide it for fear of stigma, domestic stone or isolation; they mix with people.

Hassan says that the situation requires conducting testing tests collectively, and this is not currently possible due to the lack of capabilities and necessary equipment available to the government.

The greatest danger and the
slow pace of the examination process is part of the problem. The declared cases went to the central laboratory voluntarily, most of them in Mogadishu, but the greatest danger comes in the eyes of Hassan from the randomly located high-density neighborhoods and IDP camps where 2.6 million displaced people live, where it is difficult to apply Social spacing.

Because they live in small contiguous huts and in large numbers, and where there is no hygiene and water scarcity, the population is unable to purchase soap and disinfectants to wash their hands, and if the virus reaches them it will cause a humanitarian catastrophe and complicate the efforts to combat the epidemic .

Challenges and
suffering the health sector in Somalia nearly thirty years ago, it is almost devastating, where child and maternal mortality is one of the highest in the world, so the health sector will face a number of challenges in the battle against Corona, as it has only three laboratories for detection: one in Mogadishu, and another In the city of Grooy in the state of Puntland (northeastern Somalia), and the third in the territory of Somaliland (north).

The health system official at the Ministry of Health, Abdul Razzaq Yusef Ahmed,
says that Mogadishu has one quarry sanitary quarry, which is the Martini hospital which includes 100 beds, while two other sites for health insulation are being prepared soon, in addition to the establishment of four quarries in the states of Puntland, Jubaland and southwest Somalia in cooperation with the World Health Organization.

Among the challenges they face are the lack of artificial respirators, the paucity of teams trained in intensive care units, and the lack of sampling tools to receive screening tests from many regions.

As a result, Ahmed tells Al Jazeera Net that the epidemic is targeting medical teams, with 15 of them having been infected, expecting to have dozens of other injuries in the private health sector.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Dr. Muhammad Othman, who is infected with the Corona virus, attributes many factors. The most important of these are the doctors ’progress in the battle against Corona, the low level of awareness of people as they go to the hospital or clinic to treat other diseases while they are carrying the virus, and the scarcity of preventive measures in hospitals.