The past few days have been some of the busiest and also happiest days of my life: We opened the theatres and started operations!

1. Opening. Ceremony was attended by the First Lady of Somaliland, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Religious Affairs, members of the Board of Trustees of the Hospital, national and international partners such as THET, SOMDEV, WAHA, Universities of Hargeisa and Borama, staff, students, friends and others dignitaries as well as the media.

After the openning ceremony, we cleaned and re-sterilized the theatres getting ourselves and premises ready for operations.

2. We then had the visit of the American Medical Team from the Kijabe Mission Hospital in Kenya. They are a team of doctors, mainly surgeons, who came to us in 2007 to offer help with the operations on children with Hydrocephalus (big head with spinal fluid). Since we only had one theatre at that time, and since that one theatre was used for everything, the risk would have been too great for these kids who easily die of post-operative infections. When theatres were being built, we informed them and they came to see the premises and agreed to start the operations this January.

You may wish to know that all the cost of these operations (dressings, instruments, food for children and mother, clothing, medication etc…) is totally free of charge and am covering it personally. This also includes the food and accommodation of the two surgeons and one anesthetist living at our hospital for the week that they are here.

We have already done the first four children who are doing well and possibly one or two more tomorrow. This is the first time that this is being done in Somaliland, and if all goes well, we will be doing camps for these children each time that we can get the surgeons. In the past, this surgery was available only to those who could be flown abroad, who had a visa and whose families had the money to pay for it.

3. The surgeons are also doing orthopedic surgery and plastic surgery on persons who had burns and who have developed contractures of hands, fingers, arms and neck. They have done ten so far and more tomorrow.

Each day, we have all been in the theatre from seven in the morning until after ten pm at night. I am so proud of our staff and so happy that we could do this for our people.

4. On the 30th of this month, after the current patients have hopefully gone home, we will be doing two days of cleft lip repair. We will do as many as we can in two days for those who show up.

5. Starting on the 6th of February, we have sent out the announcements for the first Fistula Camp this year with support from the WAHA team who operated on the 34 women last year. These will be covered by the funds already received from the Fistula Foundation.

6. In March, we expect another Fistula Camp.

7. We are still waiting for some of the theatre equipment bought and ordered from Dubai and managing with what was received and in hand.

8. The current team helped us to un-pack the Glostavent but their anesthetist is not familiar with this machine so have not yet started using it.

Edna