Ask Edna

Posted on Mar 8, 2012 in Edna Adan, Somaliland | 0 comments United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) has published to her web site, Off The Sidelines, a page of Questions and Answers, questions from her Book Club members addressed to Edna Adan. The goal of Sen. Gillibrand’s group is to make more women aware of the need to be involved in the decisions that affect their lives every day and to let women know that their voice matters, to give them...
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Skirball Center Interview

Posted on Jan 4, 2012 in Edna Adan, Somaliland | 0 comments The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles has published an account of Edna’s visit there in late November, including an interview. Edna discusses the challenges she faced in building the hospital and talks about her work now. “I try to give women in my community an opportunity. They are my army, my soldiers.” The Skirball is host to an exhibit Women Hold Up Half the Sky based...
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Edna’s TEDx Video now available

Posted on Dec 24, 2011 in Edna Adan, Somaliland | 3 comments Edna was invited to Geneva three weeks ago to address a TEDx conference where she spoke about Somaliland and the building of the Edna Hospital. She described how important is the training of midwives to the goal of reducing high rates of maternal and infant mortality. If Edna, beginning at the age of 60, in a war-ravaged and unrecognized country can accomplish her goal to build a hospital and...
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Edna interviewed in Switzerland

Posted on Nov 28, 2011 in Edna Adan | 4 comments Following her presentation at the TEDx conference in Geneva yesterday, Edna gave an interview to a member of the Swiss media. Edna shares her humanitarian vision with TED If an elderly woman can build a hospital, everyone has the potential to move humanitarian mountains if they put their mind to it, says Edna Adan Ismail. “We’ll be ten years old in March and it’s given life to...
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Edna at TEDx

Posted on Oct 23, 2011 in Edna Adan, Hospital News, Somaliland | 3 comments Edna Adan will give a presentation at the upcoming TED conference in Geneva about her work in service to the women of Somaliland. She will discuss how she came home to Hargeisa in 1997 from a career at the World Health Organization to find Somaliland’s health care system in ruins. “The ten year Civil war from 1982 to 1991 caused the death of a quarter million of our people and...
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Half the Sky exhibit opening in L.A.

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 in Edna Adan | 1 comment The book Half the Sky is the theme for a new exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Oct. 27 through March 11, 2012. The book is by our friends and supporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who include a chapter about Edna Adan and the Hospital. The Los Angeles exhibit also features Edna prominently. Nicholas Kristof, himself, will speak there on October 25. Buy Tickets...
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Recent Achievements at Edna Hospital

Posted on Mar 19, 2011 in Hospital News | 0 comments Here is a summary, provided by Edna Adan, of some of the highlights of these past few months: 1. After the operating theatre was opened, we had the visit of surgeons from Kijabe hospital who performed the first operations in the new facilities equipped with supplies received from the Fistula Foundation and Direct Relief. Among the operations performed were seven children with hydrocephalus who...
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La Croix on Edna & Somaliland (in French)

Posted on Feb 11, 2011 in Somaliland | 0 comments Our readers may recall that Edna Adan spent some time in France in December, following her highly successful visit to Switzerland. The primary focus of the visit to Switzerland was to fight the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) while the visit to France was focused more on helping women suffering from Obstetric Fistula. Edna provided many interviews in France. This one touches on...
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Edna Hospital: “Dazzling”

Posted on Dec 19, 2010 in Blog, Hospital News | 2 comments We are so pleased that our good friend and longtime supporter, Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, has once again linked here from the New York Times. The Gifts of Hope: “Edna Hospital (ednahospital.org) is a dazzling maternity hospital in Somaliland, an area with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Edna Adan Ismail, a Somali nurse-midwife who rose in the ranks of...
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Bachelor of Science Midwifery Programme

Posted on Dec 13, 2010 in Hospital News | 0 comments The University of Hargeisa (UoH), Edna Adan University Hospital (EAUH) and Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) would like to announce their forthcoming BSc. Midwifery programme due to start in March 2011. This programme which is the first of its kind in Somaliland is designed to create a new cadre of midwives who will help to address maternal and infant health across the country. The BSc...
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Somaliland: Africa’s Best Kept Secret

Posted on Sep 1, 2010 in Somaliland | 0 comments Horn of Africa needs an Internal Hero is a newspaper article by South African Iqbal Jhazbhay. Edna Adan was very pleased by the article and recommends it to you. “..But it is Somaliland that has accurately been dubbed Africa’s best kept secret. “In June this year, the region held its second democratic presidential election, which was observed to be free, fair and credible by...
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Breaking a Conspiracy of Silence

Posted on Dec 27, 2009 in Edna Adan, Somaliland | 0 comments In this review of Half the Sky in the NY Review of Books, Sue Halpern discusses the plight of women in the developing world. For Westerners, the words “gender inequality” are likely to suggest pay differentials and glass ceilings and old-boy networks. For the women and girls Kristof and WuDunn write about, gender inequality is more elemental. It takes the form of sexual slavery and...
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Decade’s Most Important Book

Posted on Dec 22, 2009 in Hospital News, Somaliland | 0 comments A writer at the Huffington Post has suggested that Nicholas Kristof’s book Half the Sky should be considered… The most important book of the decade Steve Leveen writes: But what if we could have known in 1962, the year of its publication, that Silent Spring would contain a message of change necessary to save our very world? My guess is that we would have acted faster to head off what...
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University of Pretoria awards Medal to Edna Adan

Posted on Dec 13, 2009 in Edna Adan, Hospital News, Somaliland | 0 comments Edna Adan was at the University of Pretoria this past Thursday to accept the Chancellor’s Medal for her outstanding contribution to humanity, and particularly with regard to helping the under-privileged people of Somaliland to realize their right to health. Here is the original article by Saeed Mohamed Dr. Edna Adan spoke at the university’s graduation ceremonies on International...
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Nicholas Kristof on Oprah

Posted on Sep 26, 2009 in Hospital News | 0 comments Nicholas Kristof has taped a full one hour on Oprah where he speaks about his new book, Half the Sky, in which Edna Adan is featured prominently. This Oprah program is tentatively scheduled for broadcast on Thursday, October 1. Visit Half The Sky homepage Recommend on FacebookTweet about it...
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Nicholas Kristof on Oprah

Posted on Sep 7, 2009 in Hospital News | 0 comments Pullitzer Prize winner and NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has taped a full hour program with Oprah where he discusses his new book, Half the Sky, which prominently features Edna Adan. We don’t yet know the exact date that the show will be broadcast but is expected to be shown in early October. Watch for it! The book, and the TV show, profile heroic women in the developing world and...
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NY Times article features Edna Adan

Posted on Aug 19, 2009 in Edna Adan | 0 comments New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn will publish their new book in September, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. That book is previewed in the NY Times Sunday magazine issue of August 23, 2009 and it can be read online here: The Womens Crusade. Edna Adan is featured in the article. Here is an excerpt: An obstetric fistula,...
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Somaliland Shows the Way

Posted on Jul 21, 2009 in Somaliland | 0 comments Somaliland: What Somalia Could Be is a new article written by Dr. J. Peter Pham recounting some of the history of both Somaliland and Somalia. Dr. Pham speaks highly of Edna Adan and of the hospital as an example of the good things that can happen in the presence of good governance. He discusses at length just how good government in Africa can come about. (And why it has failed to come about in...
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Video History of Somaliland

Posted on Dec 3, 2008 in Somaliland | 0 comments This brief video from the Voice of America features an interview with Edna Adan. “The people of the African republic of Somaliland voted in 1991 to become an independent nation. They argue that there are enough cultural, political and social differences between them and the people of Somalia to make Somaliland a separate country, as was the case briefly in 1960. But the world has not yet...
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A Stoning in Somalia

Posted on Nov 14, 2008 in Hospital News, Somaliland | 0 comments We are so pleased that the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof has, once again, linked here from his Blog at the New York Times. A Stoning in Somalia “…Incidentally, for anyone interested in Somalia, there is a superb aid project in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland: a maternity hospital run by Edna Adan, a former U.N. official who used her savings and...
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The Terror of Motherhood in Somaliland

Posted on Sep 27, 2008 in Edna Adan, Somaliland | 0 comments Edna Adan has published a new article which summarizes the health issues facing women and infants in Somaliland. Here are a few excerpts: “My theory is that women in Somaliland die because of ignorance on their part and on the part of those assisting them. Poverty is a strong factor that prevents women from seeking help because they convince themselves that they cannot afford the cost of...
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