Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon has appealed to the country’s diaspora health professionals to ‘help transform Somalia’s health service’.
The Prime Minister was speaking Thursday when he opened in Mogadishu the first National Health Conference.
The three-day conference, organised by the Ministry of Human Development and Public Services, has attracted over 400 health professionals from across Somalia and abroad.
According to statement released at the opening ceremony, the delegates will discuss how to transform Somalia’s health sector.
“The participants will produce recommendations and operational guidelines on strengthening the Somali health system, improving health service delivery and health financing and regulation,” said the statement.
The PM said: “Two decades of unrest left our people with no national healthcare to turn to when in need, resulting in Somalia having some of the worst health indices in the world, in particular maternal and child mortality rates.”
He added: “The first steps towards rebuilding our national health service have began. The essential package of health services and joint health and nutrition programme has began to be rolled out and are providing basic health services in several regions of Somalia.”
Dr Mariam Kassim, the Minister of Human Development and Public Services said: “The current stability gives us the opportunity to rebuild our health service.”
She added: “There is no politics in providing healthcare and I am pleased to welcome here today representatives from every region of Somalia.
Looking at where the health service was just a year ago and where it is today, gives us hope for the future. We aim to expand the health services and programmes we have launched across the whole of Somalia so that every Somali has access to basic health services.”
Somalia’s health services collapsed when the dictatorial central government of the late General Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in January 1991.
For over two decades, private practitioners including quacks, have dominated the health sector.
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