Many people in Somalia are doing their bit to rebuild the country.
One woman who left Mogadishu nearly 30 years ago to start a new life in the UK is now a doctor and has returned home to start a much-needed maternity hospital in the capital.
Shamsa Abdullahi Bybook, just a young nurse in her 20s had to flee the mounting chaos and tensions of Mogadishu in 1989 to start a new life in the United Kingdom.
She became an experienced midwife at a North London hospital, earned a master’s degree from Middlesex University and raised a family.
But she never forgot Somalia.
She was appalled by the poor medical facilities available to young women and the numbers who were dying during childbirth in her home country.
Bybook and her husband moved back to Mogadishu in 2016 to start the Bybook Maternity Hospital which would offer reproductive services to Somali women.
She was fully aware of the risks of going back to Mogadishu as the country’s government, with the help of African troops has been battling the al Shabaab insurgents to try to restore peace in the country following decades of conflict.
In October 2017, the maternity hospital was opened in the Hodan district of the Somali capital and offers a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services that include safe delivery, paediatric and childcare, female genital mutilation counselling, diagnostic sonography, postpartum care and infertility treatment.
The 45-bed Bybook Maternity Hospital records an average of 50 safe deliveries each month and also treats new-borns with breathing complications.
