Study: Symptoms of “long-term Covid” are linked to another virus

Somalia’s struggling health system has been crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, Amnesty International said, noting that only 15% of the country’s rural population has access to medical care and the country has only one surgeon per million inhabitants.

According to the “Voice of America” ​​website, the organization released a 27-page report titled “We just saw Covid-19 patients die,” calling for urgent investment in the healthcare sector. in Somalia after years of great neglect.

The Amnesty report quoted a senior Somali doctor as saying that a hospital ward saw four elderly men die in ten minutes from lack of oxygen.

“Remain helpless”

In this regard, Somali human rights researcher Abdullah Hassan says health resources are so poor that medical workers often can only sit idly by and watch their patients die.

The emerging corona virus pandemic has exposed the poor health sector conditions in the country, for example at the start of the epidemic there was only one hospital in Mogadishu dealing with cases related to the emerging corona virus , many hospitals lacking basic equipment.

“Safety before health”

Amnesty explained that the Somali government allocates only 2 percent of its budget to health care, while the security services got the largest share of that budget at 31 percent.

According to official figures, the country has seen more than 16,000 infections and around 900 deaths from the Corona virus, but chief medical officer Muhammad Mahmoud Ali told the organization the death toll is much higher, stressing that the data only includes people who have been able to access health facilities and perform the necessary tests.

He continued, “There are a large number of coronavirus patients who have died in their homes.”

For his part, Abdul Qadir Abdul Rahman Adan, founder of Ambulance Ambulance, the only service of its kind for the inhabitants of Mogadishu, explained that he only has two ambulances, adding: “The crews are exhausted and it is difficult to have oxygen.

He added: “Our services are free, but we cannot provide the money to purchase oxygen supplies, and ambulance teams are not well trained to deal with some health issues.”

The report, based on interviews with 33 medical and aid workers, as well as officials and experts, called on authorities to capitalize on the country’s debt reduction and increase investment in healthcare.

In March 2020, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank reduced Somalia’s debt from $ 5.2 billion to $ 557 million.

Debt relief aims to bring the Horn of Africa country back into the global economy after 30 years of conflict and unstable governments, while Hassan sees debt relief as an opportunity to improve Somali hospitals.

“All this money that will be received through debt relief must be managed in a transparent and accountable manner, and it must be used to improve the health sector in the country,” he said.

In the same vein, Adan believes that the health sector urgently needs more medical experts to revive it.

He warned that “the people who run the health sector and work on health policies should be experts with good experience in health and medicine, because without it it is difficult to develop the system”, a- he declared.

Amnesty International notes that only 0.6% of Somalis have been fully immunized against the Corona virus and that 19 of 33 health workers interviewed refused to receive the vaccine, despite being offered to them.