Ebode Hassan (45) a Somali refugee in the Sheder refugee camp health centre in eastern Ethiopia on the border of Somalia struggles for breath due to asthma.
Ebode has 8 children and comes from Mogadishu. She fled after fighting began 5 years ago and ended up in Sheder refugee camp. Her husband died in the fighting. Her two eldest children have gone to Libya and Sudan looking for work and she looks after her 6 youngest children in the camp. She suffers from asthma, hypertension and has a cardiac condition. She hopes to be permanently referred to Addis Ababa for more specialized treatment but due to budget constraints her referral has been delayed. She is referred for 2-3 months to a regional hospital then sent back to the camp where she relapses.
Senior Nurse Abdul Karim (35), an Ethiopian government nurse, says she is in need of permanent Urban Refugee Status so she can receive treatment at the Black Lion hospital which is the only public cardiac hospital in the country. He also said the climate is better in Addis and needs to move out of the dusty camp environment which is
The camp is home to over 10,700 refugees and opened in 2008 following fighting in Somalia with Al-Shabab. There is only one doctor for all the refugees in the camp who often have complex medical issues from trauma wounds to physiological
conditions.
Act for Peace supports Development and Inter-Church Aid Commission (DICAC) in providing access to health services to refugees who have to be moved to Addis Ababa in order to deal with health concerns that cannot be adequately treated in the more rural refugee camps. The support provided includes assistance with medical expenses, emergency transport, supplementary dietary requirements and housing.