Somalian doctor defied militiamen
Hawa Abdi, who has died aged 73, was a pioneering doctor whose one-room clinic grew into a 400-bed hospital; she provided sanctuary to 90,000 people during Somalia’s brutal civil war, offering life- saving treatment to malnourished children while facing down marauding militiamen.
When families of refugees started turning up, she sold her family gold to feed them.
In May 2010 Hawa Abdi’s hospital was overrun by 750 jihadi fighters from an al- Qaida- affiliated group. They demanded that, as a woman, she relinquish control. When she refused, they imprisoned her. The act provoked outrage among the Somali diaspora, and Hawa Abdi gave clandestine phone interviews to journalists.
The jihadis decided to release her after several days, but she refused to leave until they wrote a letter of apology, which they duly furnished in both Somali and English.
“I told the gunmen: ‘ If I die, I will die with my people and my dignity.’” When one militant said to her, “We are men, we are in control,” she responded: “You are a man — you have two testes. A goat also has two testes. What have you done for society?”
Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe was born in 1947. She won a scholarship to study medicine in Kyiv.
She r e t urned f r om Ukraine in 1971, specializing in gynecology. The next year she enrolled at law school.
Later she taught at the Somali National University. Hawa Abdi opened her own clinic in 1983, using money from the sale of some land.
Within two months she was receiving 100 patients a day and was soon treating cholera, measles, bullet wounds and diarrhea.
Those who could not afford to pay she treated for free, while the wives of businessmen and government ministers were charged extra. When she could no longer afford to fund the hospital, she took a medical job in Nairobi and sent back $1,500 a month.
As famine gripped the country during the civil war of the 1990s, nearly 10,000 people died at the hospital of starvation. The camp’s population swelled to 90,000.
She set up farming and fishing collectives so people could feed their families while earning an income.
When famine struck again in 2011, the hospital once more became a haven.
In 2012 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Hawa Abdi’s first marriage was arranged when she was 12. She married her second husband in 1973; they later separated.
She is survived by two of her four children, both doctors.