Hafsa from Somalia

Hafsa is born with a bilateral cleft lip and a cleft palate. A difficult start in life. The Somali girl is not even two years old when her parents bring her to us in April of this year to get treatment for her. Cleft aid missions are hosted regularly at the Somcare Hospital & DCKH Cleft Center, a cleft center in Garowe that we opened in cooperation with Somalia Medical Care e.V. (Somcare) in March 2022. This was also the case in that April: The experienced surgeons Dr. Muhammad Quamruzzaman and Dr. Al Masum Ziaul Haque from our Bangladesh project are visiting. They are assisted by the Ethiopian doctors Dr. Samater and Dr. Abdinasir.

During this nine-day aid mission, Hafsa will receive her surgery, as will almost 50 other children and youths with cleft lip and palate. Dr. Masum closes Hafsa’s bilateral cleft lip. Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe places great concern on ensuring that all cleft care in a country is offered locally, by local specialists, so that experience and specialist knowledge can be accumulated in the country and because the language and cultural barriers are lower. But there are few specialists in Somalia. Therefore, our project partners from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh often help out as volunteers in the initial phase of the project.

Hafsa’s family comes from the Mudug region in Somalia. Her parents are nomadic livestock herders. But drought and overexploitation of the scarce vegetation, for example through deforestation to produce fuel, make it increasingly difficult to earn a living from nomadic herding. Many nomads have to sell their animals and then end up as internally displaced persons in self-built tin and cardboard huts on the outskirts of cities such as Garowe (our project location) and Gaalkacyo. Our partner organization Somcare from Heidelberg has already initiated several aid projects for these people.

Deutsche Cleft Kinderhilfe in the Horn of Africa region

When Hafsa’s operation to close her cleft palate is due in August of the same year, our project in Somalia had achieved a momentous milestone: our first local surgeon, Dr. Samater from Jijiga in Ethiopia’s Somali State, had completed his training with our experienced doctors, including a study visit to Pakistan with Professor Ganatra, and started working autonomously. A huge step forward for our project!

Until we have a doctor permanently based in Somalia, Dr. Samater will travel to Garowe when there are enough patients on the waiting list. On his very first independent visit to Garowe without a foreign partner, Dr. Samater closes Hafsa’s cleft palate – a milestone both for Hafsa and for our project! Both Hafsa’s surgeries went well – and are now behind her, with a transformed life ahead of her.

Her mother knows this too:

A message from Hafsa’s mother Fatima

We too say “Thank you!”

We wish Hafsa and her family all the best for their future and would like to give thanks from the bottom of our hearts not only our dedicated doctors, but above all our donors who made our projects – and Hafsa’s surgeries – possible.