Somalia Shattered by Anarchy and Chaos

from Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres

Fourteen years of violence have dramatically affected Somalia's population of nine million, with approximately two million people displaced or killed since civil war erupted in 1990 and close to five million people estimated to be without access to clean water or health care. The collapse of the health-care system, along with most other state services, have hit women and children particularly hard: one in sixteen women dies during childbirth; one in seven children dies before her first birthday; and one in five children dies before the age of five. Natural disasters like flooding in the lower Juba and Shabelle valleys have only worsened the human catastrophe, causing high rates of chronic malnutrition and preventable disease. Even though a recently selected central government offers a glimmer of hope, violence still shatters people's lives as predatory militias and warlords wield power for financial profit. From January to November 2004 in Galcayo, in one of the more stable parts of Somalia, MSF treated nearly 1,000 people for violence-related traumas, including 262 gunshot victims. The continuing insecurity in many areas and a lack of international attention has resulted in a dearth of meaningful emergency assistance, leaving many desperate segments of society abandoned and all but forgotten.

Read more about Somolia here – http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/somalia.cfm.

Doctors Without Borders/MΘdecins Sans FrontiΦres (MSF) – http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org – is an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in nearly 70 countries.