Half way down the dimly lit main hallway of Mogadishu’s Banadir Hospital, a sign indicates the entrance to the delivery ward. It reads: “Women are not dying of diseases we can’t treat. They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving.”
Outside, family members of the women within crouch beside the wall, avoiding the slanted columns of harsh Somali sunlight that line the floor. They are waiting, and sometimes praying, for healthy sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews or, at least, for the lives of their wives, daughters or sisters.
Inside the delivery ward it is dark, and mostly still but for an occasional flurry of activity as nurses armed with cooler boxes full of vaccines sprint from one room to another and orderlies push women on stretchers down to the surgical theatre. According to Somali custom, women giving birth should remain quiet, but every now and again a shout shatters the silence and reverberates through the halls.