World Humanitarian Day 2021

 

World Humanitarian Day is held every year on 19th August to pay tribute and give honor to health and aid workers who risk their lives in serving the humanity despite all odds.

Suleyman sheikh muktar is a nutrition nurse for SOS children’s village Somalia who works daily in the outreach to fight against malnutrition in the IDPs of Baidoa,in a country where the rate of malnutrition is very high and has posed existential threat to the young children, pregnant and lactating mothers.

SOS Children’s Villages stayed in the country to help the Somali people when the majority of international relief organisations left. To this day, families continue to struggle to feed themselves and care for their children. The changing security situation makes the work of our organisation extremely challenging.

“I have been working in this field of nutrition for almost 15 years, I feel excited when I see emaciated children I treated getting better, we do visiting in the camps SOS children’s village serves daily to check the status of the children,the rate of malnutrition in the camps is very high and we wish we could cover that gap ” Suleyman narrates his daily activities in the camps.

Suleyman continues to narrate one of the cases he feels proud and motivates him daily, “One of the cases I handled in Abow Asharow camp is really keeping me motivated, we identified twins who were 13 months old, each weighing 4kg,they were very emaciated, their mother could not take them to the stabilization centre for them to be hospitalised due to fearing other kids may suffer once she admits the twins in the stabilization centre so we decided to handle the case,their appetite was low so we admitted them into the program,I started to give them Plumpy’nuts bit by bit ,since we are mobile team and go to 5 different locations weekly,we assigned of the community leader to have close monitoring of the twins for their appetite through the community health workers we have in the IDPs and give us daily reports about the twins,they were in the program for 3 good months because of their conditions, and thanks to Allah the twins recovered and the mother could not hide her excitement and appreciated the tireless support SOS children’s village is giving the community .”

SOS children’s village celebrates Suleyman in this world humanitarian day for the heroic work he is doing to save the lives of malnourished children in the camps with his team.