Somali Nurse-Midwife Wins Templeton Prize for Genital Mutilation Fight: EastAfrica TempletonPrize.
ity of women and help them to flourish physically and spiritually. Her many achievements include the founding of the Edna Adan University and Edna Adan Hospital, which has significantly reduced maternal mortality in Somaliland, and her tireless campaign to end female genital mutilation around the world.
“Driven by a passionate belief in women’s innate dignity and divine-given potential, she has enacted a transformation of female health in her native land. Drawing on the doctrines of the Muslim faith, she has employed her positions of authority to argue passionately that, despite what some have believed, female circumcision is against the teachings of Islam, and deeply harmful to women.”
As a girl, she loved shadowing her father in his surgery and thought to become a surgical nurse, but he encouraged her to look into midwifery, where the need was greatest. The most important lesson she absorbed from him was compassion, she later recalled. One of his favorite expressions was “if you cannot do it with your heart, your hands will never do it.” She returned in 1961 to her homeland as its first professionally trained nurse-midwife.
While Somaliland’s healthcare system collapsed in the aftermath of war, the hospital made great strides, reducing the maternal mortality rate by up to 75 percent. In addition to providing patient care to a high-risk population, the hospital also started training nurses even before it opened.
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