Oct 3 2012
ABC News profiles Edna Adan, a 75-year-old former U.N. diplomat responsible for building the first maternity hospital in her country of Somalia. "I could have retired and lived somewhere else in the world, but I think I would have found it difficult to live with myself," Adan told ABC News, according to the news service. In 1991, she "cashed in her pension from the World Health Organization, sold all of her jewelry and belongings -- including her favorite car, a Mercedes -- and spent $300,000 of her own money to build a hospital," the news service writes. "Today, the Edna Adan University Hospital has treated over 14,000 patients and delivered more than 12,000 babies," ABC News notes. The news service says Adan plans to train 1,000 midwives throughout the country (Whitcraft, 10/1).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |