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HARGEISA — The President of the Republic of Somaliland, Abdirahman M Abdillahi “Irro” has ordered the urgent procurement of fifteen new dialysis machines and pledged to eliminate all remaining out-of-pocket costs for dialysis patients, according to a statement issued by the Presidency, in the most concrete response yet to a public backlash over conditions at Hargeisa Group Hospital’s kidney unit.
The statement, signed by presidential spokesman Hussein Aadan Cige “Deyr,” followed a visit by President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi “Irro” to the hospital’s dialysis department, where he met with hospital administration, health workers, and patients. It lays out three measures: free supplies, fifteen new machines, and a nationwide technical assessment.
Free supplies and new machines
Dialysis treatment itself was already free; the government has now ordered that the small remaining fees patients paid for medications and consumables tied to dialysis — needles, filters, and similar items — be eliminated as well. Separately, the Presidency ordered the “urgent” purchase of fifteen dialysis machines, intended to expand the unit’s capacity, reduce strain on the equipment currently in use, and ensure more patients can be treated at appropriate times.
A nationwide technical review
The most far-reaching measure in the statement is the dispatch of a technical committee to conduct a full assessment not just of Hargeisa Group Hospital but of regional hospitals nationwide. Its mandate covers treatment services, administration and management systems, medical equipment, infrastructure, and patient care, with dialysis units specifically named among the areas under review. The committee is expected to report back to the President with both immediate and long-term recommendations.
That mandate is broad enough to reach the two officials at the center of the controversy: Health Minister Hussein Bashir Hirsi and Ministry Director-General Ahmed Mahamoud Jama, whose handling of the crisis and the hospital’s separate MRI procurement are matters of administration and management within the committee’s stated scope. Whether the review’s findings translate into personnel consequences, or stop at equipment and infrastructure, is likely to determine how this episode is ultimately judged.
The Presidency’s statement reiterated that the government is “committed to the growth and development of the country’s hospitals” within its financial means.
No mention of accountability
The statement does not address whether any official will face consequences over the episode. This publication’s earlier reporting on the crisis — “A Government of Fake Doctors, Real Patients — and a President Who Brought Cameras, Not Answers” — documented that Health Minister Hussein Bashir Hirsi, who publicly accused protesting patients of serving a foreign agenda, does not appear to hold a physician’s license in the U.S. state where he is credentialed, according to a search of the Georgia Composite Medical Board’s public verification system. That reporting also found that the Ministry’s Director-General, Ahmed Mahamoud Jama, told a reporter that MRI machines emit dangerous radiation when asked to explain why a $400,000 MRI purchased by the hospital remains at the seller’s premises — a claim that conflicts with established medical science.
Neither official is mentioned in the Presidency’s new statement, and nothing in it or the government’s earlier public remarks on the visit indicates that either man, or any hospital official beyond the dialysis unit’s head, already replaced, has been dismissed or disciplined.
The fifteen machines and the free-supplies order would, if delivered, address the core complaints raised by protesting patients and by an unverified but detailed social-media account from a self-described former hospital staffer, both of which described patients receiving roughly half the dialysis time recommended by standard medical practice. Whether the technical committee’s review amounts to reform, or to another entry in what this publication’s earlier reporting described as a pattern of crisis management through spending pledges and photo opportunities, will depend on what it finds — and what the government does with it.
This publication sent written questions to the Ministry of Health Development for this story; it had not received a response by the time of publication.
