Friday, July 29, 2011
"You can see if a child is getting better just from the face of the parent," he said. "Making a difference is what keeps me here."
Amin works at a stabilization ward at the International Rescue Committee hospital in the Dadaab refugee camp, where dozens of tiny children with stick-thin limbs and oversize heads loll on plastic mattresses. Mothers use their fringed shawls to flap the humid aid around their babies' faces while patient nurses poke intravenous needles into tiny hands. Amin, walking about the ward in his yellow T-shirt, knows them all.
"Most come in here very sick. Mihag was unconscious when he came," said Amin, speaking of a tiny 7-month-old the same size as an infant. "But today he is picking up a bit."
The child, which weighed as much as a newborn when he arrived, has put on 3.5 ounces (100 grams) in the past few days. The wailing babies are weighed in a wicker basket suspended from the ceiling.
The U.N. says parts of Somalia held by Islamist rebels are suffering from famine, and a total of 11.3 million people in the Horn of Africa need aid. Amin said the situation is the worst he's seen it - they've had up to 42 babies in his ward for malnourished babies at a time, a sevenfold increase at the hospital since the beginning of the year. The hospital is just one of three treating Somalis refugees in Dadaab camp.