Edna Adan was born in Hargeisa, British Somaliland on 8 September 1937, the daughter of a prominent Somali medical doctor. She was one of five children born to her mother, but two died at the time of delivery. At the time girls weren't educated in Somaliland, but her father hired a tutor for some local boys and she learned to read and write with them. She later went to a school in Djibouti where her aunt was a teacher. When she was eight years old, she underwent FGM. It was arranged by her mother and grandmother when her father was on a business trip; when he returned he was furious. Wanting to prevent other women from undergoing the same trauma she did, she trained as a nurse and midwife in the United Kingdom at the Borough Polytechnic, now London South Bank University. She later married Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal, a Somali politician who was elected Prime Minister of Somalia in 1967. She is said to be "the first Somali girl" to study in Britain, Somaliland's first qualified nurse-midwife and the first Somali woman to drive.
Hospital work
In 1980 Edna Adan began building a hospital in Somaliland's capital of Hargeisa, but was forced to leave the country due to the beginning of the Somali Civil War in 1981. She returned to Somaliland and built from scratch a maternity hospital, which she continues to run. The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital officially opened on 9 March 2002, in land donated to her by the regional government at a site formerly used as a rubbish dump. The region lacked trained nurses to staff the hospital – as most had either fled the country or been killed during the civil war – and so Edna recruited more than 30 candidates and began training them in 2000 while the hospital was still under construction. The hospital now has two operating theatres, laboratory, library, computer centre and a complete wing dedicated to training nurses and midwives. the hospital had 200 staff and 1500 students. The mission of the Edna Adan Hospital is to help to improve the health of the local inhabitants, in particular the high rate of maternal and infant mortality. The facility is a non-profit making charity and a midwifery teaching hospital that is also undertaking the training of student nurses and Assistant Laboratory Technicians.
Charity work
Edna Adan's work is supported by charities in the UK and USA which help her raise support and awareness to train additional midwives and fight FGM in Somaliland.
Government work
Edna Adan Ismail was the only woman minister in the Somaliland government until July 2006, when she was replaced as Foreign Minister by former Minister of Information and National Guidance Abdillahi Mohamed Dualeh. In addition to her work in government, she continues to be a voice for the Somaliland peoples' democratic will.
