Galcayo: A Town Divided, A Population Trying to Endure

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

The people of Galcayo, in south-central Somalia, have endured war for many years. The town is now divided by a "green line," with warring factions on either side.

Twenty years of violence have destroyed basic state services and the health care system. Malnutrition, which has afflicted people in the region for a long time, has worsened significantly in the past 12 months. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is the only provider of free health care services for hundreds of kilometers.

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

MSF works in the outpatient department and in a recently-opened pediatric inpatient department at Galcayo North's hospital and provides an extensive package of health care services, including surgery, in Galcayo South. Here, women stand in front of an MSF's therapeutic feeding center. Women and children are particularly vulnerable in Galcayo; one in 12 women dies during childbirth, and one in seven children dies before his or her first birthday.

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

Nurses check the weight and height of each child. Those who are stable are treated as outpatients in the ambulatory therapeutic feeding program.

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

Hibo Osman, center, sits outside the tents of the MSF therapeutic feeding center, holding her daughter, Asho, who is malnourished and has diarrhea. When Hibo was pregnant with Asho her husband was shot in a firefight. She earns money by selling second-hand clothes in the market.

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

Inside the feeding center, MSF nurses insert an IV line into a severely malnourished child. MSF Head of Mission Karin Fischer assists.

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The next day, the injured man's operation seemed to be successful.

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Somalia 2011 © Sven Torfinn

A family member of the man who was shot asked to receive the bullet.

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Habiba Dahir Muse sits outside the MSF hospital in Galcayo with her sons Shafeer, left, and Abdikayr. Muse has already lost two daughters. Her nomadic community in Galgaduud, about 99 miles away, collected money for her to bring her surviving children to Galcayo for treatment.

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Six-year-old Yurub was suffering from measles and then became malnourished. MSF treated her for both and she is now recovering.

September 05, 2011

Photographer Sven Torfinn recently visited Galcayo, a divided town in Somalia where MSF is working to deliver desperately-needed health care amid drought and malnutrition exacerbated by years of conflict.

Photographer Sven Torfinn recently visited MSF facilities in the town of Galcayo, in south-central Somalia, where MSF is working in hospitals on both sides of a divided town—which is to say in both Galcayo North and Galcayo South, areas separated by a shifting but constant frontline. The local population suffers from a now familiar litany of afflictions, including conflict, drought, malnutrition, and a severe lack of health care services, all of which are exacerbated and enabled by armed groups that have been battling each other for years. Below are images of a town divided, and a people trying to endure.