After the local community leaders requested us to intervene and rehabilitate the Brava Hospital, it was decided to help the community in Brava by renovating their general hospital.

Brava, also known as (Baraawe), an ancient port city in the southern Lower Shebelle region of Somalia, is also the Southwest State of Somalia’s capital city. Facing the Indian Ocean, it is the main city in the area, with a population of around 61,282 (43,000 inhabitants and 18,282 IDPs). 200 km south of the country’s capital city, Mogadishu,

The Bravanese communities belong to an ethnic minority with a distinctive Bantu language. They are the most marginalised communities in Somalia who have not rightfully received the attention needed, even though they may have been impacted equally or even worse than others but are not getting any humanitarian aid. These are mainly due to a lack of access to humanitarian organisations and the dominant tribes in the region forcing themselves to represent the communities they are overwhelmingly controlling and divert any aid funds to their causes.

The nominal hospital serves as the only medical institution in the region and offers minimal health care to hundreds of thousands of people in Brava and the neighbouring towns. In June 2016, the major renovation of Brava general hospital was completed. Brava public hospital’s renovation had been one of the notable successes that the community had witnessed since the start of the civil unrest in Somalia.

Since IRF got involved in restoring the hospital, the community started to feel a sense of purpose, protecting the hospital from unwanted attention and keeping the warring factions from using it.