2010-04-013
GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that fighting was taking a heavy toll on civilians in Somalia and casualties were overwhelming a dwindling health care staff in the capital Mogadishu.

"In March 2010 alone, at least 900 conflict-related injuries and 30 deaths were reported at Mogadishu's three main hospitals," WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told a news briefing.

He told Reuters: "Health care workers are struggling to cope, they are overwhelmed with the huge increase in wounded. It is stretching an already weak health care system to the limit."

Children aged under 5 years old accounted for 10 percent of reported injuries, which included shrapnel and gunshot wounds, fractures and crush injuries, he said.

At least 13 civilians were killed in fighting between Somali government forces and hardline Islamist militants in Mogadishu on Monday and bomb blasts killed six people, rescue services and the police said.

Somalia's fragile government controls just a few blocks in the capital and al Shabaab rebels, who want to impose a harsh version of sharia law on the anarchic nation, control large swathes of southern and central Somalia.

The Western-backed government has said for several months it will launch a major offensive against al Shabaab rebels, who have professed loyalty to al Qaeda, and Hizbul Islam militants.

At least 3.2 million people are affected by Somalia's humanitarian crisis, according to the WHO, a U.N. agency. Some 1,400 women die per every 100,000 live births and at least 86 infants among 1,000 die before reaching their first birthday.

Omar Saleh, a WHO specialised trauma surgeon, has just returned from training 33 doctors, nurses and midwives in Mogadishu to improve their skills in responding to the escalating conflict, the WHO said. He has trained about 100 workers in the past year.

Only 250 qualified doctors, 860 nurses and 116 midwives work today in Somalia, home to the lowest number of health workers of any country in the Horn of Africa or Middle East, it added.

The rate translates into 0.11 health workers per 1,000 people, about half of the minimum threshold required to conduct essential health services, it said.

Somalia had 300 doctors as recently as 2006, but some have fled the country, part of a "brain drain", while others have been victims of the violence, including some killed by a deadly blast at a graduation ceremony last December, Garwood said.