Kath and Kim's Jane Turner* visits the world's biggest refugee camp and learns of the challenges involved in raising a family in appalling conditions.

I have been a Special Representative for Australia for UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) since 2005. In that time I have visited refugee camps in Chad, Sri Lanka and India to help raise awareness in Australia about the plight of refugees. But when I visited the world's largest refugee camp in Dadaab, on the border between Somalia and Kenya, I found the conditions there to be the worst I had ever seen.

Dadaab refugee camp was originally designed to shelter 90,000 refugees. It is now home to a staggering 290,000 refugees, most of whom have fled the fighting in neighbouring Somalia. 80 per cent of these refugees are women and children.

Maternal Health

A new mother in the maternity ward of
Dagahaley Hospital, Dadaab, Kenya

Travelling with the National Director of Australia for UNHCR, we arrived on a special humanitarian flight in a remote and desolate part of Kenya. We then travelled by car through the endless three-camp complex; row upon row of crowded ramshackle dwellings, huts and tattered tents.

Our first stop was the maternity hospital in Dagahaley camp, a place of special interest to me as a woman and a mother. The hospital was nothing more than a wooden hut with a corrugated tin roof. Iron bedsteads lined the room draped with blue mosquito nets. On each bed lay a woman and her tiny newborn swaddled in sarongs. Each baby was less than four hours old.

The midwife told me that all the births had gone well, though on our visit we met a 16-year-old lying alone - her premature baby had not survived the night. Another young mother in terrible pain had swollen like a balloon as a result of acute eclampsia. Across the room a midwife nursed a twin who was struggling to survive, her tiny lungs breathing fast and shallow.

All the normal complications of childbirth are writ large here against the backdrop of the difficult refugee life: eclampsia, obstructed labour and premature birth are just a few of the problems that refugee women face. They also have to deal with malnutrition, complications after female genital mutilation, a lack of hygiene and a severe lack of education.

Family Matters

Big families are customary in Somalia; I met a 22-year-old girl who was pregnant with her fifth child. Multiple pregnancies without proper nutrition can cause many problems including anaemia and calcium deficiencies, which among many complications cause infection, loss of teeth, brittle bones, osteoporosis and neurological weaknesses. This also has a domino effect as diseases in children are far more common among mothers who suffer from poor health.

Jane Turner with a young girl suffering from
infantile encephalitis in General Ward,
Dagahaley Camp, Dadaab, Kenya. Doctors say
they are “seeing more and more serious
illnesses in the camp
due to lack of health education.”

Health education and family planning in the region is still severely underdeveloped. Andrea, who runs the hospital, told me that only 30 of more than 200,000 women are involved in family planning.

The camp has amazing medical staff and they have some recent innovations such as the 'mama taxi' that is available to bring the women to hospital. These, along with an increasing awareness by the refugees that birthing in the hospital is safer than at home, have drastically reduced maternal and child mortality rates.

Health Education

Next stop was a secondary school, one of only six in the camp. Out of this enormous total population of 290,000, only about 13,000 children attend secondary school. Up until 1999, no girls attended school in Dadaab; now, almost a quarter of the students are female.

Three of the secondary schools were set up by parents and the communities. Talking with these parents and the teachers I could have been home in Melbourne at my own child's parent-teacher meeting - the same concerns and hopes for their children were prevalent.

The students themselves were inspiring, articulate, determined, full of ambition and passionate about returning to war-torn Somalia to help rebuild it. One boy spoke of the new school building they had been able to erect, but as yet there was no money to buy desks, chairs, equipment, stationery and books. The students are taught that "knowledge is power, and education is the key", yet they have limited resources to pursue this goal.

Ongoing Complications

Probably the most shocking part of our trip to Dadaab was visiting the homes of the refugees.

Jane Turner listens as UNHCR External Affairs
Officer Andy Needham explains how
refugees prepare food outside a
shelter at Ifo Camp, Dadaab, Kenya

Everything was dilapidated. Some of the huts were barely standing. The women build the walls from mud and sticks, and they are then covered with UNHCR plastic sheeting, sticks, cloth or anything else they can find to shelter themselves with. The walls and roofs were covered in holes.

The rains had already started to fall and I cannot even begin to imagine what will happen to these families once the flooding starts. The plots were mired with holes where the soil has been dug out to make the mud walls. Once the rains come, these holes became stagnant swamps, breeding grounds for mosquitoes that bring a severe threat of malaria. The drinking water is easily contaminated, causing dysentery and cholera.

Dadaab is desperately underfunded. With an average of 6400 new refugees arriving each month, and no more land to build on, the camp is dangerously overcrowded. Everything from shelter, tools and utensils, to food and water, is in constant short supply.

Everything is difficult in Dadaab. To see it first-hand made me put my own problems squarely back in their place. The resilience of the refugees in the face of such desperation and the tirelessness of the aid workers in the field are a testament to the human spirit.

So I come back to Australia not downcast or feeling hopeless, but grateful in the knowledge that I, along with all other Australians, have the unique opportunity to make a life-altering difference to the refugees of Dadaab. The experience of visiting Dadaab has put me back in touch with the wonderful sense we all innately share - the sense that we must always help our fellow man.

You Can Help

The UN Refugee Agency needs your help to send the World’s Biggest Relief Package to Dadaab, the World’s Biggest Refugee Camp.

• $54 can provide effective malaria treatment for 30 refugee children
• $125 can provide an emergency survival kit containing sleeping mats, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets and a kitchen set
• $430 can supply a water distribution point with 6 taps

It’s quick and easy to add your gift – just go to www.worldsbiggestpackage.com or call 1300 361 288.

About The Author

* Author and comedian Jane Turner is a Special Representative for Australia for UNHCR. The views expressed above are not necessarily those of UNHCR.