Why has Somaliland’s first trained nurse won $1.4 million?

Over the past six decades, Dr Edna Adan Ismail has been a nurse and midwife. She has spent her life fighting for maternal health care rights in Somaliland and campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation- a practice which involves the partial or total removal of genitalia. It leaves many women and girls with infections, pain and complications in child birth.

She’s been in the news recently because she was awarded The Templeton Prize and prize amounting to almost $1.4 million. The award honours those who “harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it”.

So today Africa Daily’s Alan Kasujja caught up with Dr Ismail while she was on a trip in London to talk about her life, legacy, maternal healthcare and how it feels to win over a million dollars.