Libya’s healthcare crisis has a sad, new face. It is that of a tired 7-year-old girl, Sohan Aboulsoud, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, an inherited genetic disorder. Her family couldn’t get treatment for Sohan in so they decided to dare the oft-deadly, illicit journey by boat to Italy in search of help on June 25.
When Sohan’s mother, Khawla Nail, shared the photo of her exhausted daughter on a smuggler’s boat online, it went viral on social media and was picked up by a number of media outlets.
A day later, dozens of families with children who also suffer from cystic fibrosis protested in the Libyan city of Tripoli. They demanded access to medication and the creation of diagnostic centers in Libya. The lack of such services threatens lives, they said.
Since the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been stuck in . Since 2014, Libya has been split in two, with opposing governments located in the east and west of the country. A UN-backed administration known as the Government of National Unity, or GNU, is based in Tripoli in the west — where Sohan’s family is from. Its rival, known as the House of Representatives, is based in the east, in Tobruk. At various times over the last decade, each government has tried — and failed — to wrest control from the other.
The ensuing instability has impacted the country’s healthcare system so that advanced hospitals are not being built and certain medicines are scarce or unavailable. In December 2021, a report by the World Health Organization found that in the southern and eastern regions of Libya, about a third of all facilities were “not functional,” while 73% and 47% respectively were “partially functional.”
Libyan families desperate
For the past seven years, Sohan’s family has paid for private lab tests in neighboring and ordered medication through private pharmacies. Without this medication, Sohan would not have been able to survive until today.
“I submitted her file to the Libyan health authorities more than once but the response was always, there’s no budget,” Sohan’s mother told DW. “Everything was expensive, complicated and beyond our reach. And I watched my daughter’s condition deteriorate before my eyes. We exhausted every option for help in Libya.”
According to documents obtained by DW, more than 60 Libyan families have officially submitted requests to the Libyan Ministry of Health asking for cystic fibrosis treatment, a life-threatening illness that impacts the lungs, the digestive system and other organs. The documents include names and national ID numbers.
Mahmoud Abu Dabbous, head of the National Organization for Organ Donation Support in Libya, said that Sohan’s family was not the first that decided to risk the , to Europe in search of healthcare. “It is a grave indicator of Libya’s failure to meet basic health needs,” Abu Dabbous said.
Around 10 days ago, Sohan, her mother and her stepfather boarded an overcrowded boat filled with Libyan families. “We didn’t leave because we wanted to migrate, it was because illness doesn’t wait,” Sohan’s mother said.
Many other are less successful on their journey from Libya or Tunisia toward Europe. According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, more than 63,000 have died or have since 2014. The actual number is most likely significantly higher as reliable data is often unavailable.
Libyan government offers words, no action
Once the family had arrived on Italy’s island, which is around 420 km (260 miles) by boat from Zuwara on Libya’s western coast, a frequent launching point for smuggling operations, the family was housed in a shelter, one without air conditioning. “Sohan’s disease, cystic fibrosis, does not tolerate heat or dehydration, even a slight drop in fluids could send her into intensive care,” her mother explained.
By then though Sohan’s pictures had gone viral on social media, prompting Libya’s GNU to issue a message saying it would cover the costs of the girl’s treatment in Italy.
“But they only contacted us once, then everything stopped. No official has called since and no concrete steps have been taken,” Sohan’s mother told DW.
DW’s attempts to contact the Libyan Ministry of Health for clarification were unsuccessful and at the time of publication, there had been no response.
That comes as no surprise to Tarik Lamloum, head of the Libyan human rights organization Beladi. In his experience, Libyan government support often ends after one initial political comment. The GNU reaction didn’t come”out of a sustained sense of responsibility,” he told DW. It was due to the social media furore, he speculated.
He’s also worried that Sohan’s story could provide a troublesome example for other families in similar stress. “One family already contacted me after the story went viral, asking about the journey’s details and whether it could be repeated,” he told DW. “Instead of glorifying a case in which a family had to cross the sea, the state should have provided care within the country,” he concluded.
DW’s Jennifer Holleis contributed to this report.
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