Photo: Templeton Prize
Nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and health care advocate Edna Adan Ismail, who for decades has combated female circumcision and worked to improve women's health care in East Africa, has become the first African woman to win the $1.4 million Templeton Prize, one of the world's largest annual individual awards. Born in 1937 in Hargeisa, Ismail became British Somaliland's first medically trained nurse-midwife after studying nursery and midwifery in Britain. Since 2002, when she opened the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa, more than 30,000 babies have been delivered there. Its education program, which became Edna Adan University in 2010, has trained more than 4,000 students to become health professionals. Ismail, 85, will donate some of the prize to the U.S.-based Friends of Edna Maternity Hospital to buy new equipment, hire educators, and train the next generation of health care workers. Previous prize winners include Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and conservationist Jane Goodall.
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