Report on health provisions to Nomads: improving medical staffing at Haima Hospital, Jiddat-il-Harasiis, Oman

In January 2012 the authors visited Haima Hospital in the Jiddat-il-Harasiis, Al Wusta province, Sultanate of Oman (Figure 1). It is the most remote secondary health care service in the country – nearly fi ve hundred miles from the capital, Muscat, and fi ve hundred miles from Salalah in the south (Figure 2). The visit was part of a larger research initiative to document contemporary life among the Harasiis pastoral camel- and goat-herding nomads and those Harasiis families newly settled in the government-built ‘tribal centre’ at Haima. This initiative followed on from the original United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project to extend government services to pastoral nomads in the interior deserts of Oman without forcing them to settle. The UNDP project helped support the development of weekly boarding schools, mobile primary health care and expanded immunization initiatives as well as the establishment of social affairs offices, veterinary support and other government initiatives (Chatty 1996: 92).